[Sca-cooks] [SCA-cooks] haggis
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Sun Feb 6 12:47:31 PST 2011
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
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