[Sca-cooks] Manti

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 24, 2005, at 10:57 PM, ranvaig at columbus.rr.com wrote:

>> Not by that name.  There is a similar Persian dish called  
>> "joshparag", which is a meat ravioli
>> cooked in yoghury and triangular in shape, but two arms of the  
>> triangle are twisted together.
>> Charles Perry doesn't mention manti as a relative.  He does link  
>> it to Turkish meat pie called
>> "borek" and to a Russian meat ravioli "pelmeni".
>>
>>
>
> Josh means goat or mutton or meat in Indian cooking, and I would  
> guess that it means the same in Persian.  Parag sounds a lot like  
> Pierogi, which is a Polish filled dumpling or pastry.  Filling  
> wrapped with pasta and boiled or pastry and fried.  So Joshparag  
> could mean meat dumpling.. basically a meat ravioli.
>
> ---------This was definitely not pie-like.
>
> Borek or bric are a filling wrapped with flaky pastry or these days  
> filo and either baked or fried.  Some are appetizer size, some are  
> a handheld meal,  some are a pie.
>
> Ranvaig

I STR there being a recipe for shushbarrak (see joshparag above) in  
al-Baghdadi, and the dish is still made in virtually the same way in  
parts of North Africa and, presumably, still in parts of the Middle  
East. I know I've seen it in modern cookbooks: sometimes the  
frequently-used garlic-mint-yogurt sauce is a raw combination, or it  
can be a yogurt-based "white sauce" stabilized with some kind of meal  
or starch. It seems likely kishik (sp?) might occasionally (or  
frequently) be used, that dried, powdered yogurt-bulgur mixture.  
Because of the starch, it can be brought to a boil without fear of  
curdling.

As mentioned elsewhere, the dough is pretty much a standard eggless  
pasta, rolled out thin ("like cut tutmaj"), and filled like ravioli,  
agnolotti, etc., and boiled, not baked. I think the identifying  
characteristic common to all of these dishes people have been  
discussing is the fact that the food is wrapped in dough.

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