[Sca-cooks] Rishta (was Re: Martino Corno's pasta recipe?)

[Christiane]

Master A says: 
First look at this:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~westher/recepten/RISHTA.htm

Then see this:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/islamic_wo_veggies.html#8

The second is a period Islamic recipe for rishta: it's a little 
different, but there's a recognizable common subtext, I'd say.

Adamantius
-- 

Thank you. Very interesting, I had wondered if there were Middle Eastern pasta dishes, and what the period ones were (I had read the Miscellany so briefly and so long ago that rishta didn't stick in my head). There does seem to be a common subtext. I'll have to do more searches for rishta recipes. Has anyone come across any in that some of the pasta was fried? It seems like that done that way, it serves as a "meat substitute" for those too poor to afford meat very often, or those who are fasting. 

The utter plainness of the Lecce recipe speaks of desperately poor folks who couldn't afford sugar or cinnamon; which the folk of Puglia certainly were after the Angevin swept the Hohenstaufen dynasty away, and the remaining Muslims in Lecce were exterminated or forcibly converted.

I wouldn't serve tria e ceci at a feast, but it would probably make great camp food for those looking for a simple, periodish recipe (I guess you can use the supermarket refrigerated pasta to make it instead of making your own pasta).

Gianotta