[Sca-cooks] Iron Chef Medieval Persian...

[Elaine Koogler]

Sounds great!  Wish I could have been there.

Kiri

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> This past weekend, the Principality of the Mists, in the Kingdom of
> the West, held its Fall Investiture of our new Prince and Princess.
> Instead of the usual Medieval feast, a sort-of Iron Chef feast was
> held. The theme of our food was "Trade and/or Conquest".
>
> There were three teams. Each team had to cook one course for one
> hundred people. Each course had to have at least one meat dish, one
> vegetarian dish, one side dish, and one dessert. The autocrat said we
> could have more, if we wanted.
>
> Because the kitchen was somewhat limited, she also suggested we make
> some of our dishes ahead of time. The "secret ingredient" would be
> announced the morning of the event and only had to be in one dish.
>
> I had volunteered to be on a team, but had not volunteered to head a
> team, as i've only been in the SCA 2-1/2 years and i don't feel i'm
> familiar enough with the corpus of Medieval and Renaissance cookbooks
> as i'd like to be.
>
> A couple weeks before the feast, the autocrat said to me, "You'll
> head a team, won't you?" and i said, "Uh, sure." And my course was to
> be served first.
>
> Bear in mind that almost all my possessions are in storage and that
> for the past couple months i've been couch surfing. I did have most
> of the Travelling Moorish Reading Room in a small accessible storage
> space along with my SCA camping gear and garb. So i got out my
> cookbooks - "In a Caliph's Kitchen" by David Waines, "Medieval Arab
> Cookery" by Rodinson, Arberry, and Perry, and Cariadoc's 2-vol.
> "Medieval and Renaissance Cook Book Collection". I even began to
> dream recipes - there was one i really wanted to make, but after
> searching and re-searching, i have come to the conclusion that i
> dreamed it - but it is a very plausible recipe which i may make
> sometime to see how good the dream inspiration was...
>
> I settled on NINE recipes, most which are Persian in origin or
> inspiration, and worked up recipes for them:
> Zaitun Mubakhkhar - Smoked Olives (cold dish)
> Sals Abyad - White Sauce - spiced walnut-sesame butter (cold dish) -
> served with Lavosh and a modern Persian flat bread
> Badhinjan Buran - Princess Buran's Eggplant (pureed with yogurt and
> spices) (Persian) (cold dish)
> Saffron Rice cooked with milk (a sort-of composite dish on my part,
> Persian in inspiration)
> Bustaniya - From the Orchard - spiced chicken and lamb cooked with
> pears, peaches, and almonds (Persian, probably)
> Rustab Mu'assal - Honeyed Dates (for which i stuffed 100 dates with
> 200 almonds) (as a garnish)
> al-Mauz - Fried Battered Bananas (Persian, probably)
> Lauzinaj - Phyllo-wrapped Rosewater-scented Marzipan (Persian)
> Laimun Safarjali - Quince-Lemon-Rosewater Syrup for Beverage (Persian)
>
> All the recipes were from actual period sources, except the rice,
> which was derived from period sources, as there don't appear to be
> any recipes just for rice. Also, i didn't make the meat balls that go
> with that particular Badhinjan Buran recipe and i served the bananas
> as they were, rather than with roasted chicken.
>
> The origins of several of the Persian dishes go back well before the
> Muslim conquest of Persia, although only names and descriptions of
> dishes survive. They entered Muslim Arab cuisine after the Muslim
> Arabs conquered Persia. Although no purely Persian cookbooks have
> survived, there is a late 10th century cookbook by al-Waffaq who
> collected recipes from earlier cook books, some recipes from which
> are translated by Waines in his book. I did NOT use Waines'
> "redactions", just the original recipes. I also used many recipes
> from "The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods" as translated by
> Charles Perry and reproduced in "Medieval Arab Cookery" and a few
> from al-Kitab al-Tabikh by al-Baghdadi, also in "Medieval Arab
> Cookery".
>
> While searching Near Eastern shops for synthetic musk flavoring for a
> couple dishes (i never found any), i discovered a Persian-American
> Quince-Lemon syrup!!! It didn't have any rosewater in it, but i
> bought it to see how it tasted. It was delicious. Of course, for the
> feast, i made my own, which was even better.
>
> The Feast ended with a tie between me and Euriol, Minister of the
> Silver Spoon, who made food primarily from "Le Menagier de Paris", i
> think. It will be resolved with a cook-off at Mists Principality
> Spring Coronet.
>
> I couldn't have pulled anything off without the help of several
> people, especially Rose de la Mans and Juan Santiago, who let me
> spend nearly 12 hours in their kitchen making the eggplant, quince
> syrup, and lauzinaj. They also put me up for the night, and loaned me
> all sorts of pots and pans, cooking utensils, and serving containers
> to use at the feast.
>
> And i had help from some local friends, who let me spend a few hours
> in their kitchens earlier in the week to make three other dishes. And
> I cooked three dishes on site: the meat, the rice, and the bananas. I
> ended up spending 10 hours in the kitchen there (i thought i'd only
> take about 4), prepping, cooking, dishing, and garnishing, with the
> assistance of 3 other people.
>
> Anahita
> Iron Chef Persian
>
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