Talk:Levantine cuisine

message: Dovidroth, you removed several dubious tags saying: "Rv false, misleading edit summary that reverted Iskandar's compromise. Per agreement in talk page". The tags does not revert anything, Iskandars edit is untouched. You also say: "Iskandar's compromise. Per agreement in talk page", if you looked at the discussion at the talkpage I asked "Do you have sources that say Ptitim and Jerusalem Mixed Grill are contemporary levantine dishes?-" and not one single reply or source was provided that they are "Contemporary levantine". So how is this an "agreement" or "compromise" ?  You also removed the tags from other Eastern European and Iraqi dishes that has nothing to do with the "Contemporary" section. So you incorrectly removed the tags based on several inaccurate claims.  --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 18:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dovidroths removal of Dubious tags 

message: Cholent, by all accounts on its page, appears to have evolved among the diaspora from harisa, something which is obviously an extant dish, though harisa is so universal in Middle East cuisine, it is unclear if there is anything even distinctively Levantine about that either. I suppose mashing barley or wheat together with a bit of meat isn't exactly rocket science. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think any of the dishes listed here are 'rocket science', and many have equivalents in other cuisines. If this article is to be only about dishes that are unique to the Levant, w/o any similar dishes elsewhere, there wouldn't be much left of it. Red Slapper (talk) 19:29, 16 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: That was just an off-the-cuff remark. The point was that harisa appears to be the Levant dish; cholent an Iberian derivation of the former ... but nothing I can see links cholent itself to the Levant. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Cholent is a traditional Jewish food and it is part of the cuisine of the majority of Israel. Israel is in the Levant. See the connection? Red Slapper (talk) 11:59, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Just because it has become popular in a country in the Levant does not make it part of Levantine cuisine. I'm sure pizza and burgers are popular in Israel; that doesn't make those Levantine cuisine. This isn't a list of stuff people eat in the region. You'll need to source this, because what I can see in the sources is:  ;  . Iskandar323 (talk) 12:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've addressed that fallacious reasoning above, in my responses to Macrakis. . Feel free to reread. Red Slapper (talk) 13:34, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's stay civil. I've read the above, and I agree with you with respect to challah, for instance (even though the bread has clearly been heavily influenced by European bread traditions), due to the plausible connection with a more ancestral bread of the same name consumed in the region. The same does not apply to cholent, which by all accounts (and by accounts I means sources, not the deductive reasoning of editors), is a Central and Eastern European dish. Unless you are able to provide sourcing to contrary, I will be removing that entry based on it being plainly unverifiable information, per our core content policy of WP:V. If there are no sources to the contrary of the above, there is no case to be had here. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:05, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: We've been through this "origins" stuff before. Coffee did not originate in the Levant, Shawarma is a Turkish dish, etc... But just to put your mind at ease -. Red Slapper (talk) 14:30, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: We follow what reliable sources say. Several people have asked several times for sources saying that these eastern European dishes are "levantine" and not a single one has been provided.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 05:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Several sources have been provided, including academic ones. Red Slapper (talk) 12:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Several users looked at the links you provided above and they all came to the conclusion that they do not say that the eastern European and Iraqi dishes are levantine. So sources for this claim is still missing.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 17:57, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: You can ignore the explicit language in the sources I provided (e.g ""The challahs dipped in salt ... was sensational, a bold alchemy of the Levant and Maharashtra"") , but that does not make for a convincing arguemnt. Red Slapper (talk) 18:14, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Amazing selective quotation. The full sentence from that source is: "The challahs dipped in salt and blessed over with ‘Hamotzi’ were baked by “Moshe, an Iraqi Jew who has had a chain of restaurants in Mumbai,” Sopher further wrote. The food was sensational, a bold alchemy of the Levant and Maharashtra ", So she had food at his restaurant and some of it according to the author was levantine, this does not mean that Challah is levantine. Infact the source says the exact opposite right after: "“The name “hallah” was given to a bread in South Germany in the Middle Ages, when it was adopted by the Jews for the Sabbath,” writes Claudia Roden in “The Book of Jewish Foods. “John Cooper (‘Eat and Be Satisfied’) notes that the first mention of the bread was in the fifteen century, that the term was coined in Austria….The bread became the Jewish ritual bread of Germany, Austria and Bohemia and was taken to Poland, Eastern Europe and Russia when the Jews migrated east.”"Challah has a natural home at Chabad, as this Hassidic movement’s leaders were originally from Belarus, and the ritual bread emigrated with the Jewish people to the U.S., Israel and the West." So your source says the exact opposite of what you claim, that's its a European bread that was imported to Israel.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:32, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Coffee is a bean; if you mean Arabic coffee, as in the preparation, I already removed it as not Levant specific. Shawarma is not Turkish, but Ottoman, and hence it's prevalence across the formerly Ottoman Levant. I can't access the orthodox religious website, but I fail to see how that is likely to be a reliable source for anything related to food history. I provided links to DeGruyter and Jstor; scholarly sources - unless you have something similar that counters these sources with equivalent reliability and independence, i.e. not a religious website writing about how important a religiously connected foodstuff is to them, then I am certainly not at ease. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:44, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Good thing we have an encyclopedia where we can read things like "shawarma ...appeared in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, in what is now Turkey."  If you don't want to read my source, you can read the same thing in Freekeh: "Freekeh is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible under the term qalûy (Biblical Hebrew: קָל֤וּי‎, scorched or roasted) or carmel (Biblical Hebrew: כַּרְמֶל‎), indicating it was used in ancient Israelite cuisine." Red Slapper (talk) 15:58, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Reliable source: "Shawarma is a popular Levantine Arab specialty." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East & North Africa: D-K, p 840. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:05, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No one is doubting that Shawarma is a Levantine dish - that's exactly the point: it is a Levantine dish despite not originating in the Levant. The origin of dishes is simply not relevant to their being Levantine dishes today. Red Slapper (talk) 13:03, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

