Category: Poultry and game

Another recipe by the Andalusian physician al-Zahrawi (d. 1013), whose name refers to his place of birth, the beautiful madinat al-Zahra’ (مدينة الزهراء), near Córdoba. This recipe is his version of a famous medieval dish, known as isfidhbāj (a word from Persian meaning ‘white stew’) because it was originally made with cheese. It was one of the dishes introduced to al-Andalus by Ziryab, and became known as tafāyā (تفايا). However, this particular variant is not so much a stew as chicken with a sauce.

The chicken is fried with olive oil — the recipe calls for so-called zayt al-unfāq (زيت الأنفاق), which is made from unripe olives –, good-quality salt, onion juice and coriander before being cooked with grape vinegar, pomegranate juice, boiled-down wine, and aromatics like cassia, cloves, spikenard, and pepper. The author included it among the dishes that are particularly useful for melancholics, but it has the added benefit of countering palpitations and tremors. Furthermore, he added that it was ‘tried and tested’. Surely, the right kind of dish for cold winter months when we can all need a boost.

Sour orange stews — known as nāranjiyya (نارنجية) after the word for ‘sour orange’, nāranj (today, they’re often also referred to as bu-safīr (بوصفير) or burtuqāl murr (برتقال مرّ, ‘bitter orange’) –were very popular in the medieval Arab culinary tradition and recipes can be found in multiple cookery books. This particular variety is from 13th-century Aleppo, and requires cooking a jointed chicken in sesame oil, chicken fat with onions, almonds and sour orange juice. The taste is enhanced by fresh mint, cinnamon, and mastic. It’s quite tangy so you might wish to sweeten it with sugar, but the author advises doing without since that is the way the dish should be done. Additionally, chefs are advised that the person peeling the sour oranges should not be the one extracting the juice!

The medieval Andalusian cookery books reveal that its people were very partial to game, and there are several recipes for partridge, like this one from The Exile’s Cookbook. After skinning and cleaning the partridge, it is cooked in water, salt, olive oil, pepper, coriander, some onion, almonds, murrī and vinegar. When it is done, it is finished off in the oven together with the strained broth in which it was cooked. This dish is a must for game lovers!

A unique recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook and an Andalusian-North African variant of a medieval classic, the judhaba (جوذابة), a dish of Persian origin which in its Near Eastern iteration was a drip pudding, with a chicken being roasted over a fruit-layered pudding. In the Muslim West, the dish was subject to some dramatic changes and came in two guises, one without chicken and another with chicken buried in layers of flatbreads, which is recreated here.

A plump chicken with its breast split open is cooked with olive oil, salt, pepper, cinnamon, spikenard and cardamom until it is done, after which it is is again cooked in rose water until the liquid has completely evaporated. At this point, it is time to make the flabreads (رقاق, ruqāq), which will be used. The sides and bottom of a a new pot — stone or earthenware — are coated with pounded kidney suet, and then flatrbreads are spread on the bottom, making sure the edges hang over the sides of the pot as they will be used to cover others later.

After sprinkling on sugar, almonds, cloves, spikenard, rose water, camphor and olive oil, another flatbread (or two) are added, on which sugar, almonds, spices, rose water and olive oil are sprinkled. This layering continues until you reach half the height of the pot, which is when you add the chicken to the centre after having rubbed it with saffron dissolved in rose water. Then continue the layering as before until you reach the top of the pot. At this point, the flatbreads dangling over the sides of the pot are used as a cover and then the pot is covered with a lid and sealed with dough before baking until done.

Although the recipe does not specify this, the judhaba was tipped out of the pot maqluba style, simply because it was the easiest way to serve it without destroying this ‘wonderfully crafted dish, fit for kings’, as the author puts it. And on top of that it is very nutritious — as well as being very sweet!

In light of the similarities, this dish may be considered a precursor to the modern Moroccan basṭīla (بسطيلة), usually known in English as pastilla or bstila.

An unsual recipe from The Exile’s Cookbook for a stew with chicken meatballs and chestnuts, which are used as a sauce thickener. This is one of very few recipes requiring chestnuts, nearly all of them from the Andalusian collections, which contain two recipes each. Besides the chicken and fresh chestnuts (the author explains that one can use dried ones, too, but they have to be boiled first to soften them up), the recipe calls for coriander juice, salt, coriander seeds, pepper, onion juice and olive oil. The chestnuts are mashed and then added to the pot once the meatballs are done. Finally, a sprinkle of vinegar and — it’s an Andalusian recipe after all! — a layer of eggs to top the dish.

This is a wonderful recipe from ‘The Sultan’s Sex Potions‘, a book on aphrodisiacs, originally titled Kitāb albāb al-Bāhiyya wa ‘l-tarākīb al-sultāniyya (كتاب ألباب الباهية والتراكيب السلطانية, ‘The Book of Choice Sexual Stimulants and the Sultan’s Mixtures’) and authored by the famous astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201-1274), whose work on planetary theory inspired Copernicus.

The recipe is a variation on one made with sparrows. The pigeon meat is chopped into pea-sized pieces and then cooked through in chickpea water. Before serving, it is sprinkled with ginger, long pepper and cinnamon. It is eaten with unleavened bread, which is also made using chickpea water, ‘in the manner of the sages’, as the author informs us. A great dish for Valentine’s Day!

We are still in the sour (Seville) orange season and what better way to use them than in this recreation of a wonderful recipe from a 13th-century text compiled in Aleppo for a stuffed chicken with sour oranges, parsley, pistachios, pepper, coriander, caraway, mint, rue, salt and sugar. The recipe comes in a number of variations and can also be made with lemon juice or verjuice (sour grape juice). Though our modern sweet orange was not around in that period, it is an obvious — and tasty — substitute in case you don’t have any sour oranges to hand. But there’s more… You should leave a bit of the stuffing aside and then mix it with some chicken broth and lemon juice into a tangy dip for that tender roasted chicken!

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 pan with dough, the chicken pieces are placed on top, after which a variety of spices (including coriander, spikenard, cloves and pepper) and wine vinegar and murrī are added, though for this recreation the variant with raisins and pomegranate seeds was used, alongside eggs and olive oil. Then, it is time to put the roof on the pie! The recipe states that it should be lowered into the tannūr, but your standard kitchen oven works just as well. A true delight.

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 is cooked with a variety of spices (coriander, cumin, salt, pepper, etc.), as well as onions, murri, almonds, and, of course, chickpeas. I also added home-grown fennel and oregano. Saffron is included later on for colouring and vinegar, well because it just has to be in everything! Besides the above animals, the author suggests using hare, rabbit and — wait for it — hedgehog (in fact, this is the only cookery book to mention eating this animal).

This thirteenth-century recipe from a Tuniso-Andalusian collection is made with a plump poussin, olive oil, salt, cinnamon, coriander seeds, chickpeas, onion juice, egg yolks, breadcrumbs, as well as spikenard, cloves, ginger and pepper. The author suggests that sparrows can also be used instead of chicken or, to increase the effect, both can be cooked together.

The aphrodisiac effect is achieved by the presence of ingredients such as poultry, eggs, and chickpeas, all of which were considered to be sexual stimulants. For an extra boost — as well as to enhance the flavour — carrots (another known aphrodisiac) can also be added to the pot.