Category Archives: Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Sukhtur/Kiba Lamb Neck with Garbanzo Beans and Rice

Aside February 4, 2015 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I keep trying for new lamb recipes. Lamb and mutton is iconic to the region and a very important part of traditional foods. I’m not a huge lamb fan (and no I don’t like mutton), but I keep trying. This dish is tasty but looks brown…plain boring brown. Give it a try. I think it would go well with flat bread and a nice yogurt sauce as well. More color as the taste is already fantastic.

Sukhtur/Kiba Lamb Neck with Garbanzo Beans and Rice

Translation:

It is that you have recourse to fat gut, and you wash it and clean it. Cut (meat) small, and (take) as much rice as necessary, a third as much as the meat, and a handful of chickpeas,…and dyed with saffron. Mix them with the meat and put in that gut. Season it with salt and put Chinese Cinnamon stick son it, and mastic and as much of spices as it will bear. Sew the gut shut and put it in the pot and cover it with water, and cover the top of the pot all night in a tannur on a good fire until morning. It comes out excellently. (Rodinson, pp. 368, 369)

Ingredients:

2 lbs lamb neck (or beef or chicken)

Saffron

Cinnamon sticks or 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

2 Tbs. spices (Tan Tan Moroccan Seasoning: includes paprika, sugar, cumin, salt cinnamon, cardamom, parsley, coriander, and turmeric)

1 can Garbanzo beans

1 1/2 C Jasmine Rice

1/4 C Butter

Salt to taste

Redaction:

I had to change things a little bit. The first being I didn’t have a sheep stomach or stomach of any sort to sew the meat and spices into. Stomach is one of those odd organ meats that is really hard to come buy unless you own a farm or know someone who lives on a farm and can get the stomach fresh for you. So with that in mind, we’re going straight to the meat and spices.

The second modification is that I had to use a slow cooker instead of the oven because my oven is still out!! The slow cooker will take 5 hours instead of the 2.5 hours in the oven. Dinner will still be served just not the way I had planned.

I put olive oil on the bottom of the pan as this is supposed to be a rich fatty dish. Next I add the garbanzo beans and rice with enough water to cover the rice.

The crock pot looks five gallons deep. It’s not. This is a normal crock pot with a long shot from the top. This will make enough to feed 4 easily.

Then comes the meat. Sprinkle the spice mixture over meat. Place the lid over this bad boy and let it simmer away while you play.

Let this slow cook for the next 5 hours (or until the meat is falling off the bone). At the end before serving I added 1/4 C (or a stick of butter) to the dish. This give a rich fatty taste that I believe the stomach/gut would have added and it really boosted the flavor to the next level.

I really do love the flavor of this, I just don’t like the brown on brown and more brown. I added some salt, a bit of butter and the parsley is to help break up the brown. Dinner was tasty!

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Sikh (Skewered Meat)

Aside August 4, 2014 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

There have been a few hurdles over the past few months that I have had to address and recover from. However I have a new recipe to add to my list of favorite dishes. Meat plus fire, always an excellent combination!

Sikh

(Skewered Meat)

Translation:

…for the method for skewered meat: mix meat with salt onions and turmeric and boil it with whole potherbs. Cut it into very small pieces and strain it. Then fasten one segment of meat and one piece of onion on the skewer and rub ghee, caraway, lime juice, white ambergris, rosewater and salt on it. Bake it well and when it is tender, wrap it in thin bread and serve it. (Mandu, pp. 26)

Ingredients:

2 lb cubed meat

Salt (to taste)

1 onion (finely chopped)

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp ea. thyme, cilantro and basil

Second stage

1 onion cut into quarters

Ghee

2 tsp Caraway

1 tsp lime juice

¼ tsp rosewater

Salt to taste

Redaction:

I am going to change this slightly. Here instead of boiling the meat, I am placing the meat to marinade overnight in the first set of ingredients.

So first, take a good piece of meat with a bit of marbled fat for excellent flavor and cut it into cubes.

Then mix the marinade together.

After the meat has marinated for 24 hours (or slightly longer),

I skewer all the meat.

I alternate one cube with one slice of onion, until the skewer is filled. The onion chunks actually help with the cooking. I did several skewers with onions and several without. Those without onions cooked slower and the meat was still very red in between the chunks while the outside was done and slightly charred.

Once the skewers are ready to grill, I brush each one with the ghee, caraway, lime juice, rose water and salt mixture, every 5 minutes until the meat is done.

This is the raw meat grilling on a small clay pot grill.

The meat is smelling heavenly at this point but still a bit raw.

The meat is done and ready to be devoured.

The meat actually never made it into the flat bread. We ate the cubes hot off the skewers. It was delicious. I regret nothing!

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Mawz Ma Lahm: Bananas with Meat

Aside November 20, 2013 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I have been on a kick to find banana recipes, not only for my edification but to show that bananas are indeed a very period dish for those who still believe that the tasty wonderful banana is a new world only item. It’s not. Really.

