Thanks to the Internet, more specifically Wikipedia, I will never again have to look up the origin or history of any person/place/thing in my family’s 1950s era leather bound encyclopedia set. So, in a sort of tribute to my friend Wikipedia, I have decided to embark on a regular series I’m going to call DID YOU KNOW?. Basically, whenever the mood strikes me to look something up in Wikipedia, I’ll take all the interesting bits and post them here for your consumption. To kick things off, I’ve chosen Manakish (also manaqish, manaeesh or manakeesh).
“MANAKISH is a popular Levantine food consisting of dough topped with thyme, cheese, or ground meat. Similar to a pizza, it can be sliced or folded, and it can either be served for breakfast or lunch. The word manaqish is the plural of the Arabic word manqūshah (from the root verb naqasha ‘to sculpt, carve out’), meaning that after the dough has been rolled flat, it is pressed by the fingertips to create little dips for the topping to lie in.
Traditionally, Levantine women would bake dough in a communal oven in the morning, to provide their family with their daily bread needs, and would prepare smaller portions of dough with different toppings for breakfast at this time.”
My favourite topping is zataar and cheese, which I can easily get from Bake and Cake on Edgware Road.
Nick Saum, www.nicksaumphotography.com
Did you know? (always via Wikipedia)
Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site.
Subscribe to these comments.
Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.
You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
You must be logged in to post a comment.