[Sca-cooks] pre-Baghdadi Recipes in Waines - PT. 2

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

--- PART TWO ---

 From Anahita

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In a Caliph's Kitchen
David Waines
Riad El Rayyes Books Ltd.
56 Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7NJ
1989
ISBN 1-869844-60-2

See first message for explanation of format and info included here.

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Mutajjan bi sadr al-dajjaj - pp. 56-57

WAINES: A simple dish of Ibrahim's which simply means pieces of
chicken bread (sadr al-dajjaj) fried in a tajin. The ingredient murri
is a prepared condiment or seasoning which is impossible to replicate
in the modern home, as it requires many weeks of labour intensive
preparation commencing in the spring and lasting throughout the
height of the summer heat. To say that it is made from barley flour
seasoned with a variety of spices conveys no impression of its
complexity. One recipe suggests as a substitute the spice sumac; as
its rather astringent citrus-like flavour works well in dishes where
it is ordinarily used, this substitution has been made throughout
these recipes [in Waines' work ups]. Murri is said to have warming
properties causing thirst and dryness in the body, in which respect
it is even stronger than salt. This effect of murri can be countered
by either drinking water or eating something sweet.

ORIGINAL: Take chicken breasts sliced, cut up into small pieces and
fry in oil until they appear to be cooked. Add to them pepper, fresh
coriander and sprinkle over them vinegar and murri and then spread
ground almonds on top, God willing.

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Zirbajat al-Safarjal - pp. 58-59

WAINES: This is another variety of zirbaj as found in the recipe of
that name (page 40). It is also one of Ibrahim's. The ingredient
featured in it is quince (safarjal) juice, which together with the
vinegar, gives the dish a pleasantly tart flavour. According to
medieval medical lore, zirbaj dishes in general were unsuited for
personas with 'weak stomachs'. Quince, however, is recommended as a
counterbalancing ingredient for zirbaj, so this dish ought to suit
everyone's stomach.

ORIGINAL: Take one young plump chicken, joint it and place it in a
clean pot. Put with it a stick of galingal, a handful of soaked and
peeled chickpeas and a ratl of whole onions and a little salt. Pour
over this sufficient water and salt to cover (the contents of the
pot) and one third uqiya of oil. Then place the pot on the fire
until. the onion is cooked; then remove all the onion so that none is
left and then discard. Next, pour into the pot a quarter ratl of
vinegar and wait until it has cooked. Then pour into (the pot) a ratl
of fresh quince juice which has been pressed that day and add half an
uqiya dried coriander and half a dirhem pepper and likewise half of
nard, three dirhems of cumin and twenty dirhems of the choice pith of
bread. Remove from the fire, wash around the pot and leave to settle.
Then present, God willing.

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Isfidhbaja Khadra - pp. 60-61

WAINES: The famous tenth century physician, al-Razi, says of this
variety of dish that it is very healthy, being suitable for most
conditions and occasions, for all ages and for all persons of
voracious temperament, except the truly gluttonous. Those, however,
inclined towards a temperament governed by yellow bile would find
this dish unsuitable on its own: they would be advised to eat it with
some kind of sour tasting fruit followed by a helping of sikbaj (see
recipe on page 76). The kanun is a clay or mud brick hearth used for
cooking. In this recipe, Ibrahim has employed a common practice of
making a kind of quick vegetable stock in which to flavour the dish
at a secondary stage of the preparation; here it is made of celery
and fresh coriander water.

[My Comments: portable metal kanuns are used as room heaters. The
clay cooking kanun is also portable - it is a footed bowl - the
charcoal going in the top and the dish to be cooked sitting over the
charcoal]

ORIGINAL: Take some four ratls of meat, cut it up bit by bit and
place in a pot with a piece of cinnamon, a ratl of onion chopped up
and a third of a ratl of oil with some salt as required. Cover with
water and then place the pot quickly on a portable stove or a kanun.
When the contents are half cooked, throw in with it pieces of cheese
to the amount of five dirhems. When almost completely cooked, add a
total of half a ratl of the water of coriander and celery, then pound
dried coriander and a dirhem of pepper and half a dirhem of cinnamon.
Leave until the contents have settled. Remove and serve, God willing.

