Category Archives: Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Sour Dishes (Hawamid)

Maghmum (Lime and Chicken Pie)

Aside November 11, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Maghmum: the Veiled or Covered One. Zesty Almond and Chicken Pie

Take a cleaned chicken and put it, as is, whole, with its breast split, in a pot with salt, oil, black pepper and dried coriander and a small onion. Cook half way. Then, then take it out and put it in another pot and put on it its broth, macerated (naqui) murri, saffron, rue, thyme and citron leaves. Put in its cavity a lime. Scatter over it peeled almonds and cover the top of the pot with dough. Place it in the oven until it is cooked, then use.

(al-Tujibi, Fadalah al-Khiwan fi Tayyibat al-ta’am wa a;-A;wan/Saaloum, pg. 109.)

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken or Chicken thighs

1 tsp salt

3 Tbs oil

1 tsp crushed black pepper

1 tsp dried coriander or 1 Tbs dried cilantro leaves

1 sm onion chopped

1 C chicken broth

½ tsp fish sauce

1 pinch saffron

1 tsp thyme

1 handful citron or kafir lime leaves with the center vein pulled out

1 lime quartered

½ cup chopped or sliced almonds

1 pie crust:

2 C flour

1 1/3 stick of butter

¼ C CHILLED water

½ tsp salt

Redaction:

I had to change this slightly. Instead of using a whole chicken, I used chicken thighs because it’s a small household and I am not feeding 15. I will explain how use this recipe with a whole chicken as we go, but don’t be worried if you only see chicken thighs in the pictures.

First, I gathered all the ingredients together for frying.

I poured the oil into a pan,

Get the oil to a good temperature (dribble a couple drops of water into the oil, when it sizzles the oil is ready). Then I liberally applied salt, pepper and dried cilantro leaves (or if you prefer ground coriander…same plant different name).

The dried cilantro leaves aren’t as potent as the ground coriander. Dried leaves take up more room then ground, so you need a little more dried leaves then of the ground spice.

Once the chicken was thoroughly coated, I placed the chicken into the frying pan, turning every 3-5 minutes. If you are using a whole chicken, cut the chicken in half, coat as you would the thighs and brown the same way. You just have one very large piece to turn instead of several smaller pieces.

Once the chicken has browned and partially cooked, pull from the pan and place the piece(s) on a plate. Next, fry up the chopped onion in the spiced chicken broth and oil until translucent. Place to the side.

Pull out a Dutch oven or a large clay-baking dish. Lightly oil the bottom and place the lime quarters (or if you prefer rounds) in the dish.

Mix the broth, fish sauce, saffron, thyme and kafir leaves together.

Put half the mixture over the lime wedges, then put the chicken thighs (or the whole chicken) over them. Sprinkle the remaining spices over the chicken.

Over this place the almonds,

Yeah, here I added almost a whole cup of chopped almonds. You really don’t want this many almonds. It’s yummy crunchy fun, but a full cup is waaaay to much. Scale down to about 1/2 or 1/4 depending on preference.

Then the pie crust.

Next add small vents for the steam to escape from.

This dish will be incredibly lime and chicken flavor.

Here is the dish after pulling (messily) from my clay baking dish with Roman Carrots and a spinach and barely salad. The meat, is tender and so many flavors you would almost swear there is an opera going on in your mouth. The other flavors are the back up singer to this glorious dish!

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Puddings Baked under Meat (Jawadhib) and Puddings (Akhbisa)

Bananas in Savory Dough

Aside October 23, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

This is the 2nd rendition of this recipe. The first one has a chicken, showing raw dough and apricots. I think that recipe is perfectly wonderful for apricots. This recipe is targeted to bananas and the lovely cake/pie that can be made.

I know most people think of the lowly common banana as coming from South America but that’s not the case. This wonderful and humble piece of fruit comes from South East Asisan area, found in Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern cooking in period. This is one of my favorite recipes. Sweet savory and melty banana stuffed bread. Either plain or with vanilla ice cream, this is amazingly good. You can use apricots if you choose, but do try this with bananas at least once!

Judhaba

Apricots (or Bananas) and Chicken

Translation:

First Recipe: Banana

Take bananas that are fully ripe. Peel them and immerse them in fine samid sour dough, kneaded as for pancakes. Then take them up and leave on some thing woven. Boil sesame oil, fry the bananas, take them out and throw them in syrup. Then throw them in a dish with pounded, sugar, then arrange them in a tray with fine flat breads above and below. Hang fat chicken above.

(Rodison, pp. 411).

