[Sca-cooks] Sweating meat

[David Friedman]

Thanks. Fascinating.

As Nasrullah should have known, it isn't always fried in tail--her 
translation of al-Warraq' recipe that I did specifies oil. Otherwise it 
sounds close to my interpretation of the technique, except that I 
covered the pot initially so as to get all of the meat hot.

On 4/8/13 7:43 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:
> 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.
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-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/