[My Comments: The coriander in the water is green. Celery was not the
long firm crunch stalks we use, but the small sprigs with the leaves
on, so get untrimmed celery to make this. Recipes i've seen for
making a green flavor water involved pulverizing the greens,
straining and squeezing through cloth, and using the liquid]

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Samak mishwa - pp. 66-67

WAINES: Al-Razi, taking his cue from the Greek physician Galen
described fish in general to be bad and difficult to digest. Although
al-Razi was himself knowledgeable in matters of the kitchen, his
professional medical opinion did not accord with that of contemporary
gourmands who delighted in dishes such as this one.

ORIGINAL: Take fresh fish, and scrape off the skin very well with a
knife. Split open, wash thoroughly and dry. Take sumac, grind fine
and discard the seeds. Take half of this quantity of dry thyme and
also grind, together with a quarter as much garlic, skinned and
chopped fine. Now take half the total quantity of walnuts and chop
and mix all together, adding a little fine ground coriander, cumin,
cinnamon, and mastic. Make this into a paste with fresh sesame oil,
adding salt to taste. Smear the fish with sesame oil and saffron
mixed with rose water inside and out. Then stuff with the stuffing
described. Tie up with strong cotton threads and place on an iron
skewer. Place in the oven over a gentle fire, not blazing. Cover and
leave to cook well, then remove. This can be eaten hot or cold.

[My Comments: While i don't have access to the Arabic, i suspect that
the word translated here as "thyme" is actually zataar - about which
we've had many conversations on this list, and while often in the
same family as thyme is not always what we call thyme...]

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Barida - 82-83

WAINES: This cold dish made from chicken was devised by Ibrahim ibn
al-Mahdi. The recipe is expressed in poetic form, not surprising from
a man who was not only a gourmand, but well known as a poet too. He
describes the dish as perfect summertime fare. The physician al-Razi
observes that such dishes of the bawarid type, when made with vinegar
or with the juice of sour fruits, serve to cool the temperament and
moderate it. Qutha and faqqus, mentioned in the original recipe, are
species of cucumber.

ORIGINAL: Two parts almonds and sugar and two parts vinegar and
mustard mixed together in a vessel with partially dried safflower
adding colour around the [one short word not legible in my photocopy,
may be "edges"]. Cucumber peeled, qutha and faqqas and pomegranate,
chopped up small and sprinkled around the vessel. Add a little oil.
Take a fine young chicken, cooked in vinegar, jointed and cut up in
pieces and placed over the other ingredients in one vessel. Decorate
the dish with pomegranate (seeds) and with almonds and olives chopped
up fine.

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Narjisiya - pp. 84-85

WAINES: This is Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi in poetic flight again, where he
is replying to a friend's request for the recipe for a fine dish. A
surprising ingredient is asparagus which but rarely appears in these
recipe, although Ibrahim seemed to have a particular liking for it...
In a later recipe from al-Baghdadi's work, the narcissus flower is
imitated by garnishing the dish with poached eggs, evidence that
attention was paid as well to the presentation of the dishes on the
table.

ORIGINAL: Remove the chops from the carcass and then the meat and fat
of the flank. Cut up the fresh fat meat and wash it. Place it in a
vessel over the fire and fry it in oil and spices until browned. Then
cup up over it onion round and fresh green onion and add rue and
coriander. Then add murri, ginger and a little pepper. Next add
asparagus. Break over this egg yolks which resemble the radiant stars
of the firmament and the rounded shaped flower of narcissus. Sprinkle
bits of rue over the top. Then, remember God and eat this delicious
wholesome food.