Second Recipe: Apricots

Take some sweet and mature apricots; detach (the fruit) from the pit. (Mix it with sugar.) In a clean baking pan…spread out (an already baked) flat bread) and place the mixture of apricots and place the mixture of apricots and sugar) on top. (over this with another cooked flat bread.) If you wish to add a bit of saffron , do so and sprinkle with rose water; then hang an excellent hen over (the dish), may it please God.

(Zaouali, pp. 82)

Ingredients:

5 Bananas firm bananas and 3 over ripe bananas 1/3 cup sugar flat bread dough

Walnut oil

½ C rendered chicken fat Or 1/2 stick of salted butter.

For Apricots

or 2 cups fresh or dried apricots 1 pinch saffron 1/8 teaspoon rosewater

Banana Flat Bread Dough

4 C flour 2 TBS honey 1 TBS salt 1 C water 3 VERY ripe bananas

Redaction:

When I did this recipe the first time, I used sliced home made bread and apricots. The bread burnt on the bottom.. The second time I used raw flat bread dough but not flat bread with banana, and a chicken sitting on top of the raw flat bread. This was much much better. I also did half apricots (mixed with saffron and rose water) and raw bananas (uncooked). This time, I adapted the dough a bit and the stuffing. Originally I took a shallow tangine, and poured a little sesame oil down to coat the dish then laid down the raw flat bread. This time I used a clay dish, deeper then a tangine unfortunately not deep enough as the dough raised and the rendered chicken fat could not all be used only a small portion.

First I made the dough. Flour in a bowl.

The ingredients honey, salt, yeast and water.

Are then mixed together.

This is very well mixed together. You can see a bit of crystallized honey here.

Next add in three very ripe bananas to the soft dough.

Mix, in the bananas, very well.

The dough should be pliable and soft but not hard. Some where between a pancake dough and a bread dough. Divide the dough into two.

On a well floured surface, roll the dough out. Here bits of honey that have not been well mixed are showing through. I used honey that had gone granular due to the cold. To fix this, in a period manner, just put granular honey in a bowl then place that bowl in another bowl with hot water coming to just the middle of the first bowl. This should melt the honey. Or, modernly, just stick the bowl with the granular honey in a microwave for 30 seconds or so.

Take a deep clay dish and oil the bottom. Here I used walnut oil. Sesame oil has a very strong taste and I wanted a nuttier flavor instead. The recipe calls for sesame but I changed this to my taste.

Place the dough in the bottom of the dish.

Next take and chop 5 bananas. These bananas need to be not overly ripe. Green bananas to almost brown but not squishy.

Slice the bananas up as thicker or slightly thicker then a finger width (roughly ½ inch)

Take a frying pan and add walnut oil with 1/3 C of sugar.

Then add the raw bananas until slightly browned. Maybe 2 minutes. Do not burn. The sugar will caramelize adding a deeper color to the bananas so pay strict attention to this part.

And now yummy tasty divine cooked bananas. These are so incredibly good, that I had to limit myself to only a couple of bites other wise I would have eaten the entire filling of cooked bananas.

Place the caramelized bananas on top of the bottom layer of dough.

Place the second layer of dough on top. Place the dish into the oven at 350.

This is where things get a little tricky. In period, the oven area had hooks for the a chicken to be roasted on (Rodison/Zaouali, Most people do not have such an item in their modern ovens or fire pits these days, which makes adding chicken fat a little rough. There are two choices, place a raw chicken on top while the dish cooks or take the rendered fat from roasted chicken.

I chose to take the fat from a roasted chicken cooked prior that week. The fat/drippings were gathered in a jar and place in the refrigerator till I was ready to use. I was not impressed with either the chicken on top of the dough or how the dough came out with a chicken on top. With the rendered chicken fat the crust puffs up nicely and a golden salty brown crust results.

So every 15 minutes pour a few tablespoons on top of the dough.

Pouring a little at a time will simulate the dripping of the fat from a chicken over the pudding dish instead of drowning the dish in chicken fat if poured on all at once.

This is the final dish. The crust is lightly browned, even golden, where you can see the chicken fat has crisped the dough along the edges. If you do not have any chicken fat available use butter. Put a few teaspoons on the crust about half way through for this lovely salty sweet crust.

The final taste test was incredible. The top is savory sweet while the filling adds an extra layer of sweetness. The bottom is perfectly done, sweet but not as savory as the top.

