[Sca-cooks] Too Healthy to Post?
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Tue Aug 15 22:50:46 PDT 2006
I get this list as a digest, and i find it odd that i haven't
received a Digest since 8:20 PDT this morning (Vol. 4, Issue 97)...
Are we all doing such healthy things that no one is posting?
What i've been doing...
I'm still working on Stage Three of my "At the Table of the Sultan"
project (still in Beta Test :-)
Stage One was rapid almost automatic translation (pen in notebook),
leaving uncertain and ambiguous words in French and some French word
order.
Stage Two was resolving uncertain and ambiguous words and refining
the translation a fair bit.
Stage Three is more head butting with refining the language, and now
i'm translating Yerasimos's modern recipes, which i had initially
skipped, since i'm not really all that interested in them.
In my translation, i want to retain some of the archaic sound of the
original recipes, without having it sound too stilted or hard to
understand. Also, there are places in the essays that quote directly
from some 15th and 16th century Europeans visiting the Ottoman court
and i'm wrestling with two issues there - one, making sure i really
understand the archaic French, and two, translating so as to maintain
its more formal character without making it awkward.
Additionally, i've got 2/3 of the recipes and 1/2 the essay typed
into the computer. Still plugging away.
I've even picked up a Turkish grammar book, but couldn't find a
Turkish-to-English dictionary at the local used book stores near
UC-Berkeley, just a bunch of little Turkish-German/German-Turkish
dictionaries. Sigh. I'll have to ask a source what's a good one and
go hit bookfinder.com
Anyone on the list know for certain how much yogurt is in a standard
Parisian "pot de yogourt" (we're talkin' plain yogurt here, not
fruity)? Yerasimos is not more specific than that in several of his
modern versions of the 15th c. recipes. He has at least standardized
his versions to some extent - if they contain sheep meat, it's always
500 grams, and most of the time he specifies "gigot d'agneau",
regardless of what the Ottomans might have used. A web search in
French turned up several different sizes. Heck, a container of yogurt
is certainly not standardized here in the US (here the most common
sizes are 6 oz and 8 oz). But i'm thinking maybe there is one size
that is the most common in Paris where Yerasimos was teaching for 25
years...
Today i was comparing my translations into English of Yerasimos's
translations into French of Shirvani's translations into Turkish of
al-Baghdadi's Arabic with Charles Perry's brand new translations of
al-Baghdadi. There are some differences which are obviously due to
(1) the fact that the Arabic doesn't have things like commas or
semi-colons, and (2) the translation-of-a-translation factor. But
Shirvani clearly altered some of Baghdadi's recipes a bit. I made
notes in my translation, and i'm going to go back and analyze them
more carefully tomorrow or the next day. I want to see if it looks
like some of the differences may reflect particular Ottoman
preferences...
BTW, tomorrow i'll post the working versions of the two recipes we
ended up cooking at our Kingdom A&S in 112 degree F heat (with the
Heat Index adding about 10 degrees to that). One was Merserem - lamb
with herbs and yogurt - and the other was Rashidiyya - chicken with
fruit.
I had a very early day today, so i'm going to bed early.
--
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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