[Sca-cooks] whole stuffed camel

[Mark.S Harris]

Recently, we had a discussion of animals stuffed within other animals
and cooked. Someone brought up the version of this done with a camel.
At the time I couldn't find the recipe in the Florilegium. However,
I just ran across this while scanning my sotelties-msg file:

> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 19:19:26 -0000
> From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
> Subject: Re: SC - OT - stuffed camel
>
> Anahita wrote:
> >Has anyone verified that actual possibility of that underseasoned camel
> >recipe actually being real? It sure looked fake to me... Is there a pot big
> >enough to hold a whole cleaned camel?
>
> I´ve seen several versions of the stuffed camel recipe but it was usually
> cooked in an earth pit or special clay oven. When it was a recipe, it was
> usually presented as a sort of joke or urban legend. But I´ve also seen
> mention of it in serious books dealing with the cooking of the Gulf region -
> no one seems to have been able to find out if this was really done or not.
> >From Traditional Arabic Cooking by Miriam Al Hashimi:
>
> "We have heard of a whole young camel being stuffed with a whole roasted
> lamb, which had been filled with a whole chicken. The empty cavities were
> filled with rice, nuts, raisins and spices." Then she gives a recipe for
> Quozi mahshi - a whole lamb stuffed with spiced rice, onions, almonds, pine
> nuts, pistachios and garlic - and says: "In Saudi Arabia and some of the
> other Gulf countries the lamb is stuffed with spiced rice, a whole chicken
> and eggs."
>
> She also says: "In preparation for a wedding or other feast in the Gulf
> countries a jointed camel may occasionally be found simmering slowly in a
> huge aluminium pot over an open fire. Chopped onions, saffron threads,
> cardamom pods, cinnamon bark, cloves, pierced loomi and peppercorns are
> added to the pot, which is occasionally stirred with a long-handled,
> oversized ladle."
>
> Nanna

Stefan li Rous
stefan at texas.net