[Sca-cooks] Mughal Feast

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Sara wrote:
> Madhavi, do you have any recommended references for the late period Persian
> stuff you refer to, please?

I'm not Madhavi, obviously, and i don't know what sources she used.

Many dishes in other cookbooks have Persian names. There is very limited information, however, about actual Persian food. There two 16th c. Safavid Persian cookbooks - one from 1521 written Ba'urchi Bavarchi, chef to a high noble; the other from 1594, written by Nūr-Allāh (also written Nurollah), chef to Shah Abbas I - neither of which has been translated fully.

Austrian scholar Bert Fragner, in a lengthy article about Iranian food, translated 2 sections of the 1594 cookbook, and i translated his translation, so i have 66 recipes, all for rice dishes. They are, as so many SCA-period recipes, quite scant in their directions and vague in quantities.

I've cooked several of them and taught them at both the West Coast Culinary Symposium and at Pennsic and they dishes were delicious.

Urtatim al-Qurtubiyya