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Basaliyya By al-Mu’tamid: Cheek Meat with Onions and Pumpkin
Translation:
Take chunks of meat from ribs and thighs and slice them into finger-like strips. Soak the meat in cold water, as this will drain the blood and remove the dirt. Hot water, on the other hand, will lock them in.
Take the meat out of the cold water and put it in a pot with a fresh batch of water along with a lot of pounded tallow. You may add galangal and cassia.
Chop onion, the amount needed is to be equal to one third of the meat used. If gourd is in season, then go ahead and use it. However, cut it like you did with the meat. When the pot comes to a boil and the onion and gourd.
The amount of water you added first should not be much
Continue cooking the pot until the pot is dry. Add murri (Liquid fermented sauce) and dry spices like black pepper, cassia, coriander, and cumin. Add as well on ladleful of vinegar and a small amount of rue. (Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchen pp. 317)
Ingredients:
1 lb. meat
3 C. Pumpkin
½ lg onion
1 tsp galangal, black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, coriander
½ vinegar
Redaction:
Cut your beef into small pieces. Rinse the beef in cold water, put into a pot with ground galangal and cinnamon.
I used half a large onion cut thin(ish). I used a Cinderella pumpkin for the gourd, cutting the peeled chunks into small pieces.
I cut smaller than finger length as I don’t want to chew large bits of pumpkin. Add
When the pot boils add pumpkin and onions. When the meat is cooked to tenderize add the cumin, coriander, and vinegar. Originally, I forgot this part and ate the thick stew/porridge without.
It’s amazing! Next pass through the kitchen I added the missing, cumin, coriander, and vinegar. Even better!
On its own, it’s very good. I had it over riced for a touch more filling dish.
The cheek meat is either very tender or a touch chewy from the marbling on the inside.
Boil one chicken, pullets (2 young fowl) in salt and water. Take a frying pan and pour tallow and oil into it. Spread bread dough in it to line bottom and sides. Now, take the (boiled) chicken, pullets or the two plump fowls and remove the cavity (wall). Spread the birds flat on the dough in the pan. Mix finely chopped cilantro and onion with spikenard, cloves, cassia and black pepper. Pour on them wine vinegar and murri (liquid fermented sauce). If you prefer, use juice of…raisins…and pomegranate seeds, instead. Add ½ C. clarified butter or sweet olive oil and 5 eggs. Mix thoroughly all these ingredients and pour them all over the chicken. Roll out another piece of dough into a disc (for a crust), cover the chicken with it, (and seal together the edges of the dough). Lower the pan into the (heated) tannur until it is cooked, God willing. (Ibn Sayyar Al-Warraq, pp. 372-373)
Ingredients:
1 boiled chicken, de-boned and shredded
2 rolled out rounds of circular dough
5 eggs
½ C. Murri
¼ C. wine vinegar
½ finely chopped large onion or one small onion
1 bunch cilantro (if fresh is not available use 1 tsp dried)
1 tsp spikenard, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves
½ C. melted butter.
Redaction:
Instead of doing one full bird, I used 4 chicken thighs, well boiled in salt water. The meat and skin were left over from making chicken stock and no one in period would throw out good meat.
Quick side note: Period chickens were not the size of the chickens we find in the grocery store today. They were a lot smaller. For an idea of true chicken size, look up the chicken type called The Sultan. Small chickens, incredibly cute! but not a lot of meat. Another period Middle Eastern chicken would have been the Orloff. A little bigger than the sultan in period and breed over time to be a much bigger bird by the Russian noble Orloff. (He liked the birds so brought a bunch home to Russia…hence the name Russian Orloff even though the birds technically started in the Middle East.) I wrote a research paper that can be found on Roxalana’s redactions under Research paper if you want to know waaaay more than anyone really wants to know about chickens in period.
I just went without. I also used dried cilantro instead of fresh. It’s what I had on hand.