Period vs. Modern

The period dish would have been done in a wood fired stove with a hanging chicken on a hook or spit. I had to do this dish in a gas fired stove with collected rendered chicken fat. I used as many organic items as possible. The chicken that would have been cooked over this dish would have been either a Sultan or a Russian Orlaff (Chickens in Period Research Paper). I had to use a modern chicken for the rendered fat. As seen in the photos, I tried to use as period dishes as possible for mixing and cooking. The bananas would have been fried on a flat sheet of metal. (Rodinson, p. 286)

I enjoyed this dish very much. I would have personally seasoned the dough with spices but the recipe did not indicate this was done. I am betting; however that the love for spices was great enough someone somewhere would have thought to spice the dough up. If I were serving this to friends, I would; however the dough at this point is a simple dough relying on bananas and honey for flavor.

Baranj Hus (Rice in Ghee), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Baranj Hus (Rice in Ghee)

July 26, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

This title is a little misleading. This really should say aromatic rice in ghee with nuts not just rice in clarified butter. So while the title is misleading don’t pass this dish by! Give it a try the next time you have a little of everything on hand (the only thing I was missing for this dish was the coconut) and give your dinner guests a fantastic rice treat of their life!

cooked rice and nuts

Baranj Hus

(Rice in Ghee)

Translation:

…Put good ghee in a cooking pot. When it becomes hot, flavour it with camphor, rosewater and white ambergris. Then, having mixed rice with saffron and salt, put it in the ghee and fry it well. Then add water, pine kernels, pistachio nuts, peeled almonds, cardamoms, cloves and shelled white coconut. Break them into pieces, do not mince them. Mix them all together and put them into a cooking pot and cook them well. Then having added leaves of sweet basil and sacred basil or sour-oranges, serve it. (The Nimatnama, pp. 15)

Ingredients:

2 C Ghee (Clarified butter)

1/8 tsp rosewater

2 C Jasmine rice

1/16^th saffron

1 tsp salt

1 ½ C water

1 C pine kernels

1 C pistachio nuts,

1 C almonds

½ tsp ground cardamom

¼ tsp ground cloves or 8 whole cloves

1 C flaked/chunked UNSWEETENED coconut.

Redaction:

I had to do a couple of work arounds, when I started this recipe. Those being camphor and white ambergris are a bit hard to find. I chose to omit these items; however I did include the rosewater. Remember a little goes a very long way!

Mix the rice with saffron and salt. I don’t use the expensive saffron. I use the cheaper saffron as it is available with out costing an arm and a leg. Amazon or a good Indian grocer will work very well for saffron shopping.

I put 2 C of clarified butter into a pot. Clarified butter can be argued to be the same as ghee and others will disagree.

I clarified my own butter and called it good. For the butter solids I had bread on hand for dipping and munching while I cooked. Good stuff. Then added the rose water once the butter became hot.

Next mix in the rice/saffron/salt

and stir till the ghee is well absorbed.

Add the water after the butter has been absorbed by the rice then add the nuts, cardamom, cloves and coconut.

I had to make a slight substitution here as well. I did not have any pistachios on hand so used walnuts instead. Two different flavors yet the walnut still complimented the overall dish flavors.

Stir very well again, then bring to a boil and turn the heat to the lowest setting. Place a lid on the pot and let cook for 10 minutes. Check in 10 minutes, stirring.

Take a taste. If the rice is just the way you like it, then you are ready to serve. If the rice is still a bit al dente, cook for another 5 minutes and taste again.

Another Qaliya Rice (Garlic Meat in Butter with Herbs and Rice), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Another Qaliya Rice (Garlic Meat in Butter with Herbs and Rice)

Aside June 29, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

To nights recipe comes from The Ni’matnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu. The actual recipe section of this book is fairly small in comparison to the manuscripts (in black and white) that take up the back half of the book. The recipes cover both tasty foods for good eating or food that is awesomely wonderful to eat on a cool night after a hard day of hunting!

Another Qaliya Rice

(Garlic Meat in Butter with Herbs and Rice)

Translation:

Another recipe, for Qualiya rice: put ghee into a cooking pot and when it has become hot, flavour it with asafetida and garlic. When it has become well falvoured, put the meat, mixed with chopped potherbs, into the ghee. When it has become marinated, add water and add, to an equal amount, one sir of cow’s milk. When it has come to the boil, add the washed rice. When it is well cooked, take it off. (The Ni’matnama, pp. 15)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 meat (beef, lamb goat) or 5 chicken thighs

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp corriender

2/3 C Ghee or 2 sticks of butter clarified (about 2/3 cup) OR 1 stick of butter melted

2 bruised bay leaves

½ cup chopped basil

1 pinch saffron

1 ½ C Jasmine rice

2 ½ C milk

½ tsp salt (or to taste)

8 chopped cloves of garlic (roughly)

Redaction:

This recipe is only a little vague. The potherbs had to be guessed at. I knew asafetida and garlic however I had to do some guessing for the rest of the herbs. I went for herbs that I know are used in other medieval Middle Eastern recipes. Cumin, coriander, saffron, basil and bay leaves. I could have also used pepper, lemon peel, lemon or lime juice, oregano, thyme etc. The “potherbs” I used were to my taste. Feel free to play around to make some thing uniquely your own!

