Timurid feast

[ursula]

"Gorby and the Rats" is a fourteenth-century Persian poem with a strong element of political satire about a cat who decides not to kill a rat because he's full. The rats decide the cat must have changed his eating habits, and seven rat princes bring him a celebratory feast. Here are two descriptions of that feast, from two different translations:

Gorby and the Rats,
trans. Omar Pound
copyright 1972, 1989

One brought wine,
the next, a whole roast lamb,
another, sweet raisins from his estate,
the fourth, seven dates as big as mice,
the fifth, a bag of fragrant cheese
which was to have been his New Year's feast.
Another thought yoghurt would bring peace
to his digestion,
and the seventh, proudest of them all,
carried above his turbaned brow
a bowl of great price, heaped with pilaw
nightingales' wings
almonds and rice
decked with sweet lemon rind and spice . . .

A Tale of Cats and Mice of Obeyd of Zaakan
trans. Mehdi Nakosteen
copyright 1971

One bore upon his palm
A flagon of the seasoned wine,
The next a plate of roasted lamb,
The third a tray of raisins sweet,
The fourth a plate of Persian dates,
The fifth a cake of cream-rich cheese,
The sixth a loaf of whole wheat bread,
The last of noble chiefs,
A bowl of saffron rice,
Well steamed with spice and lemon juice,
Upheld on head with balanced care.

I don't know why one translation has yoghurt and the other has bread. Nakosteen says in his introduction that he has changed some details to make them more familiar to Western readers, so my best guess is that he believed yoghurt was unfamiliar to everyone except hippies?

I decided to put together a similar feast for Saturday dinner at July Coronation. We brought wine (Shiraz, for the name, though I've no reason to believe the modern version has much to do with Persia. We had an inexpensive Australian version with a penguin on it. It was pretty good for the price), raisins, sugared dates, and goat cheese. I drained the whey from some plain yoghurt and replaced it with a bit of cold water-- this sweetens the taste, and there are a number of Middle Eastern recipes from our period which call for more aggressively drained yoghurt as one of the ingredients. We weren't up to a whole lamb, but aelfgyfu brought lamb kebabs to grill. The pilaw was the most complicated. Modern Persian pilaw is made by partially cooking the rice, then steaming it with a slurry of butter and yoghurt at the bottom which makes a crunchy crust called tah dig. I've read discussions of sixteenth-century Safavid Persian recipes which mention the partial-cooking technique, but I don't know whether tah dig is modern or not. I decided it was plausibly Timurid-- the fondness for butter in Ottoman cooking seems related to the Ottomans' nomadic roots, and the Timurids likely had similar influences-- and served my pilaw with toasted almonds and with lemon rind slivered and boiled to remove the bitterness. (Next time I'd use more rind-- I only bought one lemon.) Since glasseye is vegetarian, I didn't worry about nightingales' wings, but roasted chicken or quail might be tasty another time.

Comments

[ayeshadream.livejournal.com]

If you'd really like to try quail sometime I understand the best price and good quality are at Ranch 99, the asian chain markets. I know there's one up here in Lynnwood and some further south in the Renton area. Let me know if you'd like me to pick you up some, sometime and we can do the hand off. :)

[ursula]

Sounds yummy, but though I'm not vegetarian I do cook like one (partly 'cause it's easier living with glasseye, and partly for environmental reasons). Maybe if Saint Bunstable does a Middle Eastern cooking night . . .

[chemicallace]

We can totally do a meat-containing cooking night at my place. Just pick a date that I'm not out of town.

[cija.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I am drinking Little Penguin Shiraz right now. A fine wine!

I can't really see a rat moving a "whole roast lamb," but I suppose rats were mightier in those days.

[ursula]

Maybe he had an entourage to hold up the platter?

[gwacie.livejournal.com]

*tummyrumble* you're making me hungry! :)

[ursula]

Nice icon! :)

[countess-e.livejournal.com]

Woohoo! Is this cool or what? I am hoping to get over to Aelianora's to make goat cheese after Pennsic, and goat yoghurt would be a swell happy thing too. Have you seen any mention of preserved lemons in the sources you've read?

[ursula]

I've thought about making yoghurt, or yoghurt cheese. I haven't seen any preserved lemons, but then I wasn't hunting for them either, so if they showed up as the seasoning in a stew or something I'd have missed it. There's a lemon syrup in the Andalusian recipe collection (along with many other syrups, including thistle).