[Sca-cooks] Fish with Tahini

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Tonight i cooked
Samak Maqlu bil-Khall wal-Tahiha
Fried Fish with Vinegar and Tahini

from The Book of the Description of Familiar Foods
p. 390 in Medieval Arab Cookery
translated by Charles Perry

Take salted or fresh fish, then wash it well and dry it, and cut it 
up medium and fry in sesame oil. Throw a little dry coriander on it. 
Then take as much vinegar and tahineh as needed and dissolve it until 
mixed; you moisten it with vinegar little by little until it has the 
desired consistency. Season it, and if you wish, put in a little 
ground mustard and nuts, or [nuts]without mustard. Then take it from 
the pan hot, and first put sesame oil in the pan, and coriander and 
milled Chinese cinnamon, and it is eaten.

So...
At the marvelous Berkeley Bowl, i bought a flounder fillet. I assume 
that originally one took a whole fish and cut it up, but there's just 
me to cook for. I would rather have had fish cut in a"steak", but 
everything they had was filleted, so what could i do?

Ingredients
fish
sesame oil
ground coriander seed
white wine vinegar
tahini
powdered mustard
salt
fresh cilantro
Chinese cinnamon

Before i started cooking i made the sauce. I first mixed mustard 
powder and some salt into the white wine vinegar. Then i mixed the 
tahini with the vinegar and some water, because in my experience, 
tahini gets thick and hard to manage unless a bit more non-oily 
liquid is added. Then I broke in some walnut pieces. The sauce had 
the consistency, more or less, of mayonnaise, a bit lighter and 
fluffier (ok that sounds weird, but well...).

Then i heated the sesame oil in a cast iron pan. When it was hot, i 
put in the fillet, cutting it in half lengthwise, and then crosswise 
into several pieces. I sprinkled the up side with ground coriander 
seed. When it seemed one side was cooked, i turned over the fish, and 
sprinkled the now cooked side with ground coriander.

While the fish was cooking, I put some of the tahini sauce in my dish.

I don't know how well cooked they liked their fish. Steaks could have 
been browned a bit on the outside and still have been moist on the 
inside. I like my fish still a bit moist, so i took it out of the pan 
before it got too dry. It certainly wasn't the least bit browned.

I put the fish on sauce, then topped it with a bit more sauce. I 
sprinkled it with shredded cilantro. I am embarrassed to say i 
couldn't find my jar of ground cinnamon. Sigh. I know i'll find it in 
the morning.

It was ok. First, I put a bit too much sauce in my dish. Second, the 
sauce could have been more highly spiced, although i had just the 
right amount of vinegar. It was not exciting, but it was ok.

Now I will look at some modern "Middle Eastern"recipes for fish with 
tahini sauce and see how they differ.

Tomorrow, i cook the layered vegetable dish, Maghmuma...

-- 
Urtatim, formerly Anahita