SC - Mediterranean Feast
david friedman
ddfr at best.com
Wed Jun 4 10:08:25 PDT 1997
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/
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