SC - Mediterranean Feast

[david friedman]

At 6:19 AM +0000 6/3/97, Rhianwen wrote:

>My favorite recipe book is "A Book of Middle Eastern Food" by Claudia
>Roden, which I bought about 20 years ago.  It's still in print, and I
>saw a copy at Das Edelweiss (http://www.tcd.net/~robin/) recently, so
>I know you can still get it.  She lists such sources as _al-Baghdadi_
>for many of the dishes.

That is not quite correct. She does indeed mention al-Baghdadi--that is how
I first found out about it. There may be a few period recipes in the book,
although off hand I don't remember any. But what she generally does is to
give a modern recipe and mention the existence of a period version of it.
She does not say that the period version is the same and, in one case I am
familiar with (rishta), it isn't.

>Roden mentioned no period source for the hummus, but for
>falafel:
>
>     	"The Christian Copts, who are said to be pure representatives
>	of the Ancient Egyptians, claim this dish as their own, along with
>	melokhia soup.  Their claim is quite probably justified, since these
>	dishes, whose origins cannot be traced, are nevertheless believed
>	to be extremely old."
>
>Not exactly a primary source, but better than nothing :)

Not much better--Roden, being a careful and competent lady, isn't saying
that they are old, but that they are believed to be old. Nor does she say
what "extremely old" is.

Some time back, I recieved a letter from Claudia Roden, asking about buying
Charles Perry's translation of al-Baghdadi, which I organized and sell
(part of Volume II of the collection). I sent it to her for free, along
with my thanks for first getting me into doing medieval Islamic cooking.

So it all comes around in the end.


David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/