[Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern Food

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I wrote:
>  I'm teaching a class on "Middle Eastern" food in about a month at our
>  Kingdom A&S Tourney. It's a history and survey. I will discuss briefly
>  the history of spices. I also want to cover some of the basics of
>  historic Near and Middle Eastern food.
>
>  What individual ingredients do you think of when someone says "Middle
>  Eastern"? What dishes?
>
>  What else would people want to know about historical Middle Eastern food?
>
>  Thanks for any input - this will help guide my research.

Ana L. Valdes <agora at algonet.se> responded:

First, on Wed, 02 Jul 2003 at 22:47:28 +0200
>Chickpeas (used in every form, in the hummus, in the fula, etc), figues,
>lamb, eggplants (there are tons of recipes of baba ganush), honey,
>almonds.

Thank you for your comments. This is the kind of response i am looking for.

>Is not many files in the Florilege about Middle Eastern Kitchen?

Actually, I have a fair amount of historical info and a number of 
book resources.

I asked this question because i wanted to see what people think of 
when they hear "Middle Eastern food". This is an introductory class, 
so i want to debunk myths and expand minds with facts and provide a 
few nibbles, but not a meal.

I've taught Near Eastern cooking classes at two other A&S Tourneys 
during which we made a simple 4 dish meal. This time i'm going for 
more of a "lecture" class.

>Think about there were very different "cuisines" depending on yout class
>and income. The sultan's kitchen expensive dishes were barely eaten
>outside Damascus, Bagdad or Istambul.

This is an important point. I have a little bit of info from texts. 
However, i don't find real recipes from outside the main urban areas. 
So recipes will have to come from the books oriented to a higher 
level of clientele.

"Medieval Arab Cookery" does include a translation of a late period 
Egyptian cookbook which was for the literate and book collecting 
"middle class" person. The recipes are simpler that in the other 
translated surviving cookbooks, and there's almost no spicing. I 
personally suspect that the spicing isn't mentioned as it is left up 
to the cook. I can't believe that they were eating food this 
unseasoned.

>And it was really interesting to see how the Crusades brang to Europe a
>lot of new dishes and spices they learned to eat in Levant.

This is an excellent point. So far, all i've found are 
unsubstantiated comments and suppositions, however.

And again, on Wed, 02 Jul 2003 at 23:35:28 +0200
>This is a quite interesting link to comments about how the Crusades
>changed the food landscape in the Middle East.
>http://jeru.huji.ac.il/ef41.htm

Actually this site is *highly* flawed. I wouldn't trust much if 
anything it says about history, food history, costume history, etc...

I did copy some of the recipes, though, as they looked tasty, but 
very far from "period".

Does anyone have any trustworthy info on the influence of  Near 
Eastern food ways on Europe via the Crusaders?

Anahita