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Tabahija - 86-87

WAINES: Another dish whose name is Arabicized from the Persian. There
are also many varieties of this dish which appear in most of the
culinary manuals. This one, attributed to Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi, is
the earliest one we have. Like murri, kamakh is a savoury seasoning
which is time-consuming to prepare, the operation commencing in June
and ending in October. In this preparation for Tabahija, kamakh juice
is used which means extracting the soluble elements from it by
steeping or soaking in water. A later, thirteenth century, version of
this dish suggests sumac juice, prepared in the same way as kamakh
juice as a substitute for murri.

ORIGINAL: Take the meat and slice and wash it thoroughly. Put half a
ratl of water in a pot and boil it. Place the meat in the pot and
pour over it fine oil, a little salt and cut up into it peeled
aubergine and onion rings. When the contents have cooked and the
liquid evaporated, sprinkle over it the amount of half a spoonful of
kamakh juice and murri, and if desired, an equal amount of vinegar.
Next proceed to chop up some herbs and spices, a little each of
coriander or caraway, cinnamon and cumin, sprinkle over the contents
and stir a while. Wash the sides of the pot with a ladle of water and
leave awhile until settled. Then serve, God willing.

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Zaitun - pp. 88-89

WAINES: This way of preparing and storing olives, suggested by
Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi, provides a pleasant side dish placed alongside
others on the meal table to be dipped into when desired. They can
also be used wherever olives are called for in recipes [i don't
agree]. The Mediterranean region provides 98 % of the world's acreage
of olive production used to make oil. The vegetable [nope, sorry
David, it's a *fruit*], which is native to that area, has been
cultivated for three millenia [sic] for cooking, lamp and cosmetic
oils and for food.

ORIGINAL: Take black or green olives, black being the best, and put
them in a jar adding to the contents salt and thyme. Then cover with
fine oil. Use when the occasion arises, God willing.

[My Comments: While i don't have access to the Arabic, i suspect that
the word translated here as "thyme" is actually zataar - about which
we've had many conversations on this list]

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'Ijja min Badhinjan - pp. 90-91

WAINES: The customary form of 'ijja is a food made with eggs, like an
omelette. Here the word is used in another known sense to apply to a
dish compounded of different ingredients mixed into a kind of dough
and fried. The binding agent in this preparation is provided by the
breadcrumbs rather than the egg. This recipe is from an anonymous
work of probably Egyptian origin.

ORIGINAL: Take a pleasant aubergine and peel it. Boil it in salted
water until it is cooked through. Extract from it all the moisture.
Then knead it in a bowl with crumbled pieces of bread with an
infusion of murri, pepper, dried coriander and cinnamon, and beat
them all together until the mixture is smooth. Then fry in a pan with
oil, small loaf-sized portions of the mixture until cooked and
browned. Make a sauce of vinegar and oil and murri and crushed
garlic. Boil these together and pour over the loaves when ready for
eating.

[My Comments: The omelette type dish described by Waines is probably
related to the modern Persian dish usually Romanized as eggah - there
is no hard g sound in Arabic, so the soft j sound is used instead.]

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Jazr - pp. 92-93

WAINES: There are a few dishes in the medieval Arabic repertoire
where a vegetable is highlighted by itself. In this case it is used
to decorate the plate on which something else is served; it is, in
fact, a perfect accompaniment with a dish of plain rice. Carrots, at
least, can be treated on their own as the carrot family of plants
(which includes caraway, cumin, coriander, and dill, all common to
medieval Arab cooking) is characterized by strongly scented essential
oils. This recipe is thirteenth century Moroccan

ORIGINAL: Cut the carrots into pieces without peeling them. Select
the middle bits and cut each piece in half and cook in salted water.
Dry the pieces off and fry in a pan with fresh oil. Then pour over it
boiling vinegar with crushed garlic and caraway. One can then either
leave the carrot pieces without frying (or else place them after
frying) as decoration on a platter.

[My Comments: First, I should check and see if this is in the
Anonymous Andalusian cookbook. Second, this is *VERY* like a modern
Moroccan recipe - the biggest differences are that the modern recipe
uses cumin, not caraway, generally substitutes lemon juice for the
vinegar, and often includes a bit of powdered red chili]

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