Islam Help - Tumblr Posts
Urgent
A Primer On Medieval Islamic Food
Part 5: Recipes For Home Cooking
[Image ID: Illustrated table filled with medieval Islamic dishes. For a detailed description, go to the References section, Full Image Descriptions subsection for Image 1. Illustration by rhipiduridae. /end ID]
-
So you want to try cooking these dishes yourself. Fortunately many of the recipes are fairly clear and/or the translators did a decent job. Some even have measurements, though you’ll need to scale down from making banquet-sized meals.
This food is rich, fragrant, and visually pleasing. I’ve made a number of dishes, which will be posted in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here are some tips, tricks, and caveats to help you get the context for cooking medieval Islamic food.
Part 4: Typical Meals << Masterpost Index
-
Tips and Tricks
Many of these recipes have a modern variant - the trick is knowing what it’s called. In addition to complete name changes, Arabic text doesn’t always require vowels to be specified*, as many of them are indicated through optional diacritics, which makes the romanization highly variable. For example, jute mallow stew (ملوخية) can be written as mulūkhiyya, mulukhiyah, molokhia, melokheya, etc. When searching for modern versions, look for similar combinations of ingredients along with the region the recipe came from. Or learn Arabic, like I am.
While some of these recipes will call for special ingredients, most should be readily accessible (at least in the US and I assume most of the western world). Look for Middle Eastern, Iranian, or Indian markets. I’ve also listed substitutes if you can’t quite find what you need.
Due to the toughness of most meats at the time, recipes often call for meat to be blanched (briefly boiled) before cooking via other methods. This also removes some of the gaminess from mutton or goat. Given that today’s meats are aged and are much more tender, this is not a necessary step and will in fact make the meat tougher. If you want to be super authentic and blanch meat anyway, put the meat in cold water and let it come to a boil, then skim off the surface scum and cook as usual.
I highly recommend Medieval cuisine of the Islamic World: a concise history with 174 recipes by Lilia Zaouali for an edited compilation of historical recipes, as well as modern-day interpretations of those recipes with clear measurements and steps.
* Please check the notes for this post for @rosycoconuts’ excellent info about harakāt (vowel diacritics) and their use in writing.
-
Historical Cooking Limitations and Caveats
The surviving cookbooks were all written or commissioned by wealthy folks. Some recipes are intended to reflect what commoners would eat, but most recipes focus on the exclusive, the exotic, and the extravagant. As such, meat features very heavily while vegetarian dishes are mostly included for their perceived health benefits, when your typical commoner was unlikely to have meat in their daily diet. Similarly, a number of ingredients like spices would have been out of reach for most people save for special occasions.
The quantities of ingredients like spices or oils are extravagant by today’s standards. Some recipes call for an amount of saffron that terrifies even this “I buy spices as a hobby” tumblr user**. For that matter, since most of these recipes were meant for the house chef, the few cookbooks that give measurements are aimed at feeding a LOT of people. I know people like cookies but the Ibn Sayyār recipe for ka’k calls for 7.5 pounds of flour. For reference, 3 cups is about a pound. That’s… a LOT of ka’k.
Even the most meticulous of writers would gloss over things they would assume were common knowledge. Recipes will often call for ‘vinegar’ without specifying which type. An educated guess would be wine vinegar, or date vinegar to avoid the alcohol, but we don’t know for sure. Even worse, occasionally the writer will just say, “this dish is so common I’m not going to bother telling you how to make it.”
And finally, even with the most accurate of ingredients and cooking vessels, inevitably dishes won’t taste EXACTLY how the originals did. Much is made about terroir in wine, and it’s only amplified when you’re trying to recreate a dish thousands of miles away with plants and animals that have also evolved for over a thousand years.
That said? This food is still amazingly tasty. And there’s something very poignant about knowing cooks from a thousand years ago were reading the same text and making the same recipe you’re making now.
** At last count, I had 85 different types of spices and herbs. I think there’s more now. Help.
-
Medieval Islamic Recipes
I will be adding links to the home-tested recipes on the masterpost, but will also add them here for posterity or if you want to track updates from here. Thanks for reading!
Sikbāj: Sweet and sour lamb stew
Tharīd: Chicken stew with bread
Fatīr: Thin flatbread
Mujabbana: Cheese fritters
Byzantine himmas kassā: Sweet hummus
Tabāhaja: Lamb with spiced sauce
Atrāf al-Tīb: Spice mix
Būrāniyya: Fried eggplant and lamb
Maqlūba: Meatballs
Bādhinjān Mahshī: Eggplant appetizer
Murakkaba: Layered date cake
Part 4: Typical Meals << Masterpost Index
Ramadan Mubarak! 😊
Some head ups in order to support my Muslim friends and anyone celebrating, before Ramadan♥︎
Source from Twitter
It is our duty as feminists to protect and respect women in Hijabs
“Our Lord!”
“Our lord!”
“Our lord!”
“Our lord!”
“Our lord!”
“So their Lord responded to them.”
-Surah Al Imran
hi guys muslim aid is raising money for aid in afghanistan, following the news. donate if you can, pray if you can’t. the minimum donation is £3.