SC - Jewish cuisine

[Stephen Bloch]

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> >So if anybody can point me in the
> >direction of Jewish Medieval cooking knowledge, I would be very
> >appreciative.

And David Friedman replied: 
> So far as I know, there are no surviving medieval Jewish cookbooks--which
> seems surprising. There is a 13th c. Andalusian cookbook (_Manuscrito
> Anonimo_) which has some recipes described as Jewish.

At one point I collected all the recipes I had found in the _Manuscrito
Anonimo_ that claimed to be "Jewish" and sent them to Yaakov
ha-Mizrachi for the newsletter of Jewish personae he was publishing at
the time.  I think the newsletter died shortly thereafter, I hope not
of indigestion :-) There may be other "Jewish" dishes in that source,
but not in the section I had on disk.

Anyway, here they are.  Bear in mind that the author of the cookbook
was probably Moslem, and certainly Arabic-speaking, but probably
encountered Jews on a daily basis in al-Andalus.  I haven't noticed any
obvious tref in these recipes, unlike the famous Portuguese (?) recipe
for "Moorish chicken" that includes bacon.


A Jewish Dish of Eggplants Stuffed with Meat

Scald the eggplants and take out their seeds and leave them whole.
Take leg of lamb, mince it with salt, pepper, canel, Chinese canel and
lavender, beat it with the white of eight eggs and separate six
eggyolks.  Stuff the eggplants with this stuffing.  Then take three
pots and put in one of them four spoonfuls of oil, onion juice, spices,
perfumes and a spoonful of aromatic rosewater, pine-nuts, a bud of
citrus, another of mint, and sufficient salt and water; boil gently and
throw in half of the stuffed eggplants.  And put in the second pot a
spoonful of vinegar, minced onion, spices and perfumes, a stick of
thyme, another of heather, citrus leaf, two sticks of fennel, a
spoonful of oil, almonds, soaked chickpeas, and some half a dirham of
ground saffron, and three cut cloves of garlic; steep in sufficient
water until it boils several times, and throw into it the rest of the
stuffed eggplants.  And put in the third pot a spoonful and a half of
strong vinegar, crushed onion, almond, pine-nuts, a stick of heather
and leaves of citrus.  Spray [the first?] with rosewater and sprinkle
with perfumes, and adorn the second with cut-up eggyolks, cut heather,
and sprinkle it with perfumes; cut an egg cooked with heather over the
third, sprinkle it with pepper, and present it.


Jewish Partridge

Clean the partridge and season it with salt, then beat its entrails
with almonds and pine-nuts and add murri, oil, a little cilantro juice,
pepper, canel, Chinese canel, lavender, five eggs and sufficient meat.
Boil two eggs, stuff the partridge with the stuffing and cover it with
the boiled eggs so that the stuffing is between the skin and the meat,
and some of it in the interior of the partridge.  Then take a new pot
and put in four spoonfuls of oil, half a spoonful of murri and two of
salt.  Place the partridge in this pot and put it on the fire, after
reinforcing the cover with dough, stir it continuously so it will be
even, and when the sauce has dried, remove the lid1 and throw in half a
spoonful of vinegar, buds of citrus and mint, and break two or three
eggs over it.  Then place thou an earthenware or copper pot full of hot
coals over it until it is browned, and then around the sides until the
other side has browned, and fry [?] it all.  Then put it in a dish and
put thou  the stuffing around it, and adorn it with the eggyolks with
which thou has adorned the pot, and sprinkle it with pepper and canel,
then with sugar, and present it, God willing.


A Jewish Dish of Chicken

Clean the chicken and take out its entrails, cut the extremities from
its thighs, flanks, and necks, go away from the chicken and leave it.
Take these extremities, the neck and the entrails, and put them in a
pot with select spices and all the condiments: green cilantro juice,
onion juice, whole pine-nuts, a little vinegar and a little murri, good
oil, citrus leaves, and two buds of fennel.  Put thou this over a
moderate fire and when it is done and the greater part of the sauce has
gone, thicken it with three eggs, grated breadcrumbs and fine flour,
crush the liver, throw it into this paste, and cook it little by little
until the liver and the paste are cooked and they take body.  Then take
the chicken and fry it little by little and beat together two eggs, oil
and murri, and do not stop sprinkling the chicken above and below with
this until it is browned and fried.  Then take a second pot and put in
two spoonfuls of oil and half a spoonful of murri, another half
spoonful of vinegar and two of aromatic rosewater, onion juice, spices
and condiments.  Put this on the fire until it cooks slowly, and when
it has cooked, leave it until it is absorbed.  Then pour it in a second
dish and adorn it too with eggyolks; sprinkle it with select spices and
present both dishes, God willing.


A Jewish Dish of Partridge

Clean it, quarter it and put it in the pot with all the spices and
condiments, green cilantro juice, onion extract, murri, half a spoonful
of vinegar, three of oil, and sufficient water, buds of mint, citrus
and whole pine-nuts.  When it has boiled and consumed the greater part
of the sauce, pound the tripe and the liver gently and beat them with
three eggs and [into?] dough; coat the pot with this and stir it at the
sides until it thickens.  Cover it with eggyolks and then pour it and
adorn it with eggyolks and buds of mint, minced pine-nuts and
pistachios, spray it with a little rosewater and present it, God
willing.


A Jewish Dish of Chicken

Clean the chicken and pound its entrails with almonds, breadcrumbs, a
little flour, salt, fennel, and cut cilantro; beat it with six eggs and
the amount of four pounds [?] of water.  Then put the chicken over the
fire a little and place it in a clean pot with five spoonfuls of sweet
oil, and do not stop stirring it over the fire in the oil until it is
lightly browned.  Then make a mash of the stuffing prepared earlier and
leave it until it is bound together and thickened.  Pour it out and put
it around the stuffing, adorn with cut rue and fennel, buds of mint,
and minced almonds, and present it, God willing.


A Jewish Dish of Hidden Stuffing

Pound some meat, cutting it round, and be careful that there be no
bones in it.  Put it in a pot and put in all the spices except cumin,
four spoonfuls of oil, penetrating rosewater, a little onion juice, a
little salt, and cover it with a thick cloth.  Take it to a moderate
fire and cook it with care.  Pound meat for meatballs, season it and
make little meatballs and throw them in the pot until they are done.
When everything is done, beat together five eggs, salt, pepper, and
canel; make a thin foil of this in a frying pan, and beat five more
eggs with what will make another thin foil.  Then take a new pot and
put in a spoonful of oil and boil it a little, put in the bottom one of
the two foils, pour the meat onto it, and cover with the other foil.
Then beat three eggs with a little white flour, pepper, canel, and some
rosewater with the rest of the pounded meat, and put this over the top
of the pot.  Then cover it with fire2 until it is browned, and be
careful that it not burn.  Then break the pot and put the whole mass on
a dish, and cover it with buds of mint, pistachios, and pine-nuts, and
add aromatic condiments.  [Or] put on this plate all that has been
indicated, and leave out the rosewater and replace it with a spoonful
of juice of cilantro pounded with onion, and half a spoonful of murri;
make with all this what was made of the first, if it please God.


1This passage is confusing.  "Reinforce the cover with dough" suggests
putting a lid on the pot and sealing the edge with dough, as in some
other recipes; "stir" must then be read as "agitate".  But how is the
sauce to dry up in a covered, sealed pot, and how are we to know when
it has? -- J.ibn-E.

2presumably a pan of coals, as in the Jewish Partridge dish above -- J.ibn-E.



					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================