This recipe says meat. Any meat will do, beef, goat or lamb. Don’t feel boxed in by just one type of meat. For the chicken, I am using chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken as I am only feeding a very few people. If I had a large family I would use a whole chicken (or a lot of beef stew meat) with double all the ingredient

So gather all of the ingredients together,

add the butter to the pot.

Remember the rice will expand about double so make sure your cooking pot has room for the expanded dish not just the dry ingredients.

Once the ghee/clarified butter starts to boil add in the asafetida and garlic.

Asafetida is a very very stinky herb. So make sure there is lots of ventilation. Asafetida adds an unique flavor and only a very small amount is needed. Don’t go over board and add in tons. A little goes a very long way. If none is available double the garlic.

Here are 5 chicken thighs chopped up.

Next add in the chopped chicken (or meat)

and the herbs.

To bruise bay leaves, crumble them up and over several, many, a few times, so that they are still whole but not glossy.

Stir everything up and get simmering again. Add in the milk.

You can’t tell the milk has been added, but I assure you it has been! I deleted the water as I wanted a very rich tasting dish. The ghee/butter almost guarantees that but adding milk seals the deal. I’ve also found the richer the mouth taste the less asafetida leaves an unpleasant after taste.

Once everything has come to a boil, add the rice.

Stir everything together once more and let the pot come to a boil for the last time. Once the pot boils, turn the stove down and put a lid on. Come back in about 15 minutes to stir well to mix things up and get the rice off the bottom of the pot. At this point the rice will have absorbed all the yummy ghee/butter and milk turning soft and silky. The meat should be cooked. Turn off the stove and put the lid back on for another 10 minutes. At this point the rice should be very silky and the flavors well blended.

You can eat with a spoon or with flat bread. This is a very old time comfort dish or just an excellently rich dish to serve on a cold winter night after a hard day of hunting!

Baqsamat bi Sukkar (Twice Cooked Middle Eastern Cookie), Pancakes (Quata'if) and Biscuts (Khushkananaj)

Baqsamat bi Sukkar (Twice Cooked Middle Eastern Sugar Cookie)

April 30, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

So I picked up a few new books for my birthday. One of them, “Enchanting Recipes from the Tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights” was one of those “Hmmm, Let’s see.” type of books. I am actually very please. There are not 1001 sweets in the Arabian Nights but the 25 recipes they do have are very nice.

It seems that every culture that has access to flour, sugar and butter makes some sort of sugar cookie. Sweet subtle and very tasty!

Baqsamat bi Sukkar

(Middle Eastern Twice Cooked Sugar Cookie)

Translation:

Take flour and sugar, moisten, and knead with butter. If it is not sweet enough add finely pounded sugar to it. Make for it a liquid mixture of yeast with a little water. Make baqsamat in any variety that you wish. Bake on a tray in the oven a second time after having baked it once. (Ibn al-Adim, Kitab al-Waslah ila al-Habib fi Wasf al-Tayyibat wa al-Tib/Salloum, pp. 58)

Ingredients:

2 C flour

1 C sugar

2 sticks butter

¼ C water

2 Tbs yeast

Optional:

¼-1/2 tsp (total) spices i.e. cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves

Redaction:

This recipe is based on both the Arabian Nights and a period recipe. Salloum suggest treating this as a typical sugar cookie, with the twist of adding yeast and water per the recipe.

Take about a teaspoon of sugar and add to the yeast. This will get the yeast going while you mix the other ingredients together.

Basic recipe is to take flour and sugar, mix well.

Next cut butter into small chunks/cubes.

Then add in cubed butter,

till the butter is mixed with the flour and sugar in to pea sized granules.

Next add in yeast/water.

This will form a dough.

Cut into forms,

and cook once and allow to cool. Then cook a second time till a little harder.

My thought is with the original recipe saying “Make baqsamat in any variety that you wish” they are saying one of two things (possibly both). Make the shape of the cookie into any form you wish and/or add spicing of your choice. Even with cooking twice, there is a sufficient amount of moisture that the cookies are very moist. Almost to moist to hold any actual shape that isn’t round.

