This is a variant of a dish known as fāʾiziyya (فائزية) from 13th-century Aleppo, which requires boiling and cooking lamb. While the meat is on the hob, pound and strain sour cherries (an alternative to medlar or cornelian cherry) with mint. The resultant juice is added to rice as it is being cooked in the meat broth, and then sweetened with honey or sugar to taste. The rice is further cooked with some sheep’s tail fat (ألية, alya) until the mixture thickens. The lamb is served on a bed of the rice and cherries.
The Arabic culinary term for pilaf was aruzz mufalfal (أرز مفلفل), literally meaning ‘peppered rice’, in reference to the appearance of the grains of rice as separate grains. Pilafs are particularly associated with Mamluk cuisine, from both Syria and Egypt.
Another variation, from 13th-century Aleppo, on my favourite medieval dish, the jūdhāb (جوذاب; also jūdhāba/جوذابة ), which was Persian in origin but was already popular in Abbasid times and travelled all over the medieval Muslim world, as attested by the number of recipes in cookery books from Egypt, al-Andalus and Syria. It came in many guises but usually involved a chicken being roasted over a pudding made with layered bread, fruit, nuts, and sugar.
This particular recipe is quite unusual in that it is made with poppy seeds (خشخاش, khashkhāsh), which are mixed into a sugar syrup, alongside pistachios and saffron — one can add some honey as well (I didn’t , since one pound of sugar was quite sweet enough for me).
When the mixture has thickened, it is placed in between thin flatbreads – ruqāq (رقاق) – which are placed in the oven underneath a roasting plump chicken (also coloured with saffron), whose juices suffuse the pudding. The recipe calls for a tannūr (clay oven), but it is just as easy – and delicious in outcome – to use a conventional kitchen oven.
The contrast in both texture and flavours of the pudding with the chicken really ties things together.
Though originally hailing from the Muslim East — though the oldest recipes in fact go back to ancient Mesopotamia, the tharīda (ثريدة; also tharīd/ثريد) was extremely popular in the Muslim West, and it is in Andalusian cookery books that we find most recipes for this bread soup.
This recreation from ‘The Exile’s Cookbook’ calls for beef, gourd (use bottle gourd if you can), onion and aubergine, with seasonings including salt, pepper, ginger, coriander, saffron, cumin, garlic, citron leaves, fennel., and (unpeeled) garlic. The gourd and aubergine are cooked separately before being added to the pot with the meat and the spices. Once everything is done, some vinegar is added and then the stew is poured on crumbled bread.
Before serving, add a sprinkling of ginger and cinnamon. The recipe ends with a highly original instruction; one should blow in the bones and strike them repeatedly to expel all of the marrow, which should be spread all over the dish. The perfect comfort food!
This is a recreation of a simple, yet delicious, 13th-century dish from Aleppo, made with sour cherries, known in Arabic as qarāsiyā (قراصيا, قراسيا), a borrowing from the Greek kerasia (κεράσια), though the word could also refer to the cornelian cherry (Cornus mas). They were reported to grow in Syria and Egypt, and so it is no surprise that dishes requiring them are found in cookery books from those regions.
In this recipe, the chicken is not stewed as in the case of the very popular fruit stews (made with, for instance, quince, sour oranges or apples). Instead, it is fried in sesame oil before being added to the boiled cherries that have been thickened with sugar.
The use of some fresh mint adds a cooling lift, enhancing the aromatic complexity and bringing a refreshing final note. The sweet-and-sourness of the dish is typical of Aleppine cuisine, with the rich meatiness of fried chicken balanced by a tangy cherry glaze and enlivened by mint.
The sourness of the cherries is not too harsh, and the addition of sugar turns them into a syrup redolent of sour plum sauces like the Italian agrodolce or the Persian āloo sos (سس ألو). Today, qarāsiyā refers to a kind of plum in some dialects (e.g. Syria), while in Standard Arabic, the word for cherries is now karaz (كرز).
