[Sca-cooks] Re: Martino Corno's pasta recipe?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Christiane:
>Johnnae,
>
>Thanks to you and Kiri for your help; what irks me about this is 
>that even the Italian Websites say exactly the same thing.
>
>As an aside, the reference to such pasta as "tria" is still a 
>dialect word for pasta in Sicily and southern Italy today. According 
>to Mary Taylor Simeti and other food writers, it comes from the 
>Arabic itrjia (for string). And finding that out cleared up a 
>mystery for me as to why my grandma occasionally referred to 
>vermicelli or spaghetti as such.
>
>The general fact that there seems to have been a 12th century pasta 
>factory near Palermo seems to be undisputed. How the Arab-Sicilians 
>cooked it and with what, I don't know, but I keep stumbling across a 
>modern-day recipe for pasta with chickpeas "tria e ceci" most often 
>attributed to Lecce. Guess where the Muslims who were pushed out of 
>Sicily were resettled or fled to?
>
>So I offer this modern-day recipe that has very deep roots:
><snip>
>Soak the chickpeas with a little baking soda overnight; rinse and 
>drain. Simmer the chickpeas with the bay leaves, celery,  and a 
>little salt until tender; keep adding water so there is an inch of 
>water over the chickpeas at all times, you're going for soupy here. 
>Boil the pasta; drain and set aside. In a large frying pan, fry the 
>finely minced onion and one clove of garlic, crushed, in the olive 
>oil until browned. Take the other two cloves, and brown them in 
>another pan with some oil until browned, then remove. Fry half the 
>pasta in the garlic-infused oil until crisp. Then add the drained 
>boiled pasta to the chickpeas (do not drain the chickpeas), mix 
>well, let sit for a few moments, and top with the fried pasta.
>
>There are variations of this recipe adding crushed red pepper, 
>tomato, rosemary, and anchovies. It must be made with fresh pasta, 
>however, otherwise it's just pasta e ceci.
>
>Is there a similar Arab dish? Now I am really curious

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
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04