For this recipe I went with the shape first. Next time I am going to add a few spices for a subtly sweet dry cookie.

Digestive Beverages (Hadimat), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Middle Eastern Mead with Raisins

Middle Eastern Mead with Raisons

April 23, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Here is another warming drink. This one takes time though…lots and lots of time! This not a one hour simmer with spices and serve as the Hipocris was. This is a brew in the warming days of spring and serve next to an autumn fire. So we need to get some brewing started!

Honey Wine with Raisins

Translation:

Take fifty pounds of raisins and thirty (pounds) of clarified bees’ honey. Put the honey in a pot with a quantity of water equal to half the honey. Boil the honey and water over a strong fire, and when it is cooked add the raisons with twenty pounds of water and boil again. Strain out the grape seeds and add a weight of five dirham of saffron, five dirham of spikenard, and three dirham of mace, along with the weight of 1 daniq of musk. Keep in bottles in the shade and use after forty days. It is a marvel. (Zaouali, pp. 140)

Ingredients:

1 jar

1 package yeast

¾ C sugar

10 lbs of honey

10 lbs of water (divided in half)

3 grams each of Chinese cinnamon, nutmeg, saffron

4 lbs raisons

Redaction: One week prior to starting, I mixed the sugar and yeast together in a jar (with about 3 C water) so that when the time came to add yeast there would be lots and lots!

Now the period method did not call for yeast. Yeast in period was either salvaged from a previous batch of brewing or allowed to form naturally in or on any items by leaving them out a bit to gather the wild yeast. My kitchen is geared, due to all the various cooking I do, to bread yeast. Modern bread yeast at that. Modern bread yeast does horrible nasty evil things to brewing. So, to help circumvent any modern bread yeast from taking root into my mead, I make a HUGE batch of wine yeast (lost of sugar and time to get the little yeasty beasties growing) then add them to my bottle of brewing.

Roughly 5 to 7 days later I started to brew mead.

I took 10 lbs of honey and poured the liquid gold into a large pot.

Now the honey I bought was not regional to anywhere in the Middle East nor in Ansteorra. I bought, for cost sake, Costco slut honey. A decent clarified honey at a good price. Regional honey is much better in my opinion but 2x the price for half the amount is not. I chose to be cost efficient and go for decent mead instead of slightly darker sweeter mead. If you can get regional flavored honey…do so, but don’t break the bank for brewing!

The next step was to add 5 lbs of water. I used one of the containers of honey and refilled it up with water to equal ½ of the water needed in the first portion.

I allowed the honey and water mixture to boil just slightly.

Bubbles were just forming. Then I added the 4 lbs of raisins.

Now the period method said 50 lbs of raisins (roughly) for the original recipe. This recipe has been cut by half. Raisins to be used in that quantity had to be as easy to come by as air. Do not get me wrong the flavor is great; however I don’t think so much was or is needed. I cute the quantity from what should be 25 lbs of raisins to 4 lbs. My cooking pot would not have handled so much, though I wonder after reading the translation several times if the raisins were not cooked until dissolved in which case the 4 lbs of raisins I used should have been ground up then added. But this is hindsight. Next time I’ll try that step of making raisin paste instead of just using whole raisins.

After the raisins were added, I added the spices.

Now again I had to fudge a little on the spicing. I did not have any mace so I went with nutmeg. Mace is the outer covering on a nutmeg with a slightly subtler less heavy taste. So instead of 4.25 grams times 3 = 12.75 grams or (3 dirhams) of mace I used 3 grams of nutmeg instead of 12.75 grams or 3 dirhams. I want a flavoring of nutmeg not an overwhelming taste. I used the poor man’s saffron in 3 grams as well and 3 grams of Chinese cinnamon. For a truly heavenly period taste, get the Chinese cinnamon if at all possible. The regular every day grocery store cinnamon has no flavor compared to the really good Chinese cinnamon!

Here are the spices, still dry and in 1 cup ramekins.

I allowed everything to come to a bit of a simmer with lots of bubbles and a slight roil before turning off the heat.

Everything sat and melded for a few hours till cooler.

I then put a strainer over a cleaned bucket to pull out the raisins (and not just grape seeds) which is why I think the original way this was made was to cook the raisins till they dissolved.

Pour the boiled raisin/honey mixture over the strainer and into the bucket to strain out all the raisins. (Do NOT throw the raisins away! They are excellent in other dishes with a slightly honey/spiced flavor)

Once the raisins had been strained,

I poured the mead into a clean glass carboy and added the remaining 10 lbs of water. I added the water at this juncture instead of in the pot as my pot was not big enough to handle another 10 lbs of water. This cooled the still fairly hot mead enough that the yeast could be added.