The name of the dish (هريسة) is derived from the verb harasa(هرس),‘to beat, crush, shred’, and was made with wheat or rice. The popularity of this dish, which was commonly prepared and sold at markets, was such that its ingredients were carefully monitored by the market inspector. Recipes for this dish can be found in nearly all cookery books and many dietary manuals.
This recipe from Abbasid times requires fatty meat (I used goat) which is cooked in water and salt until it falls apart, with some additional pounding in the mortar and pestle to achieve the right consistency. Milk is then cooked in the broth, after which rice is added, followed by sesame oil and rendered fat (one could also use milk or clarified butter). The important thing is to beat the mixture continually unitl you get a nougat type consistency. It is served with a bowl of murri, which, in addition to being a matter of taste, is rooted in medicine since physicians held that harisa (especially that made with wheat) was very nutritional but difficult to digest, which was remedied by the use of murri. If you don’t have this condiment in your pantry, don’t worry since it can easily be replaced with soya sauce!
Still made in many countries. the modern haris (هريس) is particularly associated with Emirate cuisine and made from wheat, meat (usually chicken or lamb), and a pinch of salt. The wheat is soaked overnight, then cooked with meat.
However, the dish recreated here bears a much closer resemblance to the modern Gulf favourite madruba (مضروبة, ‘beaten’), which is usually made with rice but can also commonly be found with wheat, or the ‘arsiyya (عرسية), a favourite in Oman and the Emirate of Fujairah. This name, which indicates that it was traditionally served at weddings (عرس, ‘urs), is already found in a 13th-century Baghdadi cookery book for the rice harisa.
The dish should not be confused with the Tunisian condiment of the same name (usually spelled harissa in English), which is a chilli pepper paste, and may have taken its name from the similarity in texture with the original harisa.
This is a recreation of a 13th-century dish from Aleppo, which was a hit in other parts as well since very popular dish since similar recipes can be found in Egyptian cookery books from the 14th and 15th centuries. It is called a bunduqiyya (بندقية), from the Arabic word bunduq (بندق), meaning ‘hazelnuts’, after the principal ingredient.
It is actually a variant of a dish made with pistachios known as fustuqiyya (فستقية , from فستق/fustuq, ‘pistachios). After boiling and frying a chicken, hazelnuts are pounded and added to thick rose-water syrup in which starch and honey are cooked to produce a thick creamy sauce. The fried chicken is then added to this and left for a little while, or, as per some recipes, simply dunked in the sauce before serving.
Hazelnuts were relatively rarely used in the medieval Arabic culinary literature, and are found mainly in Egyptian and Syrian cookery books. They are conspicuous by their absence from Abbasid cookery books and occur only once or twice in medieval Andalusi and North African recipes. They were generally toasted before use. In the same cookery book from which the recipe is taken, hazelnuts are said to be better and more beneficial for one’s health than almonds or walnuts. According to some physicians, hazelnuts increase sexual potency, while being beneficial for treating bites, especially when eaten with figs and rue, and against scorpion stings, not least because scorpions apparently fled at the sight of them.
The Arabic word for hazelnut, al-bunduqa (البندقة) came to be the word for meatballs in North African and Andalusi Arabic, in reference to their size. Later on, this became the Spanish word for meatball, albóndiga.
This recipe by the Cordoban physician Abu ‘l-Qasim al-Zahrawi (c. 936-1013), who has been called the Father of surgery, is for a dish of fried slices of meat, known as tabahija (طباهجة), also tabahaja and even tabahijiyya (طباهجية), which he prescribed for people suffering from dropsy (حبن, haban).
The word ultimately goes back to the Persian tabāhah (تباهه), which could denote “stewed meat; a light dish made of aubergine, sour milk and herbs; eggs, dressed with meat, vinegar, pepper, and pulse” (Steingass 1892: 278). The Persian tabahja (طباهجه) and tabahij (طباهیج), on the other hand, referred to an omelette or soft meat.
