This week, in our quest to find recipes that incorporate scallions in medieval and early modern cookery, we cast our eyes upon The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the era of Almohads, by an unknown author, or, as it is more commonly known in the Society for Creative Anachronism, A 13th century Al-Andalus Cookbook.
Surely, a cookbook so full of recipes containing alliums would yield much to our tastes.
Alas, it was not to be, though the two recipes we did find are worth their mentions!
First, there is the vinegar of wild scallions. Tart, piquant, not to everyone’s taste, but an excellent accompaniment to meat dishes which are hard and need to be softened. Or, added to water to make a most refreshing drink. Our own version is still in progress, but we think that it will be a very useful part of our kitchen.
The other recipe is A Dish of Meat with Cauliflower. First you brown red meat and scallions, add in chopped cauliflower with enough water to steam it, then add eggs and the scallion vinegar and murri (for which we substituted white miso and half a dash of poudre fort), and top with cilantro. This is surely a dish fit for kings! Or at least, a very interested newsroom.
The newsroom did discuss that the recipes that we tried would definitely be the perfect complement for biting wit and sparkling satire, but with the last few weeks of allium-centered dishes, we were getting repeated protests from our neighbors to perhaps slow down our scallion-sampling. With the Newsroom mostly at Gulf Wars this week, we are happy to offer their olfactory senses a respite.
the SCAllion 