[Sca-cooks] Side Dishes for al-Warraq

[David Friedman]

With regard to the flatbreads ...  .

I don't have a tannur either. They work fine on a baking stone in the 
oven, and at least the ruqaq works in a hot frying pan without oil. I 
made it a couple of times this past Pennsic over the fire and it was 
greatly appreciated.

The soused eggplant would work as a side dish, and can be made long in 
advance—I brought some to Pennsic. Possibly with crumbly crackers or 
bread of Abu Hamsa to eat it on.

My daughter was head cook a while ago for a feast largely from 
al-Warraq. One thing she did was khall wa zayt, which is a cold 
vegetable dish to be served with chicken. We also did "A cold dish of 
dressed carrots" (p. 228) and it was quite good.

You could try "A recipe for white beans" (p. 295.)

You could try one of the baridas of beans (pp, 233-4). I think they are 
intended to be done with fresh favas, which I've been sometimes able to 
get but you may not be. I'm not sure how well they would work with dried 
favas, but you could experiment. There are two more baridas of fava 
beans on pp. 229-30 that turned out pretty well when we tried them. But 
skinning the beans was a bit of a nuisance.

Hope that helps. Note that Judhaba is yummy.

On 9/1/14, 1:55 AM, Drew Shiel wrote:
> Greetings to the assembled cooks from Aodh Ó Siadhail!
>
> I'm cooking a feast for our Coronet Tourney in November. I'm planning to
> work from Nawal Nasrallah's translation of al-Warraq, and indeed, I've been
> trying out a few of the dishes in recent months, with some success.
>
> However, almost every dish listed is what we would think of as a "main
> dish". There are mentions in the text of side-dishes and smaller dishes
> served alongside, but I can't see what these might be.
>
> I'll be serving a somewhat out-of-period plain rice in any case, and I'll
> acquire flatbreads of various kinds from local Middle Eastern shops (I'd
> love to make these myself, but I won't have access to a tannur - nor do I
> have the skills to use one), but I'd like to have a few non-main-meal
> vegetable dishes to go alongside. What would be appropriate?
>
> Le meas,
> Aodh
>

-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/