[Sca-cooks] Re: Noodles/Pasta - LONG (Charles Perry)

[Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy]

Sandragood at aol.com wrote:

> "The first recorded Iranian noodle dish is lakhsha.  There are scattered
> references to it in Persian literature, but in the absence of medieval
> Persian cookery books we must go to the tenth-century Arabic compilation
> Kitab al-Tabikh for a recipe.  The instructions call for a stiff dough of
> flour and water, 'rolled out thin with a rolling pin and cut with a knife
> into strips.'"
>
> " A noodle of some description was being made in the Greek-speaking world by
> the year 500 under the name itria, and one wonders whether there is a
> connection between it and lakhsha."
>
> " In Islamic times, at least, itriya referred to a small soup noodle which
> could be made by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, rather than
> rolling and cutting, so the Greek pasta may have been a different sort of
> noodle from the start."
>
> "As of the thirteenth century, however, lakhsha had disappeared from Arabic
> cookbooks and there was a new word for noodle, rishta, which is still common
> in Iran, the Arab world and Turkey.  Rishta is the only word for noodle in
> the several thirteenth century Arabic cookbooks and in the poems of the
> fourteenth-century Persian rhymester Bushaq (Abu Eshaq-e Hallaj of Shiraz)."

It's probably worth noting that while rishta may be the only word for
noodle in the 13th-century Arabic sources, it is not the only pasta. Off
the top of my head, I can recall shushbarrak, which is a meat-filled
pasta dish, and then there's another whose name I forget (tutmaj?) which
calls for slices to be cut off a roll of dough, and then struck like a
coin with the thumb. These last seem to be sauced with yogurt and mint,
IIRC, and the shushbarrak are alive and well, and virtually unchanged,
in modern-day North Africa.

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
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