Baklava
In Turkish, there is a strange word “baklava” that has many uses. According to Wikipedia:
Baklava is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey. It is characteristic of the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire and those of Central and Southwest Asia.
However, we should add that 150 gr. of baklava is 413 calories. Here is it (with pistachio):
The other use of this word comes from the shape of baklava slices. They are always cut in quadrangles (with a couple of exceptions), forming squares, rectangles, and rhombii. Baklava is a common word used for rhombus in Turkish. Yes, we call “baklava” describing quadrangular forms with a fuzzy meaning of the real shape, as it can be a parallelogram, deltoid, or rhombus (but not square or rectangle). There are other interesting terms for geometric shapes such as “yamuk” (lopsided) used for trapezoids. To some extent, we try to use correct names in geometry classes but sometimes I feel it is an interesting tradition for us to name geometric shapes inspired by food. As baklava trays are usually circular, such quadrangular subdivisions of a circular area have brought an interesting technique, called “star cut”,
Because of the flow of syrup and the source of fire underneath, the best part of the tray is always the middle. I think the above style of cutting Safranbolu baklava has logic that, the middle part has as many slices as possible, while the flow of the boiling syrup is diffused better into the whole tray because of the canal-shaped cuts, pointing to the middle. Yummy. The photos below show how to cut it;
This style of cutting has losses at the perimeter of the tray, but at the same time, it creates many equal and very sharp rhombii. Thus it is easier and more polite to bite it. As it is a polar construction, all subdivisions including the ones at the perimeter are equally distributed. The process is very simple and it depends on the desired size of the rhombii and the radius of the tray.
Here is the Grasshopper definition that subdivides any given circle into rhombii, using the star-cut style of baklava, color-coding different-sized slices.
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