Remember the Murri recipe awhile back? It’s here again. When you make Murri, make several cups worth. This will show up again and again in Middle Eastern recipes. If you don’t have Murri on hand, use pomegranate juice and ground up raisins. Pomegranate juice can be bought at some stores, lots of Middle Eastern and Oriental stores carry this, or it can be ordered online. For raisin juice. Soak them a little bit, then grind them well (use a Cuisinart if you have one or a pestle and mortar) and strain through a fine sieve or cloth covered sieve.
I used a simple butter crust. 1 stick of butter, mixed with 2.5 C. of flour, 1 tsp salt and 1 C. of water added a Tbs. at a time until everything comes together. Some days your kitchen is going to be so humid you won’t need all the water, but some days you will, hence the Tbs. at a time.
Lay out your shredded chicken. Cover with the onion, spice, murri and egg mixture.
Cover with the second layer of dough and seal it up. I used a simple squish the dough together then use fingers to form a semi nice looking edge found on apple pies. You can use a fork, a spoon or even a dough crimper, as long as the edges are sealed together.
DO NOT forget to add small pricks to the dough so that pockets of hot air can escape and not rip your dough apart while drying to do so.
Bake until done.
I found this more like a chicken quiche then a chicken pot pie. The flavors were a bit odd yet still enjoyable!
Take lamb and chicken. Alternatively, use young fowls or any
other similar birds (instead of chicken). You also have the option of using
either lamb or poultry. Cut the meat into medium pieces and clean them. Remove (and discard) the entrails of the
chicken and discard the heads and necks.
Put the meat in a clean pot.
Add the strained liquid of truffles, which have been washed and soaked
in water over night. Put enough of the liquid to cover the meat. If the truffles are not available, boil some
honey until it turns black then pour on it a small amount of ma’kamakh (murri,
liquid fermented sauce), add it to the pot with a little chickpeas and salt.
Light fire under the pot.
Tie into one bundle fresh rue, leeks – Either Rumi or Nabati
– and cilantro. Add this bouquet to the
pot. Then add ground spices such as
coriander, cumin, caraway, and black pepper. Continue cooking the pot until the
meat is done.
Break fine bread into pieces (in a big bowl) and add enough
of the broth to submerge it. Put the
meat pieces all over the bread and garnish the dish by arranging small sausages
and tardin (thin meat patties) all around.
(Nasrallah, pp. 337)
Substitutions and Why:
First thing we don’t have truffles in such quantities as to
be cost effective. Luckily the recipe
calls for browned honey with Murri. So
make your own murri or use a mixture of soy sauce and honey (I haven’t done
this one myself.
If you feel adventurous try making Murri at home or go with
honey and soy sauce mixture. Do not use
Rue. It’s a bit like eating poison
ivy.
Ingredients:
1.5 lbs. chicken (thighs) cut into bite sized pieces
1.5 lbs. of lamb cut into bite sized pieces
Liquid of truffles or 2 cups of honey cooked to a dark
color.
1.5 cups Murri
4 Leeks
Chopped cilantro
1 tsp each of coriander, cumin caraway and black pepper
1 tsp salt
15 oz garbanzo beans
Bread
Small sausages
Flattened meat patties
Redaction:
First if you have the strained liquid of truffles add that. I didn’t have truffles to strain liquid through. So, I cooked 2 cups of honey down and added 1.5 Cups of the murri sauce. I then added the chopped-up chicken and lamb.
Next came the leeks, cilantro, and garbanzo beans. Finally, the spices. I put the stove on a low temperature to cook the meat all the way through.
Next, I sliced up the bread and arranged this on platter.
I poured just enough of the cooking liquid to cover the bread.
After the sauce was over the bread, I added the meat, leaks and beans arranging them over the bread and sauce.
Finally, I added the thin meat patties to the main dish and served.