The finishing touch was a vapor lock as I know the yeast will do its thing and I prefer a non sticky floor due to a blown glass jar, which was a real possibility in period.

Now, this carboy has not been uncorked as of yet. It needs another couple of months before I can start decanting the wine. I’m already picking out the perfect meal to go with this!

Jazariyya (Soup with spinach, Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Jazariyya (Soup with Spinach, Walnuts and Parsley)

March 28, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

We’ve had a bit of a stomach bug going around at the house and I had a yen for some chicken soup. I decided it was time to do a little research and see what I could find that would cover the basics for a mellow soup on the most tender of stomachs. This soup is nice and meaty with good flavor but not to heavy.

Jazariyya

(Chicken (or beef) Soup with Walnuts, Parsley and Spinach)

Translation:

Boil meat with a little water. Put carrots, garlic cloves and peeled onions in it, then put crushed garlic in it. Some people put spinach with it also; some make it with out spinach. Walnuts and parsley are put in. (Rodinson, pp. 471)

Ingredients:

1 chicken or equivalent chicken parts i.e. chicken thighs (if using skinless/boneless thighs or breast cook in low sodium chicken stock or preferably home made chicken stock)

2 ½ lbs beef, lamb or goat

3 carrots 8 garlic cloves 1 onion 3-4 C baby spinach roughly chopped

1 handful parsley 1 handful roughly chopped walnuts

Redaction:

When I did this recipe I changed things up slightly. I made this as a chicken soup even though this soup can encompass any type of meat. Don’t think of this as one type of soup only.

This just looks so fresh from the garden! The carrot and parsley were plucked minutes before tossing everything together.

I cut up the chicken thighs, still slightly frozen for ease in slicing into bite sized pieces and threw them into the water.

In period, a whole chicken would have been used not just pieces like we can get modernly. If using skinless/boneless chicken parts use a low sodium broth or a home made broth. This will really kick up the flavor. You can use a broth for other meat if you like however beef lamb and goat are all marbled with fat while modern chicken pieces have been stripped of skin and bones that add to the richness of a broth.

Add in the carrots,

I know this looks sort of like a turnip or parsnip but it’s a carrot from my garden. Not the common orange but a white variety. Most of the time, I use the baby carrots. Some times I chop them in half but usually I leave them whole as this is a time savor. Period wise for ME cooking that the carrots (either yellow or purple) be cored to remove the woody pith and the outer portions chopped for the dish being prepared. They didn’t have the selection of carrot varieties we do today.

4 peeled garlic cloves

and the chopped onion.

Here everything is put into a pot bit by bit!

I did add spinach. I’ve been adding handfuls of this wonderful veggie to give an extra vitamin and fiber boost (and not just to my period recipes).

The spinach was roughly chopped and cooks down.

I did not want to just throw spinach leaves in as they some times are a bit unwieldy if not cut into smaller pieces.

Once these have been added take the remaining garlic cloves and chop them up pretty fine.

When the recipe calls for crushed garlic I believe this is meant crushed in a mortar and pestle. Chopping the garlic fine is close but not exact, we just want as much flavor as we can get so the more surface area exposed to the forming chicken broth the better!

I simmered everything for about an hour and added roughly 1 ½ tsp of salt (to my taste).

Once the soup was served I added parsley and walnuts.

I was unsure whether to add the parsley and walnuts during or after so I erred on the side of caution and used as a garnish. I did add 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt to the dish for extra flavoring. This is a very mild soup but very filling. The rye bread was an extra bonus for the day. Pairs very nicely together!

This is a very warm and tasty soup with lots of health foods too!

Digestive Beverages (Hadimat), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Syrup of Rose Water

Syrup of Dried Roses

November 27, 2012 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

We’re into the season for colds, flu and just blah. In period, a variety of drinks and foods were laid out to help with these maladies. Nyguil is a few centuries from being invented yet so you had to go with what was on hand. Some people discovered that roses could be made into food and drink. Here is one recipe that uses a syrup made of roses that helps to fortify. (Single malt scotch really wasn’t an option here.)

