SC - Fw: Klibanos- More from the Byzantine List

[Philippa Alderton]

Here's another forward from the Byzantine List which I thought might be of
particular interest to Adamantius and Bear.

Phlip
Caer Frig
Barony of the Middle Marches
Middle Kingdom

Southeastern Ohio

Phlip at bright.net

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider that cain't be throwed.

- ----------
: From: Peter Raftos <greeting at zip.com.au>
: To: phlip at bright.net
: Subject: Klibanos
: Date: Saturday, October 31, 1998 3:57 AM
: 
: Many thanks Phillipa, 
: If you are interested in period Byzantine food then Siren Feasts by
: Andrew Dalby has one chapter on Byzantine gastronomy worth looking at
: Biscuits from Byzantium. While there are a few references - more than I
: thought - there are fewer recipes but lots of raw materials and
: ingredients are named. I'm working on an article for our journal the
: Varangian Voice. I hope to build a klibanos and then cook with it. Dalby
: also mentions klibanites a pita style bread. This was cooked in the
: klibanos. The term for heavily armoured Byzantine cavalry -
: klibanophoros - oven carrier- is derived from this word. 
: 
: While no recipes are given some names of dishes are - roast pork basted
: in honey wine etc, - there are good leads to foodstuffs and primary
: documents written by dieticians of the day! These don't seem too
: disimilar in intent to the seasonal dietary regimes of traditional
: chinese medicine - but I haven't read the originals. Dalby follows
: Taxiarchos Kolias' paper on mess practice and provisioning in the
: Byzantine Army - unfortunateley for me my high school German is rusty,
: nor do I have an english translation and I don't know how reliable
: Kolias is. So from the start I have to assume that Kolias' paper is
: valid and that Dalby's interpretation is fair. 
: 
: As the staple food of the army was cereal it could be consumed either as
: porridge, bread or biscuit. Dalby cites piston a millet porridge and
: trakhanas which is made from cracked emmer (or other grains) mixed with
: sour milk then dried in balls. Trakhanas can be bought ready made at
: Greek Deli's. I have eaten chicken using trakhanas as a stuffing when I
: visited Sparta earlier this year - yum.
: 
: One biscuit is mentioned - paximadion (s), paximadia(pl.) named after
: the Hellenistic cook Paximus. Dalby says that knowledge of this biscuit
: spread more widely onwards from Byzantium than the luxuries it was famed
: for. He gives us its name in a couple of languages: Arabic bashmat,
: baqsimat, Turkish beksemad, Serbo-Croat peksimet, Romania pesmet, and
: Venitian pasimata.
: 
: Paximadia were eaten by frugal priests and were part of the army's
: rations. They are still eaten today in Hellas and the old Byzantine
: lands. Paximadia are traditionally eaten as food for Lent or weekly fast
: days- Wednesday and Friday- in the Orthodox church. Generally people
: don't restrict themselves to these times to enjoy paximadia. They dunk
: them in something wet and chew away any old time. You will find a sweet
: variety available at Hellenic bakeries and cake shops. These are made on
: a butter based dough. Nowdays the sweet variety come in these flavours:
: aniseed, vanilla, cinnamon and in more recent times chocolate. The flour
: used nowdays is whole wheat flour. Dalby says the original article used
: barley flour.
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