[Sca-cooks] Dried fish question

[Galefridus Peregrinus]

A few years ago, I participated in a seige cookery challenge at Pennsic, 
in which the person issuing the challenge supplied the food that we, the 
participants, were required to cook. One of the ingredients was a 
variety dried fish that had been acquired at the challenger's local 
Middle Eastern grocery, which I prepared using the al-Baghdadi recipe. I 
will make inquiries to see whether she recalls anything about the fish, 
and report my findings.


-- Galefridus

> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 20:27:06 -0700
> From: David Friedman To: Cooks within the SCA Subject: [Sca-cooks] 
> Dried fish question
> Message-ID: <55EFA70A.4050709 at daviddfriedman.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> 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/