[Sca-cooks] The Priest Fainted

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach tracey sawyer:
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>Greetings -
>
>I'm trying to find documentation for a "traditional" middle eastern
>eggplant (aubergine) recipe. The name translates as "the priest
>fainted" the arabic name starts with Imam- but I can't remember the
>rest.
>
>It is supposed to be a really tasty aubergine and garlic pate style
>dish, usually served in the shell. The cook book says traditional
>but doesn't say whether it is 12th century tradition or 19th century
>tradition...
>
>This is for a "Crusader" style feast to be held in August ... that
>is spring in Lochac.
>
>Thanks in advance for your assistance , Lowry

That would probably be imam bayaldi or bayildi. I've never heard it
described as a pate (more a stuffed eggplant dish; when is it _not_
served in the shell?). The legend says that either a) the imam in
question fainted because the dish was so exquisite, or b) the imam
fainted because of the cost of the oil required to prepare it. Either
way, it's a good dish (for all that it is made with eggplant).

I have to assume that the antiquity of the tradition is more like
19th century than 12th century; at the very least, the modern form of
the recipe would have to be from no earlier than the 16th or 17th
century, since a major ingredient is tomato in every recipe for this
dish that I've seen. The basic formula as I recall it involves the
guts of the eggplant, scooped out raw from the split shell, sauteed
with garlic, onion, tomato, parsley and seasonings in copious
quantities of olive oil. Can't get much more Mediterranean than that!

Now, on the other hand, I seem to recall some other eggplant-garlic
dishes in the medieval Islamic corpus. Badinjan
something-or-other-that-sounds-like-myhash comes to mind... you might
check Cariadoc's Miscelleny online for a worked-out version.

Okay, I checked and find that Badinjan Muhassa doesn't contain
garlic, and several of the other eggplant dishes in that section of
the Miscelleny also contain meat, which, since you might have chosen
imam bayaldi for its vegetarian qualities, might not fit the bill.
However, there are still a couple of eggplant dishes without meat,
some containing garlic. See Badinjan Muhassa, the Eggplant Pancake
Dish, and one or two others at:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/islamic_w_veggies.html#3

Hope this helps!

Adamantius