There was nothing bad about this dish. My favorite parts were dipping the bread into the sauce before dishing it out, and dipping the meat patties into the sauce before the dish was ready. It is sweet with amazing flavor. Lots of effort but well worth it!
Make your own bread if you can, if not really good pita
bread. I did cut this recipe down because
we are bread fiends in the house. What
isn’t used for this recipe will be gobbled down in a matter of hours.
Translation:
Take 1 (makkuk) 7.5 lbs. of good quality samidh flour and
sift in a big wooden bowl (jafna). Mix
with it 3 uqiyyas (3 oz) yeast, and add 30 dirhams (3 oz) salt that has been
dissolved in water and strained.
(strained to remove dirt and sand).
(Nasrallah, p. 119)
Ingredients:
I cut the original recipe in half.
3.25 C flour
1.5 oz yeast
1.5 oz salt
2.25 C water
Redaction:
I made bread from Emmer flour mixed half and half with
white. Emmer flour traces have been
found in the middle east through Italy (https://www.ancientgrains.com/emmer-history-and-origin/)
with a nutty flavor. It is a specialty
grain, that isn’t easy to find in the US.
I had to order mine. Some recipes
have spelt flour instead of emmer. If
neither spelt or emmer is available use whole wheat mixed white flour.
For the bread, I mixed flour, water salt and yeast until a nice smooth dough formed from about 10 minutes of kneeding.
Next, I let sit for 90 minutes, punched the risen dough down, forming dough balls roughly the half the size of my fist.
Here you can see I used parchment paper underneath. I do this with all my breads now. As far as I know, this is not period. Bread would have been made in an oven, on hot coals, wrapped around a large hot rock or Tandori depending on where you were.
The small loaves of white taste like a good sourdough
bread. The emmer flour loaves taste like
a whole wheat bread. I went with the
white flour loaves for two reasons. I
love sourdough and my daughter ate all the emmer flour loaves.
This recipe I am using the small loaves for called for scorched bread. As you can see my scorched is just extra brown. Everything in period was used. Nothing left to waste. I didn’t scorch my bread because I don’t want my house smelling of burnt bread. I did take the bread hand loafs to a dark bottom as best I could. If you find yourself with scorched bread save it for the following recipe Tharida Shamiyya (of the Levant) also known as Spiced Honey Meat over Bread
I haven’t worked with Taro root before so this was new. I love the almost potato like squish of the taro when I bit down. The spices can be…overwhelming. So keep that in mind when you go to cook this.
Mutawakkiliyya (The Caliph al-Mukatwakkil d. AD 861) Meat with Taro
Translation: A pound and a half of meat and a pound and a half of washed taro, caraway pepper Ceylon cinnamon, five bunches of green coriander, five green onions, five heads of garlic. The meat is put in the pot and water to cover or less is put on it and you kindle (the fire) under it until it dries up. And when the water has evaporated, you throw the pepper and caraway , and you cut up two bunches of green coriander and four green onions and pound the four heads (of garlic) mixed with three bunches of green coriander. You feed it with all the pepper and caraway and throw everything into the pot with the meat. You can cut up the garlic. When it smells good, you put water on the pot as needed to cove the taro you have. Then you kindle (the fire) until the taro smells good, and you make it settle and ladle it out. (Rodinson, pp. 340)
Ingredients: 1.5 lbs stew meat 1.5 cleaned taro root 2 tsp. ea. Long pepper (groud) and caraway 1 Tbs Chinese cinnamon 1 head of garlic 1 bunch cilantro (RINSED) 1 bunch green onions Salt to taste
Redaction: So reading through the recipe is a little bit confusing. The quantities change from 5 to 4 to 3 the further you go in. So I made a few judgement calls (after experiment). I tried 3 heads of garlic with two full store bunches of cilantro and 4 green onions. WHOA! All I tasted was garlic. So I made a decision to embrace the right as a cook to change how much went into my dish.
