Or, a history of substitutions.
Pursuant to my attempt to cook more,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ursula brilliantly suggested I try ancient Babylonian recipes.
Tonight, despite my marking load and a possibly busted hot water heater, I decided to make tuh'u.
This stew is pretty well-known as ancient Babylonian recipes go -- it comes from the Yale Babylonian collection. Here's a tiny 2019 interview on NPR with Assyriologist Gojko Barjamovic.
(The accompanying article mentions the deeply frustrating and familiar history of a woman suggesting the right answer to a puzzle and male scholars ignoring it for decades.)
I used the version of the recipe from the Yale Bablyonian Collection site here.
I also watched along with this cooking video, which adds a little bit of history around the Babylonian New Year, and uses slightly different proportions (more vegetables).
This is a lamb stew, but I think you could easily make it with just the beets, like a kind of proto-borscht, or with some umami alternative. If I make it for a class one day, I'll do the beet version.
Here's the Yale recipe:
Ingredients:
* 1 pound of diced leg of mutton or lamb
* 1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat
* 1/2 teaspoon of salt
* 1 cup of beer
* 1/2 cup of water
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 1 cup of chopped arugula
* 1 cup of Persian shallots or spring onions
* 1/2 cup of chopped fresh cilantro
* 1 teaspoon of cumin
* 1 pound of fresh red beets, peeled and diced
* 1/2 cup of chopped leek
* 2 cloves of garlic
For the garnish:
* 2 teaspoons of dry coriander seed
* 1/2 cup of finely chopped cilantro
* 1/2 cup of finely chopped kurrat or ramps/wild leek
In brief, you sear the meat in the fat, then add the onion and cook until transparent, then more or less dump everything else in except the leek and garlic. While you mash the leek and garlic in a mortar and pestle, boil the rest, then add your remaining alliums and simmer for an hour.
I am including the ingredients list less to be helpful and more to complain about late-stage capitalism. My local grocery chain, despite being cavernous, is pretty useless, and I had to make a series of more and less plausible substitutions.
First, there was no stewing lamb. I ended up with ground lamb so as not to pay the eye-watering prices for the fancy cuts. If I did this again, I might get it on the bone to add to the broth.
There were also no coriander seeds and no shallots. There was no arugula. (I think it's generally considered a spring green, but the weather here is so temperate that there's also a fall harvest.) I could have used baby broccoli greens, but I went with a different brassica -- Brussels sprouts.
For the sheep fat I substituted olive oil, which the video assured me was a reasonable decision.
I didn't crush any seeds of any kind, so my spices are not very authentic. I do own a mortar and pestle. Crushing the garlic and leek may be the second time I've ever used it?
According to the video host, Barjamovic suggests half-Weiss/half-sour for the beer if you don't have any Babylonian beer. (Wild sour seems like it would makes sense.) I happened to have only Pilsner, so I used that.
In the pot, the stew was a really beautiful mixture of red beet broth and bright green Brussels sprouts.
I think I overcooked the lamb. I'm not sure this needed quite so much oil, though it did make it rich and give nice mouth feel.
Because I had no seeds, I ended up putting the ground coriander right into the stew, which was good, though a little goes a long way.
Next time, I'll try to match the veg a little more closely and get some coriander seeds.
Tasting!
This is good! It's pretty mild -- again, throwing the bone in would probably enrich it. The broth is a beautiful red colour. Cumin's a great support to any umami dish. The earthiness of the beets is of course a joy.
I don't taste the cilantro as a separate note at all, if you're worried. It's just a really nice, slightly aromatic stew. The sprouts got soft in a happy way.
In salt fat acid heat terms, I would be tempted to add some acid to bring out piquancy -- there was mention somewhere about vinegar. (Maybe that's the beer, but I'd like more.)
(Squeezes in some juice from a highly authentic plastic lime) Yep, I think that definitely enhances.
8/10 would make again. I want to make bread to go with it!
§rf§
Afterthought: I also should have cut the beets smaller. Mine were more chunked than diced and I bet it meant the flavours didn't combine as smoothly as they might've.
