[Sca-cooks] Dried fish question

[Ana Valdés]

In Sweden and Norway they dry herrings and mackerel with a huge amount of salt to be able to eat it they let in a pan with water and vinegar for many hours until the salt is gone. 
When I was in Baghdad for some years ago in a conference they invited us to eat carps and they said it was the most usual fish in the region.
Ana



Skickat från min iPhone

> 9 sep 2015 kl. 00:27 skrev David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>:
> 
> Al-Baghdadi has a recipe for Maqluba al-tirrikh, which involves frying tirrikh, a kind of fish, boning it, crumbling it, mixing in eggs and spices, and frying it. We've made it in the past using the Arberry translation. Since we had no source for tirrikh we made maqluba al-catfish.
> 
> Looking at Perry's newer translation, I noticed that tarrikh are dried fish of a particular variety. We are always interested in ways of managing Pennsic without a cooler, so dried fish sounded interesting—the more so since one of our campmates does not eat meat but does eat fish.
> 
> Our local Chinese supermarket carries a number of different varieties of dried fish, most of them in the refrigerated section. I got one yesterday from an unrefrigerated shelf and tried making a small amount of the recipe. The result was not tasty—and the smell in the kitchen unpleasant.
> 
> 1. Does anyone have any information on what tirrikh were like, hence what varieties of fish would be closest? Perry, in an old correspondence I had with him, mentioned that salted fish from the relevant lake are still sold in Istanbul under the name "kefal," which is the name of the grey mullet. He doesn't know if what are now sold are the same as what were called tirikh, and the grey mullet is a salt water fish, but it at least suggests the possibility of looking for a fresh water fish in some way similar to the mullet. Of course, even if I did that, I would still have the problem of figuring out what kind of fish are in the packages of dried fish in the Chinese grocery store.
> 
> 2. Al-Baghdadi's recipe starts by frying the tirrikh, then boning it. The dried fish I got was very dry, like wood. That made me wonder if either something softer was being used or if the fish was rehydrated and then fried and al-Baghdadi didn't bother to mention the first step.
> 
> Comments? Is anyone here better informed about dried fish than I am?
> 
> Incidentally, the grocery also had something labeled stockfish. I believe it said it was salted. So another project is to find a period recipe that says how to treat stockfish—I'm pretty sure I've seen one.
> 
> -- 
> David Friedman
> www.daviddfriedman.com
> http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
> 
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