I used one (well rinsed) bunch of cilantro, 8 green onions (one store bought bunch), and one head of garlic. There is still a bite; however I can now taste the green onion and cilantro instead of swearing I’ve turned into a vampire the garlic bit back so much.
I gathered all my items up. Per usual, I have cut the meat into bite sized pieces. I think that’s courteous to my quests to not have to chew one piece for ever while having the cheeks of a chipmunk.
First thing to notice is that taro root looks like hairy roaches. I found when picking out the Taro, the box contained a lot of moldy roots. I went for the dense and firm roots without the mold. I don’t need to rediscover penicillin. Rinse them well and peel off the outer layer.
The spices are some of the usual suspects. However, I am trying more long pepper than just regular pepper. I LOVE the smell of fresh long pepper. In the picture, you will see the long pepper is whole. I ground mine up, so the full flavor could be enjoyed by all, not just the one person who bit down on a whole long pepper. However, I am trying more long pepper than just regular pepper. I LOVE the smell of fresh long pepper. In the picture, you will see the long pepper is whole. I ground mine up, so the full flavor could be enjoyed by all, not just the one person who bit down on a whole long pepper.
Put the meat into a pot with just enough water to cover.
Once the first round of water has evaporated, everything but the taro root goes into the pot.
Stir this around until fragrant. 2-3 minutes. Next add the taro root and enough water to cover. Cook until the taro root is tender. This is about 35-45 minutes.
Serve!
The taro root is nice. A good starch in place of potato for a beef stew. STRONG garlic taste even with the cinnamon. Not even the lovely fragrant long pepper could overcome so much garlic. When I do this dish again, I’ll probably go for ½ a head of garlic and maybe a smidge more cilantro and green onion. Otherwise pretty tasty.
I wanted to do a dish that had the unusual. Tongue doesn’t come up very often nor do several of the spices I used. Here is my redaction of this hearty stew of meat and chickpeas.
Qelyeh-yeSirab – A dish of tripe,tongue, stomach
Translation:
Its method of preparation is that the trip of mountain bovine should be cleaned and cut into small square pieces and the skin of sheep tail fat should be chopped according to the instructions for trip and boiled. Then the meat of the bovine chest is cut into small squares and added along with peeled chickpeas, onions,spices, especially cinnamon sticks, and quartered bovine tongue and simmered overnight, and in the morning high quality vinegar with sugar and saffron is added and it must be thick. If bovine tripe is not available, sheep tripe can also be made according to this recipe, and a large amount of fat is pounded and added at the step of simmering.
(ol-Hayat/Ghanoonparvar, pg, 37)
Ingredients:
Tripe (if available)
Beef (I used brisket)
Beef tongue
Cinnamon sticks
Two onions
4 C. garbanzo beans
3.5 Tbs spices containing nutmeg, allspice,
ginger, gallingale, cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, long pepper, grains of paradise.
½ C. Balsamic vinegar
¼ C. sugar
Large pinch of saffron
Redaction:
Tripe is one of those items that isn’t usually available at most stores. I…skipped the tripe. Terrible of me and even though I cook weird and a usual even I can’t make tripe palatable to everyone. I used beef brisket, the flat portion leftover from a full brisket that wouldn’t fit into a baking pan. The tongue was perfect.
Brisket
Gather your ingredients together. Don’t worry if you think you have more than anyone will ever eat. Freezers were made for a reason!
Even though I was using the smallest possible portions, I had a mountain of meat, roughly four pounds worth. This required a minimum of two onions sliced and four cups of garbanzo beans. Even if you have a large crock pot, feel free to add more onions and chickpeas as this will be mostly a meat dish otherwise.
The brisket was easy enough to cut into squares. More fat should have been added. Feel free to add olive oil or even a bit of sesame oil if beef tallow or sheep tail fat isn’t available. I would even suggest ghee/butter.
The tongue was a pain. First you have to boil the tongue for 10 minutes in either water, broth or wine. I used broth I had on hand from a pot roast done the night before.
