[Sca-cooks] Re: Manti

[Christiane]

This is from "Medieval Arab Cookery", page 254, third paragraph:

"The word was 'joshparag'[there is a line over the o that I cannot reproduce],
from 'josh', the
root  of the verb 'to boil', and an uncertain second element whigh may be related
to 'parcha',
'piece'.  The obscurity of the derivation had been felt even by Iranians, because
the word had 
been altered to 'gush-e barreh', 'lamb's ear'.  In Arabic, the word has also been
altered by folk
etymology to 'shushbarak' or 'shishbarak', as if connected with the words for skewer
and the small
Turkish meat pie 'borek'."

Sometimes reading too quickly is a dangerous thing.  Charles Perry didn't say that
it was 
connected to borek.  I misread what he wrote.  Sorry.

=========================================================

Huette, actually knowing this makes sense why the dish is sometimes referred to in modern Turkish as "borek of the Tatars."

I actually did find recipes on many Turkish tourism sites for manti were baked in a dish, not boiled or steamed, before the yogurt sauce was added. The tendency for naming stuff that is unfamiliar is to equate it with stuff that is familar. So these little pieces of meat-filled dough in the bottom of a baking dish must have been reminiscent to miniature borek, perhaps? 

Gianotta