[Sca-cooks] Food Poem

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

From: "Cindy M. Renfrow" <cindy at thousandeggs.com>
>
>  >Also, if anyone knows exactly what a kamakh is,
>
>[Arberry notes Rijal is the arabicized form of the Persian (? illegible) ,
>[meaning] "confection, electuary" & cites Steing??? Sorry the text is too
>small & broken.

In "Medieval Arab Cookery", p. 79, note 2:
"Rijal is the Arabicized form of the Persian richal (richar),
'confection, electuary' (Steinglass). For kamakh, see above p. 25.

>He refers to a note about shuniz, but does not give the page number & I
>can't find it.

In "Medieval Arab Cookery", p. 50, note 4:
"According to Ibn al-Baitar, "Mufradat" (tr. Leclerc) s.v., this
aromatic herb is nigelle (Greek) or fennel-flower: see Dozy,
"Supplément", I, p. 791. Lane ("Lexicon", p. 1605) translates, 'the
black aromatic seed of the species of nigella, a sort of allspice.' "

>[page 207]
>"KAMAKH RIJAL
>There are several varieties of this, but all follow the same recipe, only
>differing in ingredients. First take a large, dry pumpkin-shell from which
>all the pith and seeds have been removed: soak in water for two hours, then
>dry thoroughly. Put in 5 ratls of sour milk, 10 ratls of fresh milk, and 1
>1/2 ratls of fine-brayed salt, and stir.  Cover, and leave for some days in
>the hot sun. This is first made in June, at the beginning of the
>mid-summer. Each morning add 3 ratls of fresh milk, and stir morning and
>evening. Add milk as the liquid lessens, until the beginning of August. Now
>take mint-leaves, shuniz, and quarters of peeled garlic, throw in, and
>stir, adding fresh milk to make up as usual, until the middle of September.
>Cover until the beginning of October: then remove from the sun until set,
>and serve. There is also the simple variety, in which no [aromatic]
>ingredients are used; another, in which shuniz and garlic are used; and
>another, in which are used the dried leaves of the red rose cut off from
>the stalk."

From: "Olwen the Odd" <olwentheodd at hotmail.com>
>Am I reading this right?  Are they actually talking about using a dried
>gourd and just describing it oddly?  Does anyone think buttermilk would
>work?  How the heck did they keep the flies out?  I mean, that is a long
>time to let milk set out.

According to Charles Perry, on p. 282-283 of Medieval Arab Cookery,
in the section on the Book of the Description of Familiar Foods:

A third condiment is kamakh rijal or rijar which was yoghurt mixed
with salt and allowed to age outdoors on one's rooftop in summer,
like murri. After about four weeks, it begins to develop a
cheese-like aroma, due to the action of the same microbes that
produce it in cheese. In cheese, the milk is curdled and pressed to
protect it from undesirable microbes while the cheese microbes do
their work; in kamakh rijal, lactic acid and salt do the job. The
yoghurt is fed with fresh milk daily for three and a half months,
during which time it thickens a good deal because of the accumulation
of milk solids. It is like a vary sharp, quite salty, semi-liquid
cheese with a hint of rancidity from the oxidation of the butterfat,
which is encouraged by microbial action and the presence of salt. The
essentially identical recipe kamakh baghdad in Kitab al-Wusla
specifies sheep's milk for this sort of product, which suggests that
the rancidity was relished (as with smen, the aged butter of today's
Morocco), because sheep's milk cheese is quite high in butterfat. All
these products [Perry has discussed several others prior to kamakh
rijal] are extinct in the Arab world today, though the Egyptian
cheese mish, which is aged in salted whey, somewhat resembles kamakh
rijal.

----- end quote -----

So it sounds to me like pureed feta might be a tolerable substitute.
And if you want to make it yourself, you tie cloth over the mouth of
the container to keep the bugs out. Also, i find all sorts of
interesting fermented milk products in my local Persian and Lebanese
markets.

>What in the world is shuniz?

Described above, it is apparently those black pyramidal nigella seeds
they sell in Indian food stores.

Anahita