Bringing Medieval Arab Cooking to Life
A unique recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook and an Andalusian-North African variant of a medieval staple condiment murrī , made with fish rather than the usual barley. One starts with some ṣīr (صير), which denotes small fish — in this case sprats –, which are placed in a jar with salt and oregano, stirred continually, …
Undoubtedly the most famous condiment of medieval Arab cuisine, the standard version usually involves forty days of fermentation of rotted barley. It has been said to taste like soya sauce, which can indeed serve as an alternative if your pantry is low on the real thing. There will be another post devoted to the various …
Continue reading “The medieval Arab equivalent of garum, only better: murrī (مرّي)”
A succulent recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook for a leg of lamb with salt, pepper, coriander, fig vinegar, murrī and olive oil. However, it wouldn’t be a medieval Andalusian dish if it did not contain eggs, now would it! In this case, you need five eggs which are beaten together with flour and breadcrumbs into …
A unique recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook, which is also the only medieval Arabic cookery book to include recipes with tuna, in this case dried tuna. The fish is cut up and lightly fried before being cooked with pre-boiled aubergines, onion, olive oil, pepper, coriander and cumin. If one does not wish to use onion, …
This is a recreation of an Abbasid pie known as maghmuma (مغمومة), i.e. ‘concealed’, in that the content is covered by a top sheet of dough. As it was cooked in a tannūr (clay oven), it is also a tannūriyya. The principle is simple — and decidedly modern — one; after lining the bottom of …
A wonderful 13th-century vegetarian recipe for fried battered aubergine — a much-used vegetable in Andalusian cuisine — from The Exile’s Cookbook. The dish was known as al-mughaffar (المغفّر), meaning ‘the protected one’, in reference to the batter covering the aubergine. It requires sweet aubergines, which after being cut up, are boiled before being battered with …
This is a unique dish from 13th-century al-Andalus and North Africa from The Exile’s Cookbook for shrimp — known as qamarun (قمرون), a borowing from the Latin cammarus. Though there are a few recipes requiring shrimp in Abbasid cuisine, this is the only one in the medieval Arab culinary tradition that calls for whole shrimp. …
This recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook is rather unusual in that it calls for the meat of “a deer, bovine antelope, ass, mountain goat or gazelle – whichever is available to you.” As I had just eaten my last gazelle and mountain goat last week, I had to make do with just venison. The meat …
This delicate stew from The Exile’s Cookbook is made with plums — probably damson — known in Andalusian Arabic by the very poetic name of ʿayn al-baqar (عين البقر, ‘cows’ eyes’), and this is how they appear in the dish as well! The recipe is similar to another stew, known as Murūziyya (مروزية), which in …
This unusual dish from The Exile’s Cookbook is made with a vegetable that had been imported from the East by the famous Ziryab (9th century). The lamb is cut into chunks and cooked wit olive oil, murri, onions, garlic and a variety of spices and herbs, such as cumin, coriander and citron leaves. The asparagus …
Continue reading “Tuniso-Andalusian lamb and asparagus casserole”