[Sca-cooks] semi-topical: Good Friday dinner?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Mordonna wrote:
>The cabbage sounds wonderful.

You know how they say "sweets to the sweet"? Well, i like nuts, which 
is why i made the cabbage - THREE kinds of nuts PLUS tahini - 
mmm-mmm-mmm.

>Why salt instead of "Syrian Cheese"?

Lent, therefore no dairy. The author mentioned that any recipe could 
be adapted for Lent, using vegetables and no meat, and there's 
mention of substituting processed nuts instead of milk or yogurt. I 
mentioned this in my documentation. So i figured making this recipe 
without the cheese was allowable. And since cheese tends to be salty, 
and there's no salt specified elsewhere in the recipe, i added salt.

>When I read the original, I thought the addition of cheese to this 
>recipe was Not A Good Thing.

I suspect, but don't really know, that using cheese might do more 
than just add flavor and texture. The cheesy beasties might "process" 
the cabbage a bit when left overnight in a warm climate. Anyone here 
know if lactic acid fermentation has any effect in a period of 24 
hours or so?

>What is "Syrian Cheese"?

I don't really know.

If it had to come all the way to Cairo from Syria in the 14th 
century, i would guess it could either be aged or packed in brine 
like feta.

If it were made by a Syrian community in Cairo or Cairene cheese 
makers trained to make Syrian cheese, i suppose it could be 
different. But i don't know much about modern Near Eastern cheeses, 
let alone 14th C. cheeses. I've seen all sorts of Levantine and 
Persian processed and even some aged dairy products in my local 
Middle Eastern markets (including kashk), but i don't recall actual 
cheese.

I suppose it's even possible that what is being called for is one of 
these, like, oh, say, lebneh, instead of a European style cheese.

Johnnae was kind enough to send me a copy of Charles Perry's article 
about Sicilian cheese, which he figured was a hard aged cheese, but, 
well, Sicily and Syria are not the same place :-)

The chapter with the Lenten food in the Book of the Description of 
Familiar Foods also had dishes for the sick, and while some of the 
recipes are clearly for one or the other, i was uncertain about 
others. They weren't all in a clear order. And there were some 
helpful cooking tips mixed in, such as not overcooking vegetables "to 
rags" and about adding some natron, a type of salt, to keep green 
vegetables from turning yellow as they cook - just like the 
suggestion to add baking soda to vegetables when boiling them that i 
am familiar with from the 20th century.

-- 
Urtatim, formerly Anahita