[Sca-cooks] Middle Eastern Food

["Ana L. Valdés"]

> Looking for reliable sites with info om the Crusades and food I 
> discovered a beutifoul site about African food in the Middle Ages, 
> extracted from Arabic sources, included Ibn Battuta.
> Enjoy it,
>
>> http://www.congocookbook.com/c0067.html
>
> Ana



lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> 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
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