nuncheon: (mesopotamia)
Tuh'u Beet Broth. Lamb meat is used. Prepare water; add fat. Peel the vegetables. Add salt; beer; onion; arugula; coriander, samidu, cumin, and the beets. Assemble all the ingredients in a cooking vessel and add mashed leeks and garlic. Sprinkle the cooked mixture with coriander, and suhutinnu.

It appears that "tuh'u" may not be beets but wheatberries.
It also appears that there are two translations, one that says "meat is used", and one "meat is not used", so it may be a vegetable dish, or a kind of porridge cooked with beer and greens. Perhaps in time when more of the cuneiform tablets are translated, these things may become more certain, but unless someone invents a time machine, we just can't be sure what the actual dish was.

For this, I have followed Bottéro's translation above, together with a suggestion found online as to what kind of beer could be used, which was a German Weissbier. As to what tuh'u beets would be, if indeed they are beets, is unknown. I had beetroot, so I used that.

Finely dice onion, sweat them off in fat (I used a mix of ghee and olive oil). Dice as much garlic as you'd like, add to the onions; once they are getting soft, add the diced lamb. Brown the meat and season with salt, cumin, and ground coriander. Put in the diced beets and cover with the beer. Let simmer until the meat is soft and the broth has the desired taste. Add the arugula and leek and cilantro (if used). Let the greens wilt slightly and add some finely sliced fresh garlic.

I served it with bulgur and pomegranate seeds.


nuncheon: (modern snail)
The following is not a try at recreating an authentic Mesopotamian dish; it is a modern dish inspired by the recipes of the Yale tablets.

Halazzu in broth. Meat is used. Prepare water; add fat; salt, to taste; onion, samidu, leek and garlic, mashed with kisimmmu. Crush some of the cultivated plant called halazzu. Assemble all ingredients in a pot.

Halazzu, according to Laura Kelley, is Carob. Kisimmu is either a sour milk product or fresh cheese.


The Recipe

Ingredients:
diced meat (I had turkey steaks which, while definitely not period, worked well)
dairy (I had Turkish cheese; sour cream or yoghurt are alternatives)
1-2 onion, finely diced
3 cloves of garlic, finely diced (or as much as you would like, really)
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced (to go in at the end)
1 small fennel, diced (for that aniseedy flavour)
1 leek, sliced
1 head of bok choi, sliced (told you it was inspired by)
1-2 carob pods, either diced or ground
1-2 teaspoons of grape molasses
a pinch or two of ground coriander
a dash of white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
salt to taste

Brown the onions and diced garlic until almost done; add the meat and brown. Add the fennel. Season with salt and coriander. Add the carob and grape molasses; add water and cook / simmer until the meat is almost done. Taste the broth and add vinegar, salt and coriander to taste. Add the leek and bok choi, add a little water if needed, simmer.
When the meat is done and the broth has the desired taste, add the finely sliced fresh garlic and the cheese / sour cream.

Serve with bulgur.

The carob in the broth has an almost chocolatey flavour. I used the grape molasses for added sweetness. The vinegar and cheese bring acidity, while the garlic at the end gives a little heat.

Not authentic, no - but quite tasty, if I do say so myself.

nuncheon: (mesopotamia)
Kanasu broth. Leg of mutton is used. Prepare water; add fat, samidu, coriander, cumin, and kanasu. Assemble all the ingredients in the cooking vessel, and sprinkle with crushed garlic. Then blend into the pot suhutinnu and mint.

"Kanasu" is variously translated as Emmer, Spelt, or Wheatberries. So, either a flour or the grains cooked in the stew.
"Samidu" I will still treat as semolina, because apart from one translation where they say it's an onion, everyone (both because of linguistics and from a cooking point of view) uses semolina.
"Suhutinnu" is most likely a root vegetable (or maybe a leek, as one translation says). Other tablets refer to it being "dug up", and it has been variously approximated with beets, turnips, or carrots. In other recipes Suhutinnu is used raw at the end of the cooking process.

I am going to make two variations of this dish. For the first one, I will use mutton, olive oil, two tablespoons of strong bread flour (because for some reason I had neither spelt nor emmer flour; NB I never use self-raising flour), a tablespoon of semolina, ground coriander and cumin, carrots and leeks, garlic, and mint. I'll also add salt, both for modern tastes and because I am rather sure that, although salt is mentioned only once or twice on the tablets themselves, it would have been added to the dishes.

Sear off the meat in the olive oil; take out. To the oil, add a mix of the flour, semolina, and spices; add a bit of water to thin the resulting roux, cook out the flour. Add the thinly sliced garlic; add mint if dry is used - fresh later. Add sliced carrots and leeks and the meat, add enough water to cover it. Cook until everything has the desired softness. Season to taste.

At the moment it is still cooking away and smelling rather yummy. I will post a picture once it's done.
nuncheon: (mesopotamia)
From Tablet A of Old Babylonian culinary recipes:
Salted Broth
Leg of mutton, but no other meat is used. Prepare water; add fat; wild liquorice as desired; salt to taste; juniper; onion; semolina; cumin; coriander; leek and garlic, mashed with kisimmu. It is ready to serve.

"Kisimmu" is variously translated as fresh cheese, sour milk, or yoghurt. As an aside, especially with texts this old (and probably with younger texts as well), you can't rely on one translation, something which I noticed when I tried to find out what Bottéro meant with an ingredient he translated as "cypress". Turns out it's more likely juniper, which makes a lot more sense. Mashed leek and garlic appears in every recipe I've read so far and seems to be a staple seasoning.

Ingredients and substitutions - Now that's not very authentic is it

No, but I was hungry and used what I had. Mutton became beef. Wild liquorice became aniseed as it has a similar flavour profile. Coriander was the powdered version where fresh was probably used. I sweated off the onion with the aniseed and juniper before adding the meat, frying that off before adding water. My fat was ghee. I used one leek which I cooked in the broth, and mashed spring onions and garlic with the only soft cheese I could get which was mozzarella (I know - I'll have to visit the local Turkish shop to see if I can get some kishk or similar). Put some semolina in to bind, then added the mashed spring onion-garlic-cheese mix.

The result is a very flavourful and unusual broth / stew. The aniseed, spring onions and cheese gave it a pleasant freshness, while the garlic gives heat (didn't even miss pepper, and I love pepper). Beef worked well, but I can see mutton giving more meaty flavour, and it would also lend itself to longer cooking. Sour milk cheese or yoghurt would definitely be better than mozzarella as the stew could use some sourness.



I'm going to try and source ingredients more "authentic" than the ones I used here, but for a first taste of a dish inspired by Mesopotamian recipes, not bad at all.

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This blog is all about historical cooking and eating, and more importantly cooking from medieval cookbooks and trying to recreate dishes that were eaten hundreds of years ago. "Medieval" is a loose term - anything pre-17th century goes for this venture into experimental archaeology.

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