[Sca-cooks] Question & Artemisian Iron Chef

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Jeanne P / Casamira <jeannecas at gmail.com>
>I need some good period sources for Chinese / Persian cooking that
>show which ingredients were used in period.
>Was Coconut milk ever used?  Can it be documented?
>I know it's not part of Mediterianian, French or English medieval fare.

Well, i haven't run across Chinese Persian cooking :-)

But i have found information about Persian cooking in two books.

One is the inestimable "Medieval Arab Cookery". While none of the 
cookbooks therein are Persian, Charles Perry has footnoted 
extensively, pointing out the Persian linguistic and cultural roots 
of many of the recipes. There are also quite a few essays by Perry 
discussing specific styles or ingredients, and many of them touch on 
Persian cooking. I find this book to be invaluable.

The other is a recently published Indian cookbook with Persian 
content, The Ni'matnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu: The 
Sultan's Book of Delights, translated by Norah M. Titley. 
RoutledgeCurzon, 2005.

So while neither is purely Persian, "Medieval Arab Cookery" shows the 
confluence of Arab and Persian, and the Ni'matnama shows the 
confluence of Persian and Indian.

I have heard of surviving Persian cookbooks, but to the best of my 
understanding one or two exist, but have never been translated into 
English.

Was coconut milk used? By whom? Obviously it was used in the tropical 
regions where the coconut palm grows... but i don't recall any 
European recipes using it, nor any Arab recipes. It does show up in 
the Perso-Indian cookbook...
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita