[Sca-cooks] History of the "stew" that is Chili (lilinah at earthlink.net)
galefridus at optimum.net
galefridus at optimum.net
Mon Mar 21 12:04:02 PDT 2011
My wife has done some investigations into the history of cholent and may have something helpful to contribute on this matter. I'm cc'ing her on this message -- either she'll get back to you directly, or I'll forward her comments to this list.
-- Galefridus
> 1. History of the "stew" that is Chili (lilinah at earthlink.net)
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:45:23 -0700
> From: lilinah at earthlink.net
> To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> Subject: [Sca-cooks] History of the "stew" that is Chili
> Message-ID:
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> Anyone know the history of chili, the American dish of beans
> and/or
> meat, tomatoes, chili pepper, etc.? On another SCA list i am on,
> someone is claiming that it derives from Jewish adafina/dafina/tafina
>
> The closest SCA period recipe i know of for adafina (without
> that
> name) is in the anonymous 13th c. cookbook where it is
> identified as
> Jewish
> [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian2.htm#Heading116]
>
> A Stuffed, Buried Jewish Dish
>
> Pound some meat cut round, and be careful that there be no bones
> in
> it. Put it in a pot and throw in all the spices except cumin,
> four
> spoonfuls of oil, two spoonfuls of penetrating rosewater, a
> little
> onion juice, a little water and salt, and veil it with a thick
> cloth.
> Put it on a moderate fire and cook it with care. Pound meat as
> for
> meatballs, season it and make little meatballs and throw them
> [p. 21,
> recto] in the pot until they are done. When everything is done,
> beat
> five eggs with salt, pepper, and cinnamon; make a thin layer [a
> flat
> omelette or egg crepe; literally "a tajine"] of this in a frying
> pan,
> and beat five more eggs with what will make another thin layer.
> Then
> take a new pot and put in a spoonful of oil and boil it a
> little, put
> in the bottom one of the two layers, pour the meat onto it, and
> cover
> with the other layer. Then beat three eggs with a little white
> flour,
> pepper, cinnamon, and some rosewater with the rest of the
> pounded
> meat, and put this over the top of the pot. Then cover it with a
> potsherd of fire until it is browned, and be careful that it
> not
> burn. Then break the pot and put the whole mass on a dish, and
> cover
> it with "eyes" of mint, pistachios and pine-nuts, and add
> spices. You
> might put on this dish all that has been indicated, and leave
> out the
> rosewater and replace it with a spoonful of juice of cilantro
> pounded
> with onion, and half a spoonful of murri naqi'; put in it all
> that
> was put in the first, God, the Most High, willing.
>
> Comments in [square brackets] from the translator, Charles
> Perry, who noted:
> A version of adafina (from an Arabic word meaning "buried
> treasure,"
> related to the word madfun, "buried," which is found in the name
> of
> this dish), the Sephardic equivalent of the Ashkenazi dish
> cholent,
> which could be left in the oven overnight on Friday so that
> Jewish
> housewives wouldn't have to violate the Sabbath by cooking.
>
> -------
>
> Nothing like chili (surprise, surprise) and not much like modern
> adafina (North African) recipes i know or variations called
> Hameen/Chamin (Middle Eastern) and Cholent (Ashkenazi, north
> eastern
> Europe), depending on region. Each of the three dishes is
> basically a
> hearty filling stew, prepped on Friday before Shabbat starts at
> sundown. Since a fire cannot be kindled on Shabbat, and food
> cannot
> be cooked during Shabbat in the usual ways, this dish was
> traditionally put in a baker's oven and cooked slowly in the
> residual
> heat and eaten on Saturday for lunch. (Shabbat ends Saturday at
> sundown, when the new day starts, according to the Jewish
> calendar).
> Nowadays, some people use crock pots with timers.
>
> Most of the modern adafina recipes i turned up include rice,
> onions,
> meat, and spices (no beans); sometimes dried fruit; sometimes
> those
> eggs slow cooked overnight in their shells.
>
> The Hameen/Chamin recipes also used rice, no beans.
>
> Ashkenazi Cholent recipes i found often included(New World)
> beans,
> along with meat and onions, although some used potato, others
> used
> barley, and yet others included two or all three of those
> filling
> carbs.
>
> So, is there a chili equivalent early on, before New World beans
> made
> it to northern and eastern Europe?
>
> --
> Ellen
> on the cusp of Oakland-Emeryville-Berkeley
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