Next you have to skin said tongue. The skin on the tongue is rough, touch and totally inedible unless you are starving. Just don’t try it unless you want to eat shoe leather and the shoe leather will probably be preferred.
After skinning the tongue, I cut the tongue into pieces, as square as possible. Please note how the outside looks done but the inside is still raw. The boiling phase was only to loosen the outer skin/taste buds of the tongue.
The spices were fun. I had made an aratif a few months earlier for a different project and much left over. For those wondering: *Aratif’s are spice mixtures, unique to merchants and households who had their own ideas of what tasted great. I used the common and the unusual(by today’s standards) because it smelled amazing. In period, every cook and household had their own secret blend. Whatever was preferred by the head of the household or passed down through the generations.
Every thing went into a crock pot. It’s a full crock pot. Don’t worry though, everything fit…mostly. *Note the whole cinnamon sticks. Once you use a stick you can’t use it again. Throw it away.
No slow burning fire was available though I would LOVE to have an indoor fire place where I could keep a fire going slowly with the correct pottery pots, just for dishes like this. Don’t be afraid to work with what you have. If you don’t have a fireplace or charcoal grill, use a crock pot or an oven. Put the oven on 200 and let the dish cook for 8-9 hours or on low for the crock pot for 8-9 hours. Remember brisket and tongue are tough; these meats need long slow simmers to tenderize.
Once the dish is almost done, add the vinegar, sugar and saffron. You don’t need a lot, just another layer of flavor.
This can be served on its own or over rice or noodles. See which you like!
Those green things, aren’t green. It’s the onions. The chopped pieces absorbed the coloring of the spices during cooking.
***Tongue: is an organ meat and will be tough with an unusual flavor if you’re not use to it. Tongue does require long slow cooking time and if not in a period dish, it’s excellent sliced with horseradish and mayo between sourdough bread.
I had guests coming and wanted to show off something new but I wanted comfort food. It had been an awful week for all of us. This dish hit all the comfort spots, meaty, fatty, carby, sweet and salty. There isn’t anything this dish can’t help with when you’re needing comfort.
Morassa Palav
Chicken with Rice, Fruit and Nuts
Translation:
This dish is also
called Molamma’ Palav. Its method of preparation is that chicken meat is cut
into small pieces, and after skimming, once it is cooked, rice is added. When
the rice is half cooked, golden raisins, pistachio nuts, almonds, dates, figs,
chestnuts, barberries, and a large amount of chickpeas are added and mixed, and
fire is prepared as in other dishes and it is steamd. Each of the above
mentioned ingredients is added at different stages; for example, dates are
added after the rice drained in order to prevent them from becoming mushy.
(Ghanoonparvar, pg. 27)
Ingredients:
1.5 lbs. cut up chicken
2 C. Jasmine rice
1 C. ea. Almonds, Pistachio, Barberries
2 C. Raisons, Figs, Dates, Chestnuts,
Chickpeas
1 C. Chicken Stock
1 C. Butter
Salt to taste
Optional:
1⁄2 large onion
3 cloves minced garlic
Pinch saffron
1 tsp ground cloves
Redaction:
Gather everything together. Here I make a substitution of golden raisins for currents. Usually it’s the other way around but not today.
Yes, those are fresh figs. It’s fig season here and I had a bunch on hand. So if you need a recipe for fresh figs, here ya go!
Add the chicken and rice together and cook. Here I added the chicken stock and butter instead of water.
Yes, you can use water, I wanted more flavor hence the addition.
Half way through cooking I added the nuts and chickpeas.
With 10 minutes left, I added all the chopped fruit and chestnuts.
Serve – One bowl is all I could eat. This rich and satisfying as only a good chicken and rice dish can be.
For the optional: Add the chopped onions with the chicken, rice and stock with the garlic. Add the saffron and ground cloves when you stir in the nuts.
