[Sca-cooks] looking for lentil recipe

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I wrote:
>This recipe is from a 15th c. cookbook attributed to Ibn al-Mabrad; 
>the recipes use relatively few spices. It was translated by Charles 
>Perry, in "Medieval Arab Cookery". It is vegan.
>
>Adas
>The best way of cooking lentils is to crush them and then cook them 
>and put with them chard and taro. When it is done, sumac, fried 
>onion, parsley, vinegar and oil are put with it.

SNIP

>I found the 15th c. recipe as written too bland. So i combined 
>aspects of both recipes, leaving out the meat but including the 
>spices of the adasiyya, making a vegetarian recipe with more 
>seasoning than the 15th c. recipe.

SNIP

I would like to add that the 15th c. Syrian cookbook attributed to 
Ibn al-Mabrad (or Mubarrad) -- fully translated by Charles Perry and 
published in "Medieval Arab Cookery" -- appears to be recipes NOT 
from the elite classes and it uses remarkably few spices throughout 
all its recipes. It is unclear whether
(1) indeed no spices or herbs were used at all by cooks of that class,
or
(2) if perhaps the seasoning of the dishes was understood to be at 
the discretion and affordability of the cook

Quite a few of those commonly used in elite cookbooks were locally 
grown, easy to grow, and not expensive, such as cumin, caraway, 
coriander seeds, coriander greens (cilantro), mint, parsley, etc..

This uncertainty is another reason i felt it was plausible to add 
those commonly used seasonings to my interpretation.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita