Category: Vegetarian

The importance of meat in medieaval Arab cuisine was such that vegetarian dishes were known as ‘counterfeit’ (مزوّرات, muzawwarāt) as they were intended to copy meat dishes, in an attempt to make the diner eat them! Non-meat dishes were associated with Christians (during Lent) and the sick. Modern echoes of this can be found in modern Turkish, where vegetarian variants of dishes are kown to be ‘lying’ (yalancı), as in the meatless yalancı tavuk göğsü, the descendant of the medieval muhallabiyya. The counterfeit recipe recreated here is from 13th-century al-Andalus and is allegedly useful against tertian and acute fevers (حُمَّى الغِبّ والحمّايات الحادّة). It is prepared by boiling and washing lentils and then cooking them with some gourd, chard, cucumber, vinegar, coriander, cumin, cassia and saffron. The resultant taste should be subtly sweet and sour, and the dish should be served cold.

In case you have any cauliflower left from pickling, you might want to try this 13th-century recipe for battered and fried cauliflower pieces. The batter is made with eggs, flour, olive oil, spices, walnuts, rue and parsley. Use sesame or olive oil to fry the cauliflower. As you can eat the dish both hot and cold, it’s a great addition to a picnic! And why not try it as a side with a curry, instead of aloo gobi?

A 13th-century vegetarian dish which is made by cutting gourd into the shape of a fish before frying it in a batter made of eggs and flour seasoned with cinnamon and coriander. It is served sprinkled with vinegar, murri (a fermented barley condiment which can be replaced with soya sauce) and coriander juice. Vegetarian dishes were commonly made to look like meat or fish dishes in order to entice diners. Indeed, the author introduces the recipe by stating that the dish is able to “mislead sick people who crave fish and the like.” [Andalusian, fol. 54r.]

A 13th-century Egyptian dish made with jujubes, raisins, blanched almonds, saffron, vinegar, honey, black pepper and the atrāf al-tīb spice mix. It can be either a main, or eaten as a vegetable side dish.

A great vegetable dish from 14th-century Egypt, made with chickpeas, walnuts, salted lemons, olive oil, tahini, coriander, caraway, rue, aṭrāf al-ṭīb (أَطْراف الطِّيب), mint, wine vinegar, and pistachios. If you think that you’ve seen this one before, you’re right since it is the ancestor to the modern favourite hummus!

Despite its name (arnab, ‘hare’), this is a vegetarian dish made with two aubergines, which are first boiled in water and salt. They are then cooked in the oven with garlic, olive oil and spices such as pepper, cumin, thyme, and saffron. You can also break some eggs into the dish before baking, which is how it was done in the recreation. [Andalusian, fol. 52v.]

This recipe is one of a number of cold snacks (known as بوارد, bawārid) found in what is thought to be the earliest cookery manual (10th century). These cold dishes were served prior to the main course and eaten with bread. This particular dish is highly nutritional as well as very simple to make. It requires gourd, chard, mallow and purslane added with sweet yoghurt, mixed with ground mustard and olive oil. Though not in the original recipe, it seemed a good idea to decorate with some freshly sliced cucumber! It is wonderful with some crusty bread and makes for a perfect picnic dish!

This was a speciality of the mediaeval Islamic west (al-Andalus, North Africa) and the cookbooks include quite a few recipes for mujabbanas, which were conspicuous by their absence from tables in the Near East. This 13th-century recipe requires flour, yeast and water to make a dough which is then shaped into balls and filled with cheese before deep frying in oil (though shallow frying also produces nice results). Don’t forget to drain them after removing them from the pan. They can also be turned into a sweet snack very easily through a generous dusting of sugar and cinnamon and with honey and rosewater for delicious dunking! There are a number of present-day descendants of the mujabbana, the most far-flung of which is probably the Brazilian pao de queijo.