[Sca-cooks] [SCA-cooks] haggis

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

RESEND with special characters replaced with plain vowels and (much) 
additional info.

There is a 16th c. recipe for a Persian dish called gipa (hard g, as 
is good), which is strikingly like haggis. Here is the current 
version of my translation from Fragner's German translation:

Bert G. Fragner
"Zur Erforschung der kulinarischen Kultur Irans"
(Toward an Exploration of Iranian Culinary Arts)
in Die Welt des Islams 23-24 (1984), pp. 320-360.

 From Maddatal-hayat, resala dar 'elm-e tabbaki
("The substance of life, a treatise on the art of cooking")
written in 1003 AH (September 16, 1594 to Sept. 1595 CE)
by Master Ostad Nurollah, Chief Court Cook of Shah 'Abbas I (r. 1587-1629)

gipa-polaw (n.40)
in Fragner, pp. 350-351

Know that, cooked according to rule and regulation, gipa is a tasty 
dish, when it is prepared properly. Thus it is done: Clean rumen 
stomachs, abdominal networks and mesentery[i.] / chitterlings 
(shirdan va charba-ye ruda va shekanba) of sheep several times and 
afterwards rub with Iraqi soap (?, sabun-e 'eraqi) using a napkin and 
then rinse again. Then shred/chop a lot of meat, and it is important 
that it has no bones. Fat-tail from sheep is used in large 
quantities, such that cracklings are processed and removed. [In the 
hot fat] put onions in the weight of two mann according to Tabriz 
measurement, also fifty mesqal[ii.] of spices, valerian (?, 
sonbola[iii.]) and davala (probably a kind tree lichen) in necessary 
quantity, and finally a half-mann of rice. Some people add saffron as 
well. The quantity of meat should be two mann and tail fat equal to 
one mann -- these are the ingredients for a whole meal. All this is 
mixed [over the fire]. The lower the liquid, the better it is, 
because so much onion is used for this dish. If one uses too much 
liquid, the food loses its consistency and is overcooked. Now the 
sheep's rumen and the other [innards] are filled, as should be, so 
they do not burst. Once they are filled, they are sewn shut, placed 
in a kettle and cooked, until they are soft. Then wipe them off and 
wash them in cold water. If one lines the bottom of the kettle with 
sheep ribs, [the gipa] is particularly good. The latter is a creation 
of my very own self! Then layer the rumen stomach and the other 
[guts] nicely [in a vessel] over one another, drip fat and clear meat 
soup (shorba) there over and let the whole marinade. The fire must be 
set up so [low] that the dish simmers very slowly until morning and, 
when it is done, is not burned, but soft and lightly browned. In the 
morning, place a thin flat bread on it and the gipa done.

40) gipa is obviously a very traditional category of dishes in which 
rice is combined with offal. In cookbooks from the 20th century 
gipa-dishes are no longer mentioned with one exception. Only Forough 
Hekmat (The Art of Persian Cooking, Tehran, 1961, p. 82 f.) describes 
two gipa recipes. With regard to Boshaq-e at'ema[iv.], he says 
explicitly that we are dealing with very old-fashioned food, that 
traditionally was eaten in the early morning (similarly to 
kalla-pacha, soup made from sheep's heads and feet). As already 
mentioned, Ba'urchi-Baghdadi[v.] (1521) still gives a total of nine 
gipa recipes (Karnama, p. 166-172).

*** my notes ***

[1.] Mesentery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesentery
(not sure what American butchers call it, if they call it anything... 
anyone know?)

[ii.] mesqal = mithqal

[iii.] sonbola = sumbul, which often = jatamansi = spikenard

[iv.] Boshaq-e at'ema (died 1426 or 1436) was a poet, author, and 
lexicographer who wrote works in the language of food, but whose 
subtext was social and political criticism. Boshaq is a contraction 
of Abu Ishaq, meaning Father of Isaac; standard naming form in the 
area, to call a married adult after the name of their first born son 
(a woman could be Umm Ishaq, Mother of Isaac). ''-e at'ema'' means 
''of food''.

[v.] Mohammad 'Ali Ba'urchi-Baghdadi is the author of the oldest 
known Persian recipe collection, Kar-nameh (or Karnama) dar bab-e 
tabbakhi va san'at-e an ("Manual on cooking and its craft"), written 
for a Safavid prince and dated 1521. The Mongolian word "ba'urchi" 
means "cook" and he came from a Turkish-speaking family. His father 
was a trained chef in the service of the Aq-Qoyunlu Prince Budaq 
Mirza and taught his son his skill. Some scholars have speculated 
that Nurollah was a descendant of Ba'urchi Baghdadi, as several of 
Nurollah's ancestors had been involved in the earlier Safavid court 
kitchen.

(side note: Alot is the name of a town in India, not a word in 
English. If one means a large quantity, it is two words: a lot)
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita