[Sca-cooks] Sweating meat

[Johnna Holloway]

There was a discussion of this very term in  the pdf published as
A CRITIQUE OF CHARLES PERRY’S TRANSLATION OF
A BAGHDAD COOKERY BOOK
(published as issue number 79 of
Petits Propos Culinaires) AND HIS RESPONSE

The critique is by Ms Nawal Nasrallah (the author of
Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens , Brill 2008) 

She writes:

Perry has an issue with the technique of (arabic term which can't be reproduced here)
)تعريق(
, literally ‘sweating’,
recommended by al‐Baghddı in preparing meat dishes in his book.
Perry says, ‘I have chosen to render
barraqa
as “to stew”; not a perfect
translation, I am aware, but more idiomatic than “to sweat”’ (115).
Indeed, not only is it not ‘more idiomatic’ but even somewhat
misleading, considering the following:
Stewing is a general cooking method that involves slowly cooking
food in considerable amount of liquid.
Tabrıq
(lit. sweating), on the
other hand, is an initial stage in cooking meat, it can be performed in
many different ways, as the recipes reveal, but the basic method boils
down to first ‘sautéing’ or ‘frying’ the meat pieces in rendered sheep‐
tail fat. In the process meat will release its moisture (and hence the
name
tabrıq
). A very small amount of water may be added to prevent
the meat from drying out, and sometimes some basic spices. The cook
needs to occasionally stir the pot until all moisture evaporates and meat
pieces start to brown in the fat (
ya ̨marr).
Tabrıq
in medieval times and up until relatively recently was a
cooking technique unique to the Arab cuisine. Not all cooks prepared
meat this way (Cf. for instance al‐Warrq’s tenth‐century cookbook),
but it was al‐Baghddı’s favorite. To me, ‘sweating’ meat in sheep‐
tail fat when preparing stews was a living daily practice during my
growing years in Baghdad. To people familiar with the cuisine past
and present, it is a living reality and not an obsolete medieval method
of a ‘cuisine that is now dead’ as Perry declares in his Introduction to
Kitb Waßf al‐A†’ima al‐Mu‘tda, p. 279.
So to bring out the flavor of al‐Baghddı’s cuisine, will it not
be better to keep the method
tabrıq
untranslated, or translate it as
‘sweating,’ and explain it in a note? It will still be literal, but literalness
with a message.

https://prospectbooks.co.uk/samples/Baghdad-critique.pdf

Johnnae

On Apr 8, 2013, at 10:19 PM, David Friedman wrote:

> Making Spinach and Cabbage Dishes: al-Warraq    snipped
> The first question is what it means to "sweat" the meat until all moisture evaporates. One of the dishes that got done in the workshop had a similar instruction. The cooks interpreted it as a very long slow cooking until no more liquid appeared, and the result was dry and rather over cooked.
> 
> I instead cooked the meat (with onion and spices) for about ten minutes in a covered saucepan until it gave up a good deal of liquid, which is more like sweating, then removed the cover and spent the next fourteen minutes cooking the liquid away.