text: Yes, a lot of Arabic food is relatively pan-Ottoman. This isn't news. All of the Levant was just the backyard of the empire at the time, so anything from Turkey would have spread swiftly. Turkey has at times even been included in definitions of the Levant due to the proximity and overlap. It's probably an interestin history, but today academic sources say things like:  , so it makes the cut. What your sudden interest in freekeh is, I don't know, but that's coarsely ground green durum wheat, an ingredient. I don't see how it is pertinent here. Are you confusing freekeh with harisa, which is just normal cracked wheat and the actual dish said to be the antecedent to cholent? Iskandar323 (talk) 18:13, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no doubt that stuff that originated in Turkey (which is not an Arab country, BTW) spread through the Levant. My point is that the origin of Shawarma is not the Levant - but it is clearly a Levantine food, despite the non-Levantine origin. Freekeh, as the sources say, is the precursor to Egyptian hamin, Ferik. Red Slapper (talk) 18:49, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: There are sources linking Shawarma to Levantine cuisine, so it stays. Simple as that. Simple as these other entries would be if you could source them. Freekeh is freekeh, which is green durum wheat. I have not seen a source linking this to hamin, which is meat and cracked, not green durum wheat berries. You're confusing things. Gil Marks, who is an expert of Jewish cuisine, links hamin back to harisa (a porridge). He explains, in quite some detail, how Sephardic Jews in Iberia added chickpeas or beans to harisa for the first time, evolving it into hamin. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:06, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've provided you a source that says Freekeh is the precursor to Egyptian hamin. Red Slapper (talk) 12:58, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, what is your point here? This page isn't about Egyptian food, and neither Ferik or Freekeh or Hamin are the same thing as cholent, which is what this current talk page discussion thread is about. The same website (so speaking in terms of your sources), states, on its page about cholent:  Now this is very bad writing, but you will note that it doesn't state that cholent itself is from the Middle East, but that cholent's "origins" are from the Middle East. Now this is harisa, which spread across North Africa, became hamin in Spain, before becoming, yes, Ashkenazi cholent in Western Europe. Just read the entry by Gil Marks! Iskandar323 (talk) 13:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Hamin is pretty much the same thing as Cholent - , if you don't really know what the dishe are, perhaps you should not be writing about them Red Slapper (talk) 14:40, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: And if that's the level of the points you are making now, perhaps you should just stop. Yes, cholent and hamin are similar, including the fact that both originated in Europe, which is the key point that is relevant here. Harisa is the original Middle Eastern and Levantine progenitor of both the other dishes, and thus the only rightful entry here. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:46, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not going into the "origin" issues again, Read my responses above, or stop your double standards and make an argument for removal of Shwarama etc... Red Slapper (talk) 11:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: There are no double standards: there are sources that assert that a specific dish is Levantine or there are no such sources. You have provided no such sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:21, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cholent/Harisa