This recreation of a ‘tasty’ (طيبة, tayyiba) tabahija is very easy to make and involves thinly sliced meat being soaked in wine vinegar and some murri, after which it is fried with a sprinkling of caraway, cumin and pepper. When it is done, drizzle on a little cooked down aromatic wine, and add chopped fresh coriander, celery and rue.
The tabahija was very popular, as evidenced by its occurrence in a number of medieval Arabic culinary treatises, from Abbasid Iraq, Egypt and al-Andalus. One Abbasid culinary author traced it back to the Sasanid king Bahram whose retinue shot a deer and cut part of it in thin slices, which they proceeded to cook in fat. At first the king was shocked at what he considered the spoiling of the meat by slicing but after tasting it he greatly liked it. The same author contrasted tabāhijas with mutajjanat (مطجنات), which were cooked in a tajine (طاجن, from the Greek teganon, ‘pan’), usually made of copper; the former contain boneless and sliced meat, and the latter jointed chickens with the bones.
In the Arabic tradition, the tabahijas were considered varieties of stews (قلايا, qalaya), which contain a broth (مرق, maraq) and are cooked until they become dry. Sometimes a distinction was made between sour (حامض, hamid) and salty (مالح, malih) tabahijas.
In the medical literature, the tabahija was thought to strengthen the bowels, stimulate the appetite, and be particularly good for those who engage in physical exertion, but may cause nausea and abdominal pain, and be harmful to the joints.
A wonderful sweet-and-sour dish called masusiyya (مصوصية), from a 14th-century recipe collection compiled in Mamluk Egypt, but with clear Abbasid origins. It is made made with goat meat (though the author says some people used mutton), which is first boiled and then added with chopped onions, salt, spices, fresh mint, celery, garlic, aubergine, and vinegar. Finally, a mixture of pomegranate juice with quince juice is poured on in with sugar, and then spikenard, saffron, mastic and nutmeg.
In keeping with the elite character of the dish, it is also coloured with saffron. Both the masusiyya and a related dish known as masus (مصوص), which is found in a number of cookery books and goes back to the earliest Abbasid tradition. Both dishes are vinegar based, linked to the fact that the latter word meant ‘meat steeped and cooked in vinegar’, though both are related to the verb massa (مَصَّ), ‘to suck’.
Cooking a 13th-century ancestor of a modern classic from a Syrian recipe — one of two from that period, the other being by a Baghdadi author, which shows the popularity and spread of the dish.
It is made by boiling lamb (though one can only use chicken or any other meat) with rice and chickpeas shaped into large meatballs. The meat is then fried before the broth is returned to it, together with chickpeas. Then the noodles are added and when they are done, it is time to serve!
The medieval mujaddara (مجدّرة) was made with rice (or, as in this case, noodles), lentils and meat. It was also slightly more ‘soupy’ in consistency than the modern variety, which is vegetarian, while bulghur sometimes replaces rice (notably in Palestinian cuisine), and it is served with a topping of fried onion.
The word translates as ‘pock-marked’ (from جدري/judari, ‘smallpox’), in reference to the appearance of the lentils amidst the rice.
This recipe, which dates from the earliest Arab culinary tradition, is for a so-called ‘cold’ dish (باردة, bārida), which referred to vegetable dishes, though some are with fish or, as in this case, meat, which were starters.
This dish is also unusual in that it is one of a relatively small number calling for beef. It is first boiled in water and when, murrī and a thick sauce made with pounded walnuts, vinegar, rue and salt are poured over it. It is served with a sprinkling of zayt al-unfāq (زيت الأنفاق) — a term derived from the Greek omphákion (ὀμφάκινον) –, which referred to oil pressed from fresh unripe olives. The garnish includes quartered hard-boiled eggs, rue and greens herbs.
