[Sca-cooks] Mongol Feast Questions

[adamantius at verizon.net]

> 
> From: "Michael Gunter" <countgunthar at hotmail.com>
> Date: 2003/09/05 Fri AM 01:55:49 CDT
> To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Mongol Feast Questions

> Everyone is familiar with kumiss or kwass, fermented milk.

You thinking of kefir? Or is kwass as a milk product some ancestor (or cousin) 
of the Russian kvass, which is basically an unhopped small beer?

> But they also 
> drank
> defatted milk (sort of like a skim milk)

Often dried, and either eaten in various forms or reconstituted. Skimming off 
the fat reduced the likelihood of rancidity, I suspect, while I'm sure the fat 
was used for other dietary purposes.

> I 
> recall a type of pasta that was dried in large cubes and grated into boilng 
> liquid. Master A knows more about this.

This seems to be a pretty generic Central Asian thing, and it survives today in 
Hungary (presumably from the Magyars), in Greece (possibly from the Turks), and 
in Turkey. In all these places, the noodle in question is known as tarhanya, or 
some close variant on that name. It is probably also an ancestor of spaetzeln, 
although there's a difference there, in that spaetzeln are grated, extruded or 
dropped into the boiling liquid, while tarhanya are made from a really firm 
dough, which is then grated onto a sheet of cloth, and dried. It is then 
dropped into the boiling soup or stew. I suppose it would be possible to keep a 
lump of dough wrapped up and grate it as needed, though.  

> 
> Some of the meat dishes included a hide kept whole and the meat chopped up.
> Then the meat was placed back into the hide with the hide sewn up and a
> large tube fitted in. A pit was dug and a fire lit. Once the coals had 
> burned down
> or rocks were added to stay hot the hide was placed into the pit and covered 
> with
> the pipe left sticking out. As the meat cooked the juices and icky fats and 
> such
> would bubble out of the pipe. When the pipe bubbled clean, the meat was
> dug up and enjoyed.

My brother-in-law was in Outer Mongolia a few years ago, and brought back some 
video footage of tribal guides barbecueing (for lack of a better term) a goat 
in a milk can, using hot rocks placed inside the can with the meat and 
seasonings (a favorite being whatever freeze-dried soup or sauce mix your 
Western guest brings along as camp food). You then seal the can and kick it 
around for an hour or two, play football with it, etc. You then eat your meal, 
accompanied, for choice, with Russian vodka, dirty songs, and a game involving 
passing around the hot rocks (which, with enough vodka, can still be glowing 
from the center, but cool enough to handle briefly, if I remember correctly).

I have no idea how old this particular form of barbecueing is, but I think I 
now may be able to capture this video as a digital file. I'd like to check with 
my brother-in-law first, though.

Adamantius
> 
> There are also reports of meat placed on sticks with onion and garlic and 
> roasted.
> 
> Here are some areas to check:
> 
> Tender Meat Under the Saddle. Customs of Eating, Drinking, and Hospitality 
> Among
> Conquering Hungarian's and Nomadic Peoples. Krems. 1998 ISBN 3-90 1094 10 5
> 
> Medieval Arab Cookery, Essays and Translations by Maxime Rodinson, A.J. 
> Arberry,
> and Charles Perry. Prospect 2001  ISBN 0907325 91 2
> 
> Book of Dede Korkut. Geoffrey Lewis. Penguin Books, Canada 1979
> ISBN 0140442987
> 
> God's Banquet, Food in Classical Arabic Literature.  Geert Jan Van Gelder.
> Columbia University Press. 2000 ISBN 0 231 11948 8
> 
> I hope this gives a slightly better overview of nomadic people's diets.
> 
> Gunthar
> 
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