When I did this dish the first time, it was completely wrong. I had to redo the marinade and the cooking. I left the spicing the same and now the chicken isn’t all vinegar with a hint of spices. You can now taste the spicing and a hint of vinegar now.
Meat inVinegar (Another Recipe For)
Translation:
Another recipe, for meat: wash the meat well and
put it in vinegar, keep it and marinate it in ghee flavoured with
asafetida. Mix the meat with potherbs of
all kinds and put it into a cooking pot.
When it is well-cooked, add lime juice, pepper and fresh ginger and
serve it. (The Nimatnama Manuscript, pg. 13).
Ingredients:
2 lbs chicken (or meat of your choice)
1 1/2 C. Vinegar
1/2 C. Ghee
1/2 tsp. Asafetida
1 tsp, ground cumin, coriander and dried parsley
1 1/2 tsp turmeric
1 Tbs. chopped ginger
1 Tbs. lime juice
1 tsp ground pepper
Redaction:
Normally you’d use a whole chicken (with skin and bones) or if you prefer red meat 2 lbs of your choice. Here I used 4 chicken thighs with skin and bones roughly 1.5 lbs.
The meat was put into a clay pottery pot. Here I added the vinegar.
The vinegar is both balsamic and generic white cider. I wanted a little sweet to the tart bite. You can go either way depending on what your taste is, as no particular type of vinegar is specified. Marinade for 4 hours or overnight.
*Asafetida is very potent. A little goes a long way and will make your hands and kitchen smell…unusual. If you don’t have any on hand, use garlic.
Spices shown are ground. Don’t be afraid to play with whole spices if you have those on hand!
Put the chicken into a baking dish. Next add the pot herbs. Here I combined cumin, coriander, mint and turmeric together.
I like the flavors and they go well with lime and ginger. Place in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 or until the meat is well cooked and tender.
I used a clay pot both times. One more period than the other. Add ghee (clarified butter) and the asafetida* (also known as the Devil’s Stink Weed) together. Pour into the baking dish.
Once you pull the meat from the oven add the lime
juice, ginger and ground pepper to taste.
Eat!
Even though this dish says “grilled”, it’s not. Even though it looks a little bland, it’s an amazing dish with more flavor than can be described in the word “grilled”. Fast and easy. You spend as much time on prepping as you do cooking. Give this one a try, if your short on time or just need something showstopping on the taste buds.
Shawi: Grilled Meat
Translation:
Take fatty good grilling meat and sheep’s tail. Chop finely. Put in a shallow earthenware pot. Put it over the fire. Take for it roasted walnut hearts and throw over roasted and pounded coriander and caraway, parsley, mint and lime. Put in the middle a little atraf al-tib. Put in a dish and eat hot. It is tasty. (Kanz al-Fawa’id fi Tanwi’ al-Mawa’id/Salloum, pg 50-51)
Ingredients:
1 – 1.5 lbs Meat
1/2 C. Olive Oil or sheep tail fat
2 C. Roasted Walnuts
1 tsp. caraway (roasted and ground)
1 tsp. ground coriander, parsley and mint
2 Tbs. lime juice
Redaction:
I gathered all the ingredients together.
I had beef for grilling on hand so went with that. Any good quality meat will do. I cut the meat into about 1/2 to 1/3 what I would normally for making kabobs. I wanted to have easily chewed pieces not huge dripping chunks. The meat was then put into a shallow tajine bottom.
I left the lid off as the recipe didn’t say to cover. I think my idea of small is not the original cook’s idea of “finely”. I’m ok with this.
Next I took roasted walnuts, spices and lime juice. Everything was mixed together then popped into the oven at 350 for 10-15 minutes.
If you’ll notice the meat is still a little pink at the center. This is a fast cooking dish.
The reason you don’t see this on a plate over roasted vegetables or sauted spinach…it was eaten to fast. I just got enough into this bowl before it was devoured. This is a damn good recipe!
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