[Sca-cooks] seljuk-era rice dish

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Ursula Georges wrote:
> Recently, we discussed Middle Eastern rice dishes in period. I just got 
> a copy of a translation of Nizam al-Mulk's Seljuk-era Book of 
> Government, and one of the stories involves a dish made of rice and 
> peas. The setup is that Zaid ibn Aslam told a story in which the 
> Commander of the Faithful finds a poor woman boiling a cauldron full of 
> water for her children in the middle of a field:
>
> "He ran all the way to the woman and put the bags down in front of her; 
> one of them was full of flour and the other full of rice, fat, and peas. 
> He said to me, 'O Zaid, go into the fields, collect all the sticks and 
> straws you can find and bring them quickly.' I went to look for 
> firewood. Then 'Umar took a ewer and fetched some water; he washed the 
> rice and peas, put them in the cauldron and threw in a lump of fat; 
> meanwhile the woman made a large flat round of bread, weeping all the 
> time for joy. I brought the firewood; and with his own hands 'Umar 
> heated the cauldron and put the bread under the fire."

Thanks, Ursula!

Sounds like a porridge to me, similar to a Persian aash.

Madhavi
> I would love to know exactly what the word translated as "peas" was!

I agree. Possibly (?probably?) some legume in the genus Vigna, such as black-eyed peas, or other cow peas.

Urtatim