Rant on research; was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>Hi. I'm Asim.  I think a few friends of mine are out here..,

Hey! Asim! Merhaba!

>and, now that I'm a little more free at work, I'm getting back into 
>cooking.  I'm not planning to do any event feasts, right now, but I 
>am planning to playing with redactions, doing research, etc.  But 
>more on me another time, perhaps...

Cool.

>The reason I find this Ironic is that, until recently, things like 
>gov't records and the like were all a prospective Ottoman cooking 
>re-creator, such as myself, had to go on.  I'm blessed, and 
>fundamentally happy with, the vast array of tailored lists of 
>foodstuffs that went into the Palace kitchen, as well as on the 
>street.  There's a wonderful English-language work on the history of 
>Ottoman food, much of which deals with how food what prepared, dealt 
>with, and fit into the culture overall -- it's laying next to my bed 
>right now, in fact, waiting for me to finish reading it.

Can you share some of your sources? I'd like to expand my SCA 
repertoire and more books is a good thing (even without recipes).

>The Ottoman researcher, however, does lack actual recipes.  Luckily 
>for me, a few months ago, a friend stumbled (almost literally) over 
>a book, written in Turkish by a Greek researcher, who redacted a 
>bunch of period and just-out-of-period recipes.  Sadly, this 
>layperson researcher does NOT read Turkish...yet. :)  But at least I 
>have the work, and can carry on...and when I do get the recipes 
>pulled out and verified, I have the ability to build a feast around 
>not just food, but the culture of the food, so to speak.  It's a 
>wonderful gift, and I'd not have given up the last 3 years of 
>research hardships for it.

Oooh, oooh! I hope you'll share when you get some of it translated.

>In part, that's because one of my eventual goals is to do a High, or 
>Near-High, Authencity Ottoman SCA Event (it's easy to have room for 
>people who only do European, as Ambassadors from other courts, which 
>happened a lot in period.)  I've been lucky beyond measure to have 
>worked with a bunch of talented folks on a High Authenticity private 
>dinner at Pennsic 2 years running, now, and what I've learned about 
>not just cooking a meal from recipes, but building a milieu for the 
>meal, has been amazing.  I can't imagine doing "just a feast", 
>anymore; I want to do, and build, re-creation experiences.

One of my dreams is to do a 16th century Ottoman feast, but so far i 
haven't found much info.

I also dream of doing a Byzantine feast and a Mongol feast. But first 
i have to do something about my arthritis, or i won't be head cooking 
again. My feet and ankles were so swollen while i was in Canada last 
week, i could only take small ginger steps, but they seem back to 
normal now - maybe it was the latitude (joke, joke). I will be 
assisting a friend of mine, who's head cook, in a feast entirely from 
Anthimus this fall.

Anahita