[Sca-cooks] Another One - a 15th c. Ottoman chicken dish

lilinah at earthlink.net lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon Jul 8 13:10:01 PDT 2013


At the Antir-West Cooks Play Date, a tradition at the West-Antir War, i cooked a dish that was delicious, if i do say so myself, as well as heart stopping. In the manuscript, it follows a completely untitled but different chicken dish. It was one of the recipes i recently translated from among the 85 added by Shirvani to his mid-15th c. translation of al-Baghdadi's cookbook.

folio 116 verso

Bashka bir turu - Another kind
The manner of making it is: Cut up two fresh chickens. Into a pot drop 100 dirhems of butter on the chicken. After the chicken is cooked, add chopped onions, and 50 dirhems almonds. Meanwhile make a syrup of 200 dirhems pomegranates and honey or sugar, add to the dish. Then add 100 dirhems tigre' apricots, after the apricots are soft, [f. 117 recto] add a spoonful of flour into the mixture, stir, cook some more, Then take off the fire and put in a nice arrangement, and eat. It is extremely delicious.
(translation by Urtatim / Ellen Perlman, 2013)

In modern US measurements:

2 fresh chickens (pasture raised - i asked the butcher to cut them up)
10.5 oz. butter (unsalted, from pastured cows)
chopped onions (3 or 4 medium yellow ones)
5 plus oz. blanched almonds
21 oz. pure unadulterated pomegranate juice (the brand i got was imported from Azerbaijan - i couldn't resist it since that's where the city of Shirvan is)
enough honey or sugar (1-1/3 cups white sugar)
10.5 oz. dried apricots (per Stephane Yerasimos, "tigre'" was a dried variety)
a spoonful of flour (i used pure wheat starch)

Cooking with live charcoal (and NOT those nasty briquettes) can take longer, so the chicken cooked gently. I stirred often to make sure the pieces were well coated in butter and in contact with the hot sides of the pot so they cooked through.

When the chicken was about half-cooked i added the onions. This is my personal taste - i don't like undercooked onions and i wanted them soft, not crunchy. YMMV. I suspect the Ottomans liked the crunchy.

Then i made the syrup. It was thinner than usual. This may be in part because i just eyeballed the sugar and may not have used enough, but also because it was so windy that the fire where i was making it may not have been hot enough as the wind kept blowing the flames away from the pot. In the end it was reduced to about 2/3 and i figured that was good enough. At home i would recommend making the syrup before doing anything else. I use the proportions in the anonymous Andalusian - equal weights of juice and sugar - following the "pint is a pound" maxim. If "pomegranate molasses" was what was wanted it would have been specified, since they had it. I think that what was wanted was something sweeter than just reduced pomegranate juice, which can be quite tart.

I added the syrup, almonds, and apricots, as well as some salt and black pepper. Even though neither salt nor pepper was mentioned, i added them because they did not serve salt at the table - dishes were eaten as they were - so diners could not salt to taste. And pepper is the second most commonly specified spice, after saffron, and i know they used it quite a bit, so i thought it was suitable here. I just eyeballed it - maybe 1-1/2 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper. And cooked until the chicken was done, stirring occasionally (not nice if apricots burn on the pot).

Then i stirred in a couple tablespoons of wheat starch and cooked stirring until it was clearly absorbed into the sauce - a few minutes.

---

That was A LOT of butter. Nope, no additional water. One stick (4 oz.) might be enough in a more controlled, home environment.

I used starch because i needed it for another dish - lamb cooked with many fruits, onions, chickpeas, almonds and saffron - to which starch, not flour, was added at the same point in cooking - and i didn't want to bring both flour and starch.

How this would have been eaten in the Ottoman palace i am not certain; i would imagine it was served over/with rice as part of a long parade of dishes in a feast, or as one of 3 meat dishes plus a soup for a palace breakfast - there was no lunch and dinners were smaller than breakfasts.

Bread was always part of a meal, fairly flat yeasted bread, but not pocket pita, which is modern.

Onions is a whole 'nother issue. Based on reading many recipes, i suspect they did not use the kinds of onions we use most commonly, yellow or white with a dry papery covering. I think their onions might have been younger and fresher, but i have no hard evidence yet.

If anyone can make it next 4th of July, the Cooks Play Date is a fabulous experience. Cooks spend 3 days cooking period recipes in (mostly) period pots over lump charcoal. There was even Cordelia's custom fire pit built by a local smith following pictures in Scappi. And Flidais's portable brick bread oven.

The cooks make all sorts of dishes during the day that they share among themselves - a parade of period nibbles. Then at dinner time, all the tables are lined up in the side of camp along a much-travelled road. All the cooks help themselves to the bounty, arranged on a few more tables even closer to the road. And we all sit facing the road. Then every passerby is invited to eat - Juana hands out small rectangular paper box dishes (as are often used for hot dogs). And after having a lip-smacking experience they are enjoined to chorus, "Period food is yummy!". Several handsome young Antiran fighters from Canada stopped to taste and ended up helping the camp wash pots and dishes, etc. That was an added pleasure.

And as i mentioned, we even had several Caidans join us. All cooks and their partners are welcome and i highly recommend the experience.

Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)



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