Syrup of Dried Roses

Translation:

Take a ratl of dried roses, and cover with three ratls of boiling water, for a night and leave it until they fall apart in the water. Press it and clarify it, take the clear part and add it to two ratls of white sugar, and cook all this until it is in the form of a syrup. Drink an uqiya and a half of this with three of water its benefits: it binds the constitution, and benefits at the start of dropsy, fortifies the other internal organs, and provokes the appetite, God willing. (Anonymouse Andalusian Cookbook, pp. A-73)

Ingredients:

3 C rose petals

5 C water

6 C white sugar

Redaction:

For this redaction a little rose history is needed. The information gathered for actual historic types of roses is rather thin. So The rose petals used are actual rose petals from Pakistani. The likely hood is high that these roses petals are from a Damasks type of rose. There are two types of Damasks, summer and autumn. These two differentiated by their bloom times. One in summer and one in autumn.

A ratl = 1 lb. 1lb of rose petals is a LOT of rose petals.

As a reference the bag is 4 ounces of roses. That’s about 6 cups of dried rose petals there. That’s a lot…a lot! of rose petals.

So due to the lack of space for so many rose petals, I have changed the measurements for some thing a little more reasonable for the cooking pots I have on hand.

First I boiled 5 cups of water, then poured this over the 3 cups of rose petals (roughly 2 – 3 oz).

The water and roses sat over night imparting a wonderful smell through out the house. Mmm…roses that aren’t cloying!

To remove the rose water, I hand squeezed balls of the rose petals to get every drop of moisture.

Now I could have placed a muslin cloth over another bowl and drained the water out that way then squeezed the cloth tightly. This was just more fun and I had some really cool pictures of rose balls that formed after all the squeeeeeezing was done. I used my squeeeeezing arm dontcha know.

This is what fresh rose water looks like. Almost like a bowl of blood. It’s not. The smell is incredible. Rose with out being cloying. DO NOT DRINK THIS!! This is incredibly astringent!! If sugar were not added to this liquid no one, unless knocking on deaths door, would be able to choke this down. Yes, it is that bad!

The rose scented/flavored water returned is roughly 4 cups. This was then placed into a pot, to which I added 6 cups of sugar.

The mixture was boiled till a thick syrupy consistency was achieved.

At this point the syrup is ready to be bottled and served. To serve the ratio is 1 part syrup to 2 parts water. The syrup is very astringent. You’ll want to cut the taste with water. If the syrup is to astringent add more sugar. In period sugar was used medicinally as a digestive stimulant, not an every day in every food imaginable additive. So if the syrup needs a little help, add a bit of sugar. It helps!!

Bedouin style #2 Brisket, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Bedouin style #2 Brisket

November 21, 2012 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I have come across meat cooked in the Bedouin style mentioned in Rodinson. However I have yet to be able to find any other description other then “cooked in the Bedouin style”. This leaves me with out a compass and to my own devices. This makes a few people I know a little nervous. Never know whats going to show up for dinner on days like this!

Now doing a reverse redaction like this takes a few things into account. A lot of “What if…(s)”. So I’m going to go down this rabbit hole and show you where it took me.

Ingredients:

1 brisket

1 oz of Ras el Hanout or Rogan Josh. I adore both of these atraf al-tib spice blends. I did not mix my own blend of these but rather purchased from my local spice merchant store named Savory Spice. Great group of gals there!

Redaction:

The first time I did this recipe, I took the brisket and just rubbed the spice on then stuffed it into the oven on a rack in the oven for 6 hours. Why a rack? Well they hooks for meat under which they would have placed a dessert or another dish with sweet water (Rodinson, pp. 280) to collect the fat for use in another way. Fat was a very important ingredient and not wasted.

The second time I tried this recipe, I pricked the meat all over with a knife. 1/2 inch cuts all over for better depth penetration for the spices.

This is one ounce of spice well rubbed onto a market cut brisket. I then wrapped this in plastic and set aside for 24 hours in the fridge. (The wrapping and setting aside is so not period here. For those who are saying aged meat, I have not seen any recipes for period Middle East cooking where meat was aged. I am thinking it was a bit to hot and meat would rot/maggot infested to fast.)

Now for the oven part. Oven’s were definitly a part of the Middle East cooking experience, just not the Bedouin. The Bedouin’s would use fire pits in which meat was wrapped in leaves and cooked. I had to improvise on what a city person might serve to visiting Bedouin guests (merchants perhaps in town/friends of the family?).

The meat was placed on a rack with a pan that held about an inch of water. This cuts down on the smoke from burning fat. You’ll have to replace the water about ever 2 hours or so to keep spicy fatty smoke from rolling through the house.

I put the fat side up so the fat would melt down and over the meat. I feel this makes the meat both juicier and more tender.

