[Sca-cooks] Fruit and Meat

[Lilinah]

  Stefan wrote:
>  Dragon said:
>  > I think a large part of the problem is that people in the U.S. are
>  > acculturated to assume fruit = sweet = dessert while meat = not sweet
>  > = not dessert.

Of course this type of binary thinking may be useful in computer 
programming ;-) but it doesn't take the grey areas of the real world 
into account.

>  Some of this may be true. Can anyone give me a "dessert" dish that
>  *does* contain meat?
>
>  The only one I could think of is mincemeat pie, but I also believe
>  mincemeat pie doesn't actually contain any meat.

Do you mean screamingly modern American? Or are you casting a wider net?

There are several sweet dishes that include shredded chicken in both 
Medieval Europe (blancmange) and the Middle East

The modern day Turks continue to make sweet dessert porridges that 
include shredded chicken.

One SCA-period version is Pirinc Herise (the "c" is pronounced like 
an English "j", and the second word has three syllables), "pirinc" 
being Ottoman for "rice" and derived from Persian.

Pirinch herisesi - Herise of rice.
The art of preparing it is the following. Clean a fat chicken and 
place it on the fire, let it boil, and lift off the foam. When the 
blood comes out of the chicken, withdraw it from the fire, separate 
the breast/white, press it well to make it give off any liquid, and 
shred it with the fingernails to make threads. It is better to shred 
it while it is still tender (hot). Pass cleanly through a strainer 
the broth of the above-mentioned chicken to remove all foam. Clean 
the rice, wash it, soak it in the strained chicken broth, and place 
it on the cinders to keep it warm. Let it rest thus soaking until it 
absorbs the broth. When it is completely soaked, cook it with fresh 
milk, that it cooks as it should. Stir it with a ladle so that the 
bottom doesn't burn. Adjust its salt, that it is neither too much nor 
too little salted. Just before withdrawing it from the fire, add the 
sugar according to taste, so that the flavor is just right. Add next 
the shredded white chicken meat, mix it all together, and withdraw 
from the fire. Add a little clarified sweet butter and let it rest a 
little. Arrange it in dishes, sprinkle with rose water, dust with 
powdered sugar, and eat.
------- Shirvani, folio 110 verso - 111 recto, 2nd half of 15th C. 
(translation mine, copyright 2006)


And there's another dish, called Me'muniyye among Shirvani's recipes, 
which has a descendent in modern Turkey known as "chicken breast".

The preparation of ma'muniyye.
Sugar or white honey 400 dragmes, butter of milk 150 dragmes, rice 
flour washed, brayed, and passed through a sieve 350 dragmes. First 
place the butter in a pot, when the butter begins to boil add the 
rice flour, cook a little. Next add on top of the cooked flour, and 
while the pot remains on the fire, the honey from which one has 
lifted off the foam, the milk, the shredded breast of chicken, but 
add a little rose water to the honey. Cook it all on a gentle fire 
while stirring continually. Add as well a handful of brayed almonds. 
Leave to cook until the paste becomes granular and quite thick. Draw 
it from the fire. Take quantities equal to an egg, place them in 
molds in the form of a bowl, push well with a spoon so that the 
pieces wed the form, and next arrange them in a frying pan. Place it 
on the embers with a little oil and cause the pieces to fry, turning 
them until they are golden on all sides. Arrange them next on a 
plate, pour under and over them powdered sugar in quantity, brayed 
almonds, and rose water with musk. It is also possible to consume 
them without frying them.
------- Shirvani, folio 121 recto - verso, 2nd half of 15th C. 
(translation mine, copyright 2006)


I'm not really a porridge kind of guy, but i really want to make 
those Ma'muniyya. (yes, the spelling is inconsistent... it's shown up 
all three ways in several books)

Of course, an Ottoman feast had savory dishes punctuated by sweet 
dishes throughout the meal. A particular sweet was the penultimate 
dish, followed by cooked sheep's heads and trotters, and sausage-like 
items, which formed the grand finale...

As for modern sweets, the bacon-dark-chocolate bar i mentioned a 
while back, well, a number of chocolatiers are making variations on 
that theme...
And there are all those recipes i posted a week or two ago featuring 
*BACON* (drool, drool)
- Bacon Apple Caramels
- Bacon-Gingerbread to make a house
- Sweet Bacon Shortbread
- Bacon Chocolate Fudge
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

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