[Sca-cooks] Camel Ribs

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Rosine/Hro?ny Rognvaldsdottir asked:
>I've just been informed that 30 - 100 pounds of camel ribs may be donated to
>my barony if we can figure out how to cook them.
>
>Any advice/experience? (I'm posting this to the SCA-Cooks list also.) I'm
>sure they'll have to be bar-b-qued, but sauce? Marinade would be right out,
>right?

And Stefan responded:
>Why would the marinade be right out?

Yeah, why would marinade be right out?

>Let's see... The Florilegium horse-recipes-msg file does give some 
>southeast Asian recipes that say "horse or camel", so if you can 
>find some recipes for horse ribs I guess you could you use those...

Having lived in Southeast Asia, that comment gave me a start. While 
there are horses in Southeast Asia - but they are far from common and 
rather small - i hadn't heard of camels there. Camels? In the 
tropics? Moo-oo-oo.

So i checked the Florilegium... The recipe i found is actually 
Central Asian, a "traditional" recipe from Kazakhstan. I think they 
use Bactrian camels there (the shaggy 2-humped kind). And i suspect 
that Rosine's camels are Dromedaries (the one humped kind). I don't 
know if there's a difference in texture and/or flavor between them.

My reading about "traditional" Bedouin food - they eat Dromedary 
camels for feasts - indicates generally boiling them. Take a camel, 
cut it up, put it in the really big feast pot with water and 
seasonings (not specified), and cook over the fire until done...

Anahita

"Would you like a camel in your coffee?"
"Yes, please."
"OK, one hump or two?"