Pahklava

Got my third round of chemo yesterday, three more to go. It took a long time, five hours in the chair, but I was well equipped with a book ("Fierce Heart", about Makaha, on the west side of Oahu and the heart of Hawaiian surfing culture), two newspapers, my ipod (I'm currently listening to "Sharpe's Sword", by Bernard Cornwell, about the British and French fighting in Spain in 1812), and a bunch of sudokus. Still I managed to fall asleep for the last hour or so. We left the  hospital around 4PM and found ourselves in the rush hour traffic out of Boston. An hour later we were maybe 20 miles along the way and jammed in traffic, so we got off to eat at a 99 restaurant. Displaying my usual high level of common sense, I ordered a cheeseburger with fries (got to keep that red blood count up). Needless to say at 2:30AM I parted ways with the meal, after just managing to keep it down for the previous hour in bed. But I felt better afterward and had a good breakfast this morning. Thanks to my younger daughter and future acupuncturist (one more year of study to go), I had my ginger tea, am wearing my acupressure wrist bands, and also applied acupressure to points on both lower legs as she had instructed a while ago. And I feel fine so far.

But I really wanted to write today about the delicious pahklava Chef Nancy made for Dr. T.and Jason. Dr. T. is from Greece, and would be well acquainted with baklava, the Greek version of the Armenian pastry we call pahklava. Why does my Irish wife know how to make pahklava? A little background: I am of Armenian-Assyrian descent. My paternal grandparents, Marderos and Hiaganoosh, came to New York from a small town in eastern Turkey, part of historical Armenia, in the early 1900's to escape the Turkish massacre of its Christian minorities, of which the largest was the Armenian. The killing by outright slaughter or forced marches through the desert of a large portion of the Armenian population is considered by most of the world to be the first genocide of the 20th century, and the inspiration to Hitler for the genocide of the Jews during World War II. Sadly, the Turkish government has refused, to this date, to admit to its role in the genocide. My mother's large Assyrian family also emigrated from eastern Turkey to escape the massacres. They came from the city of Diarbakir, which had a large Assyrian minority. She was the youngest of seven children and less than a year old when they arrived in the U.S. Unlike Armenians, who have had a homeland right up to the present day Republic of Armenia, there has not been an Assyria since ancient times. The Assyrians were a warlike people who in the seventh century BC had the greatest empire in the ancient world, comprising most of Mesopotamia and Egypt. I remember reading at an exhibit of Assyrian ruins at the British Museum that "their neighbors were not happy to see the Assyrians come around", certainly a bit of British understatement. Assyrians now are scattered throughout the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, site of their ancient homeland. Assyrians, not to be confused with modern-day Syrians, who are Arab and Muslim, are Christians and, in my mother's case, Eastern Rite Catholic, a branch of the Roman Catholic church. My father's family, like most Armenians, were Armenian Apostolic, the national church of Armenia. But the Turks did not discriminate in their massacres; all the Christian minorities were fair game for slaughter. This included Assyrians and Greeks as well as Armenians. But back to the pahklava. Nancy learned to cook many Armenian dishes from my mother. Assyrians  speak Armenian and have the same foods, perhaps with minor variations, as well as the same music and dances and customs in general as the Armenians. In fact, growing up, I considered myself Armenian and it wasn't until I was older that I even knew my mother was Assyrian.

Nancy's Armenian-Assyrian-Irish Pahklava

(See corrected recipe in next post)

For the filling:                                                  For the syrup:

                   2 cups finely chopped walnuts                        2 cups sugar

                   1 tsp. cinnamon                                              1 cup water

                   3 tablespoons sugar                                       1/2 tsp.  lemon juice

                                                                                          Boil for 1 min., cool for 5 min.

1 package filo dough                                                           

1/2 lb. butter (melt butter in microwave)

In a rectangular baking pan put down 10 layers of filo dough. Butter each layer.

Layer the filling evenly over the dough and pack down hard

Put the rest of the dough over the filling. Butter each layer.

Before baking, cut into diamond-shaped pieces. (make parallel cuts about 2 in. apart
     lengthwise in the longer direction, then make parallel diagonal cuts to get the diamond
     shapes. Dipping your knife in cold water will help make clean cuts.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Serve with syrup. Enjoy!