Mawz Ma Lahm: Bananas with Meat

Translation:

Peel green bananas. Slice lengthwise like colcosia. Fry them in a lot of sesame oil until the bananas have browned but remain like colcosia. Then, cut the meat and boil it. Fry it in the same way as colcosia {along with} fresh coriander, pounded garlic, and onion. When the meat is brown and cooked through, put the fried bananas on it and a little broth and finely toasted shelled hazelnuts. Let it dry until the broth has evaporated. Then, serv….(Ibn al-Adim, Kitab al-Wuslah ila al-Habib fi Wasf al-Tayyibat wa at-Tib (Salloum, pp. 63)

Ingredients:

4 Chicken thighs (or 1lb cubed lamb or beef stew meat)

1 onion

5 cloves garlic

1 tsp ground cilantro (you can use a handful of fresh)

4 green bananas

¼ C toasted peeled hazelnuts

1 tsp salt

Redaction.

I had to use only mostly green bananas.

The really green ones weren’t in for once at the store. I sliced them in half (for better fitting into the pan when frying).

Then fried them in sesame oil (not toasted sesame oil).

They came out a in pieces.

The greener the bananas the firmer the flesh, so really ripe bananas are just not going to work.

For the meat I used chicken thighs. If you want to use a whole chicken, slice it down the breast bone and so that the entire chicken can be laid flat. The meat is placed in water to boil for 10-15 minutes then removed and drained. The next step is to fry the meat in sesame oil till cooked through.

Once the chicken is in the oil bath add the onion, garlic and cilantro.

Any meat for the recipe i.e. chicken, lamb or beef needs to be boiled then fried.

While the meat was finishing cooking I toasted hazelnuts and peeled the paper skins off by rubbing by hand. This is not hard…just time consuming and a bit frustrating as some of the skins refuse to come off no matter how much you try.

Once the meat has cooked through, I added the bananas and hazelnuts. In this recipe, I originally used 1 cup of hazelnuts. The dish was waaay nuttier then it should have been. I also think the bananas should have been slightly sugared for a better taste. Other wise the bananas sort add a sesame lightly banana flavored wet bread type texture and flavor.

This is why I suggest fewer hazelnuts. Other wise the dish seems to be buried in small roasted hazelnuts and the other flavors are some what buried or you end up wasting the hazelnuts as you try to get more then just hazelnuts with a little chicken on your plate.

The dish is tasty, but I’d have done a few different tweaks. Plated this dish looks awesome. Flavor wise, I would definitely add sugar to the frying bananas for a salty sweet meaty dish.

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!

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!

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!

Bedouin Chicken Grilled, Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Grilled Bedouin Chicken

May 30, 2012 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

So I had a weekend with out A/C. No A/C means, other then hot and sticky, the in ability to use a computer with out it overheating in the lower part of Ansteorra during the day. Means I had lots and lots of time to do some cooking. So I decided to do a project I had been meaning to try for awhile now. A little down time on the computer and lots of ideas for cooking. Not always a bad idea!

Bedouin Chicken Version #1

I am attempting to reproduce from period ingredients and cooking styles a possibility of what meat (or in this case a chicken) could have looked like and in the methods available for cooking.

Ingredients:

1 chicken (innards removed) 1 Med onion 1 head of garlic cloves (skinned and crushed)

¼ C olive oil (almond oil or sesame oil could also be used)

1 tsp cumin and coriander (each)

1 cinnamon stick (broken into pieces)

3 TBS Ras el Hanout spice (this can be bought or made)

Redaction:

This is an attempt to reproduce a roasted chicken with only a reference in Medieval Arab Cookery (Robinson) from the line “Meat cooked in the Bedouin style.” Now there are several paragraphs that comment on how those who wrote the history of their travels would try to one up on their meals in the style of “We ate scorpion meat grilled on hot rocks with spices so hot tongues melted and eyes boiled forth”. The stories were well received and provided great entertainment but do little for those trying to redact an actual dish.

The above ingredients could be used on any animal that is stuffable or just using the Ras el spicing as a rub. Three is a reference or 5 to mixed spices for period Middle Eastern cooking. I’m going with a store bought variety instead of making my own. This is mentioned in both Rodinson and Zaouali.

Ras el Hanout spice is made from nutmeg, sea salt, black pepper, ginger, cardamom, mace, cinnamon, ground allspice, turmeric and saffron. This is an incredible spice if you ever get a chance to use it. I want to rub just about everything I come across with this then lick it off, it’s just that good!

So back to the chicken. Now for a desert traveling tribe there are a few cooking methods available for meat. Stewed, dried, grilled or buried in coals. Stewing and drying can also be done in the city so not exactly unique. The grilling for a traveling tribe would have been done via metal rods/tripods, or metal sheets (Iddison). There is also the cooking method of wrapping meat (usually fish or chicken) in a dough and then burying the meat in hot coals.

