[Sca-cooks] Side Dishes for al-Warraq

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I just got home from teaching at the Known World Bards and Cooks in Northshield. I drove to Wisconsin because I had to bring all the necessary pots and pans and kitchen tools and ingredients.

I went through all of al-Warraq looking for uses of rice some time ago - over a year, IIRC. It appears that cooked rice by itself was not a common dish. I'm on my cell phone, so I can't easily quote from posts - someone mentioned a poem that referred to rice "cooked to perfection". But there's no clear description of what that means in the late 10th century when al-Warraq collected all those recipes and food poems from the 9th & 10th centuries, or whenever the poem was written. The first recipe we know of for rice cooked as individual grains is in al-Baghdadi, at least about 250 years later.

Since there are a rather limited number of recipes using rice, I wonder if perhaps they were getting broken rice from Persia. When I can, I'll go thru al-Warraq again and list all the mentions.

I am quite skeptical that rice was used as a side with other dishes. After all, a dish, let's call it a stew, was placed in the table and all diners dug in with a few fingers on their right hands, all eating out if the sane shared dish. No one had a plate on which rice was put, then topped with said stew.

Everyone did have some bread. Diners generally tore off some of the bread, which they might use to soak up some of the liquid in the dish. By the way, please avoid modern pita. It is unlike period breads as far as I can tell from all my reading. I second or third the recommendation for "Flatbreads and Flavors".

Anyway, more to come once I get inside my apartment - and get a nap - and can defend myself with specific references to page numbers and recipes.

Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)