[Sca-cooks] Seeking Opinions. $50 Cookbook List

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Johanna Halloway made some excellent cookbooks suggestions.

Of course, as a Near Easterner, i have my own food prejudices :-)

Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, & Silvano Serventi's Medieval Kitchen
was my first Medieval cookbook. Although i quibble with a number of
their redactions, they do give the original recipes both in
translation and in the original language. And their redactions
certainly are delicious. I bought the hard cover when it first came
out. Since i'm partial to Mediterranean food, it was an excellent
purchase - although i'd rather have paid less for a paperback if it
had been available.

As a Mediterranean persona, i am fond of Barbara Santich's "The
Original Mediterranean Cuisine" which is now out of print, but i've
found several copies for $5 through http://www.bookfinder.com, the
internet used book meta-search engine. Chiefly Italian and Spanish
recipes, gives original language version, translation, and redaction.
I think she takes fewer liberties than RS&S do.

Also essential for me are Near Eastern cookboooks. I bought His
Grace, Lord Cariadoc's 2-volume cookbook collection because there are
several such books in it. Since i'm near sighted it isn't too hard to
read :-) I think for the SCAdian chef, it is an essential purchase,
because you get a library's worth of books from all over the Known
World, although i still have to dig up a 3-ring binder to put them in.

I recently popped the $55 necessary for the new edition of "Medieval
Arabic Cookery", a reprint of 'A Baghdad Cookery Book' by A.J.
Arberry and essays by Maxime Rodinson and Charles Perry. I've been
reading it quite a bit since its arrival here. It certainly won't get
dragged into my kitchen.

I've gotten lots more cookbooks, mostly 2nd hand over the past 2
years, but these are the ones i use the most.

On my "to get" list is:
1.) "God's Banquet: Food in Classical Arabic Literature", by Geert
Jan Van Gelder. New York: Columbia University Press. It isn't a cook
book, but an analysis of food in literature, what it means and how
food was used in culture, via language and context.

2.) the Scullys' "Neapolitan Recipe Collection", which is nearly as
expensive as "Medieval Arabic Cookery". I sure wish *that* would come
out in paper!

3.) And, well, some day, when i win the lottery, i'll get "A Soup for
the Qhan".

Anahita

"The truth must be taken wherever it is to be found,
whether it be in the past or among strange peoples."
	-- al-Kindi, Baghdad (801-873)