SC - Turkish food

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Sara K. Tallarovic" wrote:
> 
> TG <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE> wrote:
> >
> >"Hollow out young pumpkins or eggplants, fill them with chopped sheep
> >meat and garlic, add spices and salt, cook them without anything else in
> >water. They pour common yogurt, i.e. sour salted milk (like _compos_),
> >over this and kindred dishes. In the same way, they hollow out carrots
> >and fill them in the abovementioned manner".
> 
> Yum!!!   Gotta try this with eggplant!  That reminds me of another
> dish....does anyone know whether the famed Turkish dish, "Imam Bayildi" (or
> Fainting Imam, Fainting Priest, etc.) might be period?  It is another of my
> faves that I'd like to serve at a feast sometime.  I've heard the legend
> about how a gourmet priest fainted when denied the dish, but no reference
> to what time period this supposedly occured in.  The modern dish has
> tomatoes...
> 
> -Shu'la

Everybody seems to agree that the name translates as something like,
"The Imam Fainted", but it also seems that we have sufficient variations
on the attached story to think the dish name was standardized long
before any particular story was attached to the name. For example, I
have heard the story you mention, but also heard that the Imam Fainted
when he tasted the dish, presumably in a swoon of ecstasy. I have also
heard that the Imam Fainted when he heard the amount and price of the
expensive olive oil called for in the dish. I suspect that nobody really
knows why the dish has the name it has, and a lot of stories have been
made up to fit the name.

It'd not be the first, nor the last, time this has happened. Sometime
I'll post, for kicks, the Lobster Newburgh story on this list. No, there
was no Wenberg involved, and for that matter, no Newberg. Just Newburgh,
New York, a resort town on the Hudson. How many other comparatively
inexplicable dish names can we think of, ones which more or less require
there to be a story that goes with it? Offhand, the first one that comes
to mind is the Mandarin sweet glazed lamb dish called, in English
translation, "It's like Honey." We might try to distinguish between
semi-factual and outright fictional stories, too. Any takers?

But in re Imam Bayaldi, all I can tell you is that I have never seen a
recipe for it, under that name, that didn't call for tomatoes. Of
course, that doesn't necessarily preclude its being, say, from the 17th
century. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com