Today’s meat cooking experiment, is the grilling via oak hardwood. The types of wood available in the Middle East would have been Alder, Ash, Beech, Cherry, Hornbeam, Maple, Walnut and Oak. (pakbs.org). I started the hardwood a couple of hours before putting the chicken on the coals.

Once the fire was started and burning well, back to the kitchen to wrestle with a featherless chicken!

The spices were set up and prepped.

The onion was sliced into wedges and put into a bowl.

The garlic was peeled and smashed (but not chopped) then the cinnamon stick was broken into bits.

These were mixed together then the dried spices of cumin and coriander added along with 1/8 of the olive oil.

The chicken is then stuffed to the max! No holds bar, fill ‘em up stuffing the chicken.

The next step is to make the rub. Pour the 3 tbs of Ras el into the olive oi.

Form a paste.

Spread this on the chicken.

Place chicken on a plate and take to the grill.

Due to not having a metal tripod I had to do this the old, but not ancient, way of cooking. A grill. The coals in the grill will be as hot in a pit just not as deep and much closer to the meat then if using a tripod for grilling. Move the coals to either side of the center, so that there is a coal free well. This will keep the heat directly off of the meat and minimize burning. I tried putting the chicken on the top rack, with out a center rack.

When I closed the top lid, the chicken jumped from the top rack into the fire. After rescuing the bird, I replaced the center grill and placed the chicken there.

The fire cooks both slower and faster then expected. The skin and top portion of the meat cooked quicker then expected but the inner breast meat was not cooked when the leg meat started to wiggle. As opposed to the oven method of cooking roughly an hour, the chicken took much longer over coals. Roughly 1.5-2 hours.

Once the meat was cooked through, I pulled out the stuffing and sliced up the meat to arrange on the plate.

There is a little bit of the Ras el sauce to the side for dipping.

The breast and thigh meat was very tender and juicy however the wings and legs were very well done and an almost complete loss for eating. I am looking forward to doing this again! Very very yummy!

References:

Rodinson, M., Arberry, A., Perry, C., (2001). Medieval Arab Cookery. Prospect Books. Cromwell Press.

Corbin, J., (1999). Arabic Recipes & History for Medieval Feasts.

Perry, C., (2005). A Baghdad Cookery Book. Prospect Books: November 2005.

Bedouin Food, Iddison, Philip. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/encyclopedia/definition/bedouin-food/202/

Zaouali, L., (2004)., Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World. University of California Press.

http://www.pakbs.org/pjbot/PDFs/40%285%29/PJB40%285%291851.pdf

Plain Dishes (Sawadhij), Tannuriyya (Lamb Stew)

Tannuriyya (Lamb Stew)

May 21, 2012 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Tannuriyya:

Lamb Stew

So I was curious to do a little of the unusual with different meat types. I choose lamb neck. I usually use leg of lamb when cooking but for once I wanted to try the meat from a different portion of the lamb. Some thing that a slightly lower class of cook would have to use to make this dish. I was not disappointed!

Translation:

Take lamb or veal and cut it up medium. Then stew it with coriander, cumin, salt, milled thyme, whole Chinese cinnamon and peeled chickpeas, and throw one and a half times as much water on it. Then boil it and throw away its froth. Throw pounded walnuts made into paste on it and put it in the tannur until done, and take it up. It comes out excellently.

Ingredients:

3 lbs Lamb meat ¼ C dry corriander 1 tsp ea. cumin, salt, thyme

1 whole cinnamon stick 2 C dry chickpeas 1.5 C pounded walnuts

Redaction:

Take the twoe cup of chickpeas and boil in 5 cups of water w/salt till cooked.

This is one cup for display.

When boiling the dry chickpeas, check every 30 minutes to make sure the water doesn’t drop so much that the beans are scorched. Taste after 2.5 hours of boiling for a soft texture that isn’t to crunchy.

Set out your spices.

Fresh coriander was not to be had so dry it is.

In a pot, put in the 3 lbs of lamb.

Here I am using lamb neck meat. I wanted to try a different cut of meat then the usual leg of lamb chunks.. Lamb neck is a little fattier and includes the neck bones for richer stock. Leg of lamb is perfectly ok to use! This will feed about 4-6 people as the meat will shrink.

Add roughly 6 cups of water or enough water to cover the meat by an 1.5 inches.

Once the meat and water have been combined add in the spices,

then the chickpeas.

Give everything a stir or two to mix the spices and meat. A getting to know you swirl if you will! Again keep an eye on the water level.

Simmer everything together until the meat is thoroughly cooked and tender. This takes roughly 1.5-2 hours.

Combine the ground walnuts with the reduced stew.

Here there was an issue with the grinding. A paste was unable to be achieved so I had to do with ground walnuts.

The consistency is not quite right though the taste is still very very good.

This is a very rich dish. The meat is tender and succulent while the garbanzos add a nice crunch. The walnuts add a really nice creamy thickness to the dish. Give this a try any time you have lamb on hand!

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