#aṭrāf al-ṭīb

[thejoyofseax]

Apple Experiments in Arabic Medieval Cookery

Today, at Dun in Mara's Arts & Sciences Day, my ward Gabrielle and I tried out two of the recipes we're looking at for Féile na nÚll. Both are Arabic, one from al-Warraq, one from the Kanz, both from Nasrullah's translations.

From the Kanz, we did Receipe 119, tuffāḥiyya bi-zaʿfarān (meat with apple and saffron). It's a fairly simple stew of meat (lamb, in this case) and apples, with spices, and a thickener made of vinegar, sugar and wheat starch. For a variety of reasons, we had a few substitutions in there - the wheat starch was replaced with rice flour, the saffron with turmeric, and the aṭrāf al-ṭīb spice mix was definitely debatable in its makeup (spikenard replaced with fennel, and the lisān al-ʿaṣāfīr (fruit of Syrian ash) replaced with a little Sichuan pepper). It came out pretty good, I think, although the three kinds of pepper (long pepper, black pepper, sichuan pepper) put it at the edge of some people's spice tolerance, so I'll want to go easy on those for larger amounts. From my own point of view, the betel leaf in the aṭrāf al-ṭīb was strong enough to be distinctly tastable in the end product, even though there was only a tiny amount in there. But overall, it was a good stew, and with some adjustments to the spicing, I'll make it again. I probably won't look to include saffron in it; the amount won't really carry much taste against the peppers and betel and cloves, and the colour is adequately provided by the turmeric.

From al-Warraq, we did a ḵẖabīṣ of apples from Chapter 95 (except with apricots, because getting dried apples proved impossible, for no good reason I can imagine except the mysteries of supply lines). From the recipes around it, and from the words used in the translations, I expected the outcome to be a thick mousse, or thereabouts. What we got was a slightly apricot flavoured toffee, pretty much. It was good, but it was very unexpected.

Now, there were a number of substitutions (most notably apricot for apple, walnut oil for the almond and pistachio, and rice flour for wheat starch), any of which may have made it go weird; we didn't have anything like the exact utensils described, and we had no idea of how thick it should have been in the pot. I think our substitutions were ok (all were made in the context of recipes in the same chapter), and I don't think we went too far from the the instructions. However, I don't think we added nearly enough oil. There are actual amounts given in the recipe, for once, which makes that an even more egregious error, but they do look like vast amounts in proportion. So when we're trying that recipe again, we'll use more oil (and also see if we can get the proper apple powder, almond oil and pistachio oil).

There were about 20 people at the gathering, and everyone I spoke to declared themselves happy with the stew, and some quite delighted with the toffee-ish-stuff. So in terms of feeding people ("Pelican cookery"), we did good. More experimental results as we have them!