The mention of racks or hooks for meat is mentioned through out many period recipes with two sections devoted to describing pots, pans and how to cook sides of meat or whole animals, Rodinson, pp. 280-286/303-304. I would not suggest placing a sweet pudding underneath this brisket as the rubs are of the savory/spicy sort. I do not believe the Bedouins would have been able to use fat as an in town cook would due lack of oven facilities. That is my belief. Have not seen documentation for a portable oven, yet though!

The meat was cooked for 6 hours at 325.

Definitely well cooked!

And here is the meat sliced into. Moist and ringed with spices cooked into the fat/meat. I did take a bit of the Ras el Hanout and mix with olive oil for a dipping sauce. The taste was awesome! Very worth a try.

Hilyauniyya Asparagus wrapped in Meat (one version), Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Hilyauniyya Asparagus stuffed in Meat (one version)

June 7, 2012 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I really like asparagus. It’s one of the best things about spring and summer. Ok not one of the best but a very tasty part of summer! So when I have extra asparagus on hand (which isn’t often) I try to find new ways to cook it. Here is one version of some thing I found.

A version of

Hilyauniyya

Asparagus with Meat stuffing

Translation:

Take asparagus, the largest you have, clean and boil, after taking tender meat and pounding fine; throw in pepper, caraway, coriander seed, cilantro juice, some oil and egg white; take the boiled asparagus, one after another, and dress with this ground meat, and do so carefully. Put an earthenware pot on the fire, after putting in it water, salt, a spoon of murri and another of oil, cilantro juice pepper, caraway and coriander seed; little by little wile the pot boils, throw in it the asparagus wrapped in meat. Boil in the pot and throw in it meatballs of this ground meat, and when it is all evenly cooked cover with egg, breadcrumbs some of the stuffed meat already mentioned and decorate with egg, God willing.

(An Anonymous Andalusion Cookbook of the 13^th Centry, pp. A-41)

Ingredients:

Asparagus spears 1 lb ground meat (I used beef)

2 tsp pepper, caraway, coriander (seed or powdered), cilantro (I used dried), olive oil

2 eggs 1 ½ C of ground bread crumbs

1 tsp salt

Redaction:

This recipe has several steps. It’s not a put together and throw into a pot type of dish.

This is the first round of spices. There will be a second round. It’s on the test!

First trim off the white ends of the asparagus, throw these away, and put the green tips into boiling water for about 2-3 minutes, or until the asparagus turns bright green.

Once the asparagus has turned bright green, remove from water and set to the side.

Next gather all the spices together and separate into two batches, each batch to have 1 tsp of each spice.

Separate 1 of the 2 eggs.

Put the egg white in with the meat and set the yolk in a bowl with the other egg.

Put one set of spices, into the ground meat and kneed well.

Add the oil.

The meat will be very moist and slippery!

It looks not so tasty but gets better soon!

Take a ball of meat and flatten it out.

Wrap the meat around the asparagus carefully.

Due to the slipperiness, the meat will try to slide off the asparagus or not cover very well. Some times a meat patch of extra spiced meat can be applied, or the original coating can be pinched back over the meat back over hole covering the asparagus.

Some times you just have to unwrap the whole things and restart. Place each bit of meat and asparagus to the side.

I did not have an open fire pit in which to put a clay pot so I had to use a metal pot over the stove. Put enough water to come only half way up a meat wrapped asparagus. Add the spices.

Here the fish sauce has melded into the salt a little, hence the damp/wet looking salt and spices.

I added the spices all at the same time instead of bit by bit.

Then place each meat/asparagus piece into the pot carefully.

You can use your fingers but I’d use tongs if at all possible. Do not worry if the water boils over the meat. This is suppose to happen.

Let the meat cook through and reduce a little roughly 7 minutes. I do suggest doing a taste test around the 5 minute mark.

The next step is to combine the eggs and the breadcrumbs.

Here is the cup of bread crumbs with one egg and the yolk of the first egg. You’ll want to combine these quickly.

Once the meat has thoroughly cooked and is slightly evaporated. Add the breadcrumb mixture to the water.

The breadcrumbs and eggs will absorb the water and cook very very quickly. The more water and fewer breadcrumbs the more porridge like this becomes. The less water, the more solid the bread crumbs become and slightly crispy at the bottom.

Color wise this is not very pretty. Taste wise though, this is pretty darn tasty! If you need a bit of coloring add parsley over the top as a garnish to look less boring, though this really is anything but boring!

Sosha Lyon's O'Rourk's Medieval Redactions English, Italian, Middle Eastern, Roman, Medieval Redactions and Recipes, Medieval Research Papers, Subtleties – Grill Mistress of the Pork