Pursuant to my attempt to cook more,
ursula brilliantly suggested I try ancient Babylonian recipes.Tonight, despite my marking load and a possibly busted hot water heater, I decided to make tuh'u.
This stew is pretty well-known as ancient Babylonian recipes go -- it comes from the Yale Babylonian collection. Here's a tiny 2019 interview on NPR with Assyriologist Gojko Barjamovic.
(The accompanying article mentions the deeply frustrating and familiar history of a woman suggesting the right answer to a puzzle and male scholars ignoring it for decades.)
I used the version of the recipe from the Yale Bablyonian Collection site here.
I also watched along with this cooking video, which adds a little bit of history around the Babylonian New Year, and uses slightly different proportions (more vegetables).
This is a lamb stew, but I think you could easily make it with just the beets, like a kind of proto-borscht, or with some umami alternative. If I make it for a class one day, I'll do the beet version.
Here's the Yale recipe:
Ingredients:
* 1 pound of diced leg of mutton or lamb
* 1/2 cup of rendered sheep fat
* 1/2 teaspoon of salt
* 1 cup of beer
* 1/2 cup of water
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 1 cup of chopped arugula
* 1 cup of Persian shallots or spring onions
* 1/2 cup of chopped fresh cilantro
* 1 teaspoon of cumin
* 1 pound of fresh red beets, peeled and diced
* 1/2 cup of chopped leek
* 2 cloves of garlic
For the garnish:
* 2 teaspoons of dry coriander seed
* 1/2 cup of finely chopped cilantro
* 1/2 cup of finely chopped kurrat or ramps/wild leek
In brief, you sear the meat in the fat, then add the onion and cook until transparent, then more or less dump everything else in except the leek and garlic. While you mash the leek and garlic in a mortar and pestle, boil the rest, then add your remaining alliums and simmer for an hour.
I am including the ingredients list less to be helpful and more to complain about late-stage capitalism. My local grocery chain, despite being cavernous, is pretty useless, and I had to make a series of more and less plausible substitutions.
First, there was no stewing lamb. I ended up with ground lamb so as not to pay the eye-watering prices for the fancy cuts. If I did this again, I might get it on the bone to add to the broth.
There were also no coriander seeds and no shallots. There was no arugula. (I think it's generally considered a spring green, but the weather here is so temperate that there's also a fall harvest.) I could have used baby broccoli greens, but I went with a different brassica -- Brussels sprouts.
For the sheep fat I substituted olive oil, which the video assured me was a reasonable decision.
I didn't crush any seeds of any kind, so my spices are not very authentic. I do own a mortar and pestle. Crushing the garlic and leek may be the second time I've ever used it?
According to the video host, Barjamovic suggests half-Weiss/half-sour for the beer if you don't have any Babylonian beer. (Wild sour seems like it would makes sense.) I happened to have only Pilsner, so I used that.
In the pot, the stew was a really beautiful mixture of red beet broth and bright green Brussels sprouts.
I think I overcooked the lamb. I'm not sure this needed quite so much oil, though it did make it rich and give nice mouth feel.
Because I had no seeds, I ended up putting the ground coriander right into the stew, which was good, though a little goes a long way.
Next time, I'll try to match the veg a little more closely and get some coriander seeds.
Tasting!
This is good! It's pretty mild -- again, throwing the bone in would probably enrich it. The broth is a beautiful red colour. Cumin's a great support to any umami dish. The earthiness of the beets is of course a joy.
I don't taste the cilantro as a separate note at all, if you're worried. It's just a really nice, slightly aromatic stew. The sprouts got soft in a happy way.
In salt fat acid heat terms, I would be tempted to add some acid to bring out piquancy -- there was mention somewhere about vinegar. (Maybe that's the beer, but I'd like more.)
(Squeezes in some juice from a highly authentic plastic lime) Yep, I think that definitely enhances.
8/10 would make again. I want to make bread to go with it!
§rf§
Afterthought: I also should have cut the beets smaller. Mine were more chunked than diced and I bet it meant the flavours didn't combine as smoothly as they might've.
