Glossary A
Asfor refers to a Middle Eastern ingredient which is made from the stamens of the safflower. Asfor has a golden, pale-orange color and is used to color or tint and flavor foods and desserts.
Asha is an Egyptian term which means the evening meal.
Ashta is a form of Clotted cream made by skimming boiling milk. It is used in many Lebanese sweets, especially nuraset or ladies arms and Rose of Damascus.
Ashura refers to Albanian special pudding made of cracked wheat, sugar, dried fruit, crushed nuts, and cinnamon prepared and eaten by the members of the Islamic Bektashi sect to mark the end of the ten-day fasting period of Matem.
Matem falls on the first ten days of the month of Muharrem and commemorates the battle of Kerbela in the present-day Iraq in 680 A.D. in which Imam Husein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was killed. It is a period of fasting or at least of abstinences from drink in memory of Husein and his troops who were encircled by the enemy and left without water before their death.