[Sca-cooks] herb seasoning question

[Stefan li Rous]

Ian of Oertha asked:
<<< Does anyone here have experience with using asafoetida as a  
spice?  I've
read some warnings, and wanted to know what "kind" of food they use  
it in,
if any. >>>

I've not had any personal experience with asafoetida. I'm not even  
very sure about where you would get some.

However, if you do a search in the Florilegium using "asafoetida" you  
will find about a dozen interesting comments on it. From a period  
recipe or two, including Apicius to it's use as a medieval birth  
control herb.

Ok, for kinds of food. In the skewred-meat-msg file:
======
...in the Sultan's Book of Delights, the late 15th Century Moghul  
Indian cookbook...

Another recipe for rustic fish kabab, namely ganvari:

having placed one sweet-scented earthenware pot on top of another,    
make them both hot.  Stuff the boned fish with churned sour milk and  
asafoetida and wash it with   water.  Rub salt, asafoetida, pepper,  
cardamoms and dried ground cloves on it and also   rub lime juice on  
the fish and roast it in the earthenware, namely clay, cooking pot.   
When   it has become well- roasted, flavour it with pure asafoetida.   
By the same recipe, make   kababs of partridges, quails, kid, chicken  
and pigeon, and also, by the same recipe make rabbit kababs.
...
Another recipe, for mountain sheep:

Now the methods for cooking meat have been written down, take meat    
from a fat mountain sheep and cook kababs from it.  Add tumeric,  
asafoetida, green coriander,   onion and salt and boil it. When the  
meat has become thoroughly cooked, flavour some ghee with    
asafoetida and put that meat into it.  When it has become well- 
stewed, add roasted ground   cardamoms, cloves, cumin and fenugreek  
and put in coriander and cook it for an hour.  Take it off after  
adding one ratti of camphor and two rattis of musk.  Put extracted  
lime juice in one   china pot and make vinegar in another pot.  Offer  
whichever is preferred, put it on the dressed   meat and eat it.
...
Another recipe for skewered meat(sikh):

fry the sikh well and chop some radishes and onion finely.  Put  
together lime juice, fresh ginger juice, salt, asafoetida, turmeric,  
fenugreek, azmuda and
ghee.  Rub them on the sikh and revolve them over a fire.  When they  
are roasted, stuff them into hot thin bread and serve them.
======

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****