SC - Fried spinach recipe

[lilinah@earthlink.net]

Olwen asked:
> >Hi all.  I cann't find the recipe for fried spinach that was posted 
> >on the list a couple of months ago.  I looked in the Flori-thingy 
> >and didn't find it there either.
> >
> >HELP!!  Someone please repost the recipe please.

Well, there are two fried spinach recipes mentioned in the Florilegium,
although it wasn't in the last couple of months.

The following message is from this file in the FOOD-VEGETABLES
section:
vegetables-msg   (102K) 12/27/00    Period vegetables. Recipes.

I did look in the fried-foods-msg file first, myself So sometimes it 
is a matter of having to look in several similar files.

Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net

> Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:03:13 -0400 (EDT)
> From: cclark at vicon.net
> Subject: Re: SC - Anthro and cooking
> 
> >Tollhase1 at aol.com wrote:
> >How similar and different are Chinese noodles, and Italian pasta which
> >developed from it? Any other examples of similar medieval foods
> >developing regional variation? Seems like Great Britain vs. the
> >Continent would provide several examples.
> 
> There are some spinach recipes that might be worth looking into. Al-Baghdadi
> (1226) has a recipe for fried spinach (isfanakh mutajjan), which is
> parboiled in salted water, dried, fried in refined sesame oil, and seasoned
> with garlic, cumin and coriander seed, and cinnamon. The Forme of Cury
> (English, about 1390) has a recipe for fried spinach (spynoches yfryed),
> which is parboiled, dried (by pressing, not just draining), fried in oil
> (type not specified; I would guess maybe olive or walnut), and seasoned with
> sweet powder (a spice mix that may have been similar to pumpkin-pie-spice or
> pudding-spice mixes). According to one contemporary English food writer, all
> fried foods were sugared before serving - that might apply to this recipe.
> 
> The main difference between the two recipes is that in the English recipe
> the seasoning is the same sweet powder that is used for many other English
> vegetable dishes. I would guess that as spinach was transported northwards
> to England, the recipe came with it. When the English cooks first
> encountered spinach, they might have asked "How do you cook it?" and someone
> told them. And from there they just adapted it to their local style. Later
> English cookbooks have various other spinach recipes, such as sweet and sour
> boiled spinach with currants.
> 
> Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon