Lynn Strong

Cozy fantasy and beyond

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Category: Chai and Charmcraft

  • Charmcraft’s release and a jasmine meditation

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    By the time you’re reading this, I will (or won’t) have gotten through the 25-pages-and-4-spreadsheets launch plan for Chai and Charmcraft.

    If you haven’t ordered it yet and are interested, this week (May 1-8) is a good time to do that, because the preorder 50% discount lasts through the May 8 Cozy the Day Away Sale and it will go from $2.99 to $5.99 at some point after that.

    (The other Catsprowl books will also be on sale on May 8 — along with over 100 other books! I tend to open a gazillion tabs at the start of the day, go do the day job, and come back and read the details in the evening, because if I get sucked into the book shinies at the start of the day, I might be late for work.)

    I… have had better weeks than this one. This is a strong contender for “top five worst weeks of my life,” between a treasured friend in the ICU, multiple tornadoes resulting in stacked migraines and power outages and most of my local friends group having refrigeration failures at the same time, day job work being aggressively too much, all the way down to completely trivial things like the lack of refrigeration meaning I couldn’t do a housebound mini book party or even have a tablespoon of milk to make a fresh cup of chai with.

    The big stuff is big and hard. But I was under the delusion that surely I would be able to do something about the small stuff, right? I got instant chai packets and ordered a tin of baklava because it wouldn’t need refrigeration, except I was so tired I nearly dropped the baklava, except the adrenaline jolt from nearly dropping honey pastries all over the floor meant that I didn’t get sleep for the second night in a row… The world was already Way Too Much, and the petty stuff stacking on top of the major stuff is even more Too Much Stuff. I’m in the land of being afraid to move because I’ll drop something or break something because the universe is clearly not done saying Ha in absolutely any way it can.

    But the show has to go on. So I’m trying to sound coherent on 3ish hours of sleep in 3 days and also feeding the coolest bits of foodie research I can find into the Bluesky repost game. Latest bit: a fascinating (to me, anyway) look at how the medieval cookbooks’ instructions to smoke a container with incense before filling it is still in use today!

    And Siavahda’s review is giving me life. Seriously, every time I start crying at how much too much everything has been this week, I go reread parts of that, and I try to find the shining faith in humanity that Sia saw in it.

    There’s some cosmic balance in that Charmcraft helped Sia through a rough spot and Sia’s review is helping me through a rough spot too.

    I’m not doing 75% of what an indie author “ought to do” when releasing a new book. That 25 page list would be a lot longer if I were capable of facing down Meta’s Eye of Sauron on top of the pile of marching Murphy’s Law beasties sticking claws in this week.

    I can’t do the classical book launch with a couple hours standing around mingling over canapes at a local bookstore or library. My low key, safe from red-hatted family, and disability friendly version is that Bluesky thread of lots of fun history and food research details, likely with a lot of cat videos thrown in.

    (I am delighted that I get to call both pet-grooming videos and delicious-street-food videos “research time.” 😸 Also I need to go add Pyaari to the thread because I hadn’t met her when I started writing but she looks exactly like what I imagine Sahar to look like.)

    So of course I need a recipe to go with the book launch blog post, and a character to talk about… and I did think about Shai Madhur’s sticky date balls, but really, I need something to be very, very, VERY simple in my life right now.

    So does Irfan.

    Irfan is Faraj’s extremely harried hajib / chamberlain / really-not-a-vizier, on account of how word association with “vizier” usually unearths “evil,” “scheming,” or “backstabbing” within a few guesses to speakers of English who have been exposed to Disney’s Aladdin et al. (I very nearly named him Jafar, because I feel so badly for all the perfectly decent people named Jafar who have to survive that cultural baggage, except that I knew my small indie self was not going to armwrestle the Mouse’s cultural legacy into reconsideration; it was much more likely that people would see Jafar and think I meant a villain.)

    I really hope that people don’t read Irfan as the villain. If people read him as a villain, I’ve failed him as a writer. If this book wasn’t a cozy fantasy, he would likely have been the hero. The trope expectations of an epic fantasy would have meant he was absolutely correct in his fears. (Still utterly delighted that Sia saw that too!)

    Since Irfan doesn’t have his shahzada‘s type of prophetic foresights, he’s got to be even more cautious than Faraj if he expects to intercept the trouble before the trouble makes its way into Faraj’s life. And Irfan is the variety of neurodiverse that takes chaos as both an affront to the way things ought to be and a personal failing. After all, it’s literally been Irfan’s job for decades to prevent as much chaos as he can, before his dear prophet catches troubling foreshadows of whatever chaos Irfan didn’t manage to avert in time.

    (In Katayef and Kittens, Irfan is getting a break as much as Faraj and Ashar will be. I thought I owed him that, from early readers’ feedback!)

    In bookworld, I haven’t pinned down whether the outside-the-Empire trade connections extend as far as China and Japan, or whether the Zen Buddhist tradition has an analogue here. I’m inclined toward yes, I just haven’t written anything that needed a formal answer further afield than “kashmiri goats exist in this world because Varsha-auntie deserves the softest fiber arts to play with.”

    Likewise, Irfan deserves the simplest, calmest possible recipe for a man who thrives on calm, simple order that’s in short supply for both of us right now.

    (I really am sorry I surrounded you with such catful chaos, Irfan!)

    Chameli ki sharbat / mogra ka sharbat is what you make when you have time and ingredients and a kitchen and boiling pots and sterilized jars for storage and …a fair amount of fuss.

    I don’t always have that much time or that many spoons in my life. But I discovered between last year and this that I didn’t need that much time, and sometimes a sip of jasmine-scented bliss helps refill the spoon shortage. Sometimes the simplest possible solution is an exquisite grace of its own.

    On the flip side, there really isn’t a substitute for the luxury of fresh, clean, fragrant blossoms here; it doesn’t work the same way with dried jasmine blossoms, and dried herbs don’t float away from a sip the same way, and I’m just not fond of a mouthful of dried herbs in water, and if you have a jasmine tea bag, you’re getting jasmine tea, which is a delight of its own but not caffeine-free for all day enjoyment.

    If you would like your own blossoming jasmine plant, and you have a pot and a sunny window, they’re wonderfully gratifying plants — sometimes so fragrant they kick off my allergies! There’s a reason I specify only three blossoms below. But you can do it with just one, if you’re patient.

    I don’t live in a jasmine-hospitable climate. I didn’t plant it in the ground; I carry the pot indoors in the fall and outdoors in the spring, and I’ve done so for nearly 20 years. So if you think fresh jasmine blossoms are for other people but not for you… Charmcraft is a book about how lovely things that other people can have are also for you too. So I’m here to encourage anyone to try a jasmine plant in a pot wherever you are. And if your windows don’t get much sun, I have loved these plant halo lights for several years.

    A Meditative Jasmine Infusion

    Three fresh jasmine blossoms

    A beautiful cup with a lid or a saucer

    Cool, crisp water

    Fill the beautiful cup with water to three quarters full. Float the three jasmine blossoms (stem side down) in the cup. Cover it between sips.

    The space between the water and the lid will fill with a remarkable fragrance, and the blossoms last all day in cool water.

    (You can also try this with other fresh, fragrant, un-sprayed flowers or herbs, such as damask roses, lavender, or your own favorite edible flowers or herbs.)

  • Mu’tamidiyya – Medieval frittata

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    Here’s the last of the Chai and Charmcraft-associated recipes that went into the book; after this, I’ll be writing up ones that didn’t make it into the paper edition. This is one of the recipes from the banquet meal with the gathered priests. (Photo credit to Sylvar of Openverse.)

    I’m frequently surprised by how much the thousand-year-old recipes from Egyptian and Persian and Arabic cookbooks resemble what we make today. (I’m not surprised by how tasty they are, but I am the kind of person who loves medieval flavor profiles, including sweet-with-sour and floral things.)

    If you put a sizzling skillet of ‘ujja mu’tamidiyya in front of a person at a fancy restaurant today, they would probably be delighted. It’s basically a thick omelet with chicken and olives and cheese and an assortment of herbs scattered over the top. (In modern Egypt, a thick egg omelet or frittata with meat and vegetables, now called eggah or ejjeh rather than ‘ujja, is still made today.)

    The historic version

    This is one of the recipes contained in both Kanz al-Fawaid and Zahr al-Hadiqa, with a note from Daniel Newman in his translation of Zahr that while there was an Abbasid caliph named al-Mu’tamid, he believes the al-Mu’tamid in question was al-Mu’tamid ibn al-Abbad, the last ruler of Seville.

    “Recipe for a muʿtamidiyya omelette with cheese: Take two chicken breasts and slice them thinly. Take one raṭl of meat and slice it in the same way. Wash and put in a pot over a fire and pour on one raṭl of good olive oil and two dirhams of salt. Boil until nearly done. Then, slice one quarter of a raṭl of cheese, and throw it into the pot with the meat. Season with two dirhams of dried coriander, and one dirham each of pepper and cassia. Add ten pitted olives. Then break twenty eggs into a large green-glazed bowl and pour on one ūqiya of murrī. Finally, cut some rue in it, remove [from the fire] and serve.” (Newman, The Sultan’s Feast, recipe 115)

    The modern rendition

    Given that most people don’t cook with 20 eggs and 2 cups of olive oil at a time nowadays, I’m scaling that back some! When I make a quiche in a reasonably standard pie dish, I use 6 eggs because that works out to about an egg per slice. While this is written as a thick omelet without a pie crust, I’m not going to argue if you decide you want a pie crust in there to make it easier to remove from a pie dish. Alternatively, if you’re confident of your frittata skills, an oven-safe nonstick or cast-iron pan can make it an all-in one.

    • 6 eggs
    • ½ cup (approx. 2 oz) cheese (or a meltable non-dairy cheese) – qanbaris or paneer may be historic, mozzarella or ricotta may be melty and tasty
    • ½ to 1 chicken breast (or a can of chicken, drained)
    • (Optional, if ½ chicken breast) Some other meat or protein as desired
    • A couple tablespoons olive oil
    • A pinch of salt
    • ¼ tsp each of coriander, black pepper, and cinnamon
    • Between 4 and 10 pitted olives, as you like (I won’t tell!)
    • 1-2 tsp murri if you have it, fish sauce / soy sauce / Worcestershire if you don’t
    • (Optional) Some chopped celery leaves or fresh parsley to substitute for the rue
    • (Optional) Some sumac to sprinkle over the top 
    • (Optional) A pie crust or parchment paper if, like me, you’re more confident of your egg baking than your egg flipping

    Everything up to the eggs happens in a skillet:

    1. If your meat is starting out raw, slice it thinly. 
    2. Heat your skillet, add the olive oil and salt, and cook the meat until reasonably done. (If your chicken starts in a can, drain it thoroughly before adding it to the skillet.)
    3. Add the cheese, spices, and as many olives as make you happy.
    4. Crack your eggs into a separate bowl and whisk them together. 
    5. Add the murri or fish/soy/Worcestershire sauce to the eggs and stir through.
    6. Decide whether you want to finish it in the skillet or bake it in an oven. 

    If you’re going for the skilleted version:

    1. If you don’t trust your flip skills, start the oven preheating to 350.
    2. Pour the whisked eggs over the contents of the pan.
    3. Stir gently for about 5 minutes until it starts setting up.
    4. If you trust your flip skills, flip away. (I have never trusted my flip skills that much.)
    5. If you don’t trust your flip skills and have that oven going, bake it until it’s golden on top and/or around 160 F / 71 C on a food thermometer. The time needed will depend on how much stovetop pre-cooking it got. (If you have the knack of frittatas, use your own favorite method!)
    6. (Optional) Sprinkle the chopped celery, parsley leaves, and/or sumac over the top before serving. 

    If you’re going for the baked pie dish version:

    1. Preheat your oven to 350 F / 175 C
    2. For quiche, line your pie dish with a crust; for a baked omelet, line your pie dish with parchment paper.
    3. Pour the skillet-prepared mixture into your pie dish and distribute it evenly.
    4. Pour your whisked eggs over the ingredients.
    5. Bake for about 35-45 minutes, until 160 F / 71 C or until a toothpick comes out reasonably clean. (If using a crust, you may want to shield the edges with tinfoil or a pie protector when the crust looks golden.)
    6. (Optional) Sprinkle the chopped celery, parsley leaves, and/or sumac over the top before serving. 

    Alterations for food sensitivities

    If you need an eggless and/or vegan version, the primary contenders for eggless omelets seem to be chickpeas or tofu. 

    The historic cookbooks do have eggless omelet recipes based on chickpeas or aquafaba, so if chickpeas work for you, Monica at The Hidden Veggies has a chickpea-based omelet recipe that you could adapt to use olives and similar flavor notes.If chickpeas don’t work for you, Alison at Loving It Vegan has a tofu-based frittata instead. (I’d need to swap the cornstarch as well, personally.)

  • Esmatiyya

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    I call this esmatiyya after Esmat the cook in Chai and Charmcraft, since I can’t document this exact combination in a single historical source. But all of the individual pieces did exist, and if anyone would put different things together in a stunt-spectacular display it would be a royal cook! (Photo credit to Kadluba on Openverse for a bowl of soba with seaweed and tempura shrimp.)

    The historic inspirations

    The flying fried fish on skewers: In the introduction to The Exile’s Cookbook, which is a translation of ibn Razin al-Tujibi’s 13th century Andalusian cookbook, Daniel Newman describes “battered fried fish, aptly called ‘the protected’ (No. 290), which may well be the direct ancestor of the British classic fish dish – it is even eaten with vinegar!”

    The hypothesis goes that when the Spanish Inquisition got underway, anyone of a different faith got out if they could, and many of the multicultural foods of the commingled Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities from places like Cordoba were taken with those refugees to Spain’s rivals in England and other countries.

    I’ve also seen it translated as “the armored” elsewhere, and the crisp battered coating does seem like a suit of armor. Eggplant also gets a similar battered treatment in the Andalusian cookbook, and the notion of tempura may have landed in Japan with the Portuguese a couple hundred years later. And skewers cut from coconut shells would make easier arches than straighter-grained woods.

    Here’s that thirteenth-century recipe for the protected/armored fish: 

    “Another dish, known as mughaffar: Take any good-quality fish you have available, scale it, and then wash with water and salt. Cut it open lengthwise and remove the bones. Next, beat the meat with eggs in a bowl, and add powdered darmak flour or grated breadcrumbs, as well as pepper, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, coriander seeds and macerated murrī. Coat the fish with this batter and fry in a pan with olive oil until golden brown. Then make a sauce for it by cooking vinegar, murrī and olive oil; pour it over the fish and serve. If you want to make a fish Burāniyya or muthallath, proceed in the same way as you would when using meat, and cook it in a casserole in the oven, as described above [, Allah the Exalted willing].” (Newman, The Exile’s Cookbook, recipe 290)

    The swimming uncooked fish in the vinegared and greens-floating broth: Given the connections between sikbaj and modern ceviche, I couldn’t resist. When you add in zirbaj and mukhallal (“the vinegared”) variants on meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables, and the connections between the Persian and Levantine recipes Ziryab brought from Baghdad to Cordoba because of one of the most epic rap battles of actual history, everything about this except for the raw fish itself is pretty historically grounded. 

    (Back in the days before refrigeration they had very good sanitation reasons for wanting their fish actually cooked, salted, or otherwise preserved!)

    The modern (and low spoons) rendition

    Basically, you’re looking for a bowl of sour broth with not-battered fish underneath arranged skewers of battered fish. The easiest ways I can think of for not-royal cooks to achieve that leans on grocery and restaurant provisions.

    • Per person: In a 24-ounce bowl (donburi are convenient), combine 2 cups of hot fish or vegetable stock with your choice of 1-2 tsp seasoned rice vinegar or a good squeeze of lemon or lime juice. 
    • Add some wilted spinach or wakame for “seaweed” in your fish’s ocean. If you like mint, tarragon, and/or fennel, mince and toss 1-2 Tbsp mixed herbs in too.
    • Swimming fish: Your choice of sashimi-grade fish, smoked salmon lox, or canned sardines. (Swimming not-fish could be falafel, veggie kebabs, fried tofu, or vegetarian fish-substitutes.)
    • Flying fried fish: On long skewers, arrange your choice of shrimp, fish, or vegetable tempura, battered cod, or (for vegetarians) falafel, hara bara kebab, or fried tofu pouches (which could be cut into fish shapes). Lay the long skewers across the top of each bowl or arrange a tripod of them.

    If I were preparing all of this from scratch, I would do the broth first, then have the swimming fish marinading in the broth while frying up the battered fish or shrimp. Doing everything from scratch is outside my personal abilities now, but if anyone tries it, let me know!

    Alterations for food sensitivities

    Vegetarian/vegan: Fried tofu pouches, seitan, or some of the historic imitation fish paste recipes may work for you. (You could put veggie tempura on long skewers over swimming tofu pouches in a tasty veggie broth with a splash of rice vinegar! Or ochazuke, or miso soup…)

    If vinegar is out, abghooreh/verjuice is unfermented sour grape juice – it won’t denature fish protein the way stronger acids do in ceviche, but if you start with lox or sardines in brine you don’t need the acid reaction.

  • Rahat al-Hulqum Revisited

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    Back in 2023, I hadn’t had nearly as many resources for my first rahat al-hulqum post as I do in 2026. So here’s the updated version of that post, with a lot more history!

    Rahat al-Hulqum and Faludhaj

    The story that Nathaniel Webb bought for Wyngraf  was an 8,000 word version of the prologue of Chai and Charmcraft, which I’d titled “Rahat al-Hulqum” because of Ashar’s nickname for Faraj and the rose-flavored sweets that inspired the nickname. The confection behind that name is still available today, sometimes in rose flavors, other times in apricot or pistachio or more; you most likely have heard it called Turkish Delight. (Some people love it, others are disappointed after CS Lewis’ build-up in The Chronicles of Narnia. I ended up in the loving-it camp, obviously.)

    The confection called Turkish Delight and other names like lokum (Turkish) and rahat (Romanian) is often traced to a shopkeeper in the Ottoman Empire — but for centuries before that shopkeeper’s variation, people have laid claim to it under other names and areas, including the Safavid Empire in Iran and tenth century Egypt. I was enchanted to discover Salma Serry’s gastronomy blog post about her grandmother’s lemon faludhaj, which she connects to the 10th century versions via our queen of medieval Arabic food history, Nawal Nasrallah. Serry’s grandmother served her lemon faludhaj for sore throats when she was a child – just as the 10th century cookbook noted that faludhaj was good for the throat, and the name rahat al-hulqum meant “comforts the throat.”

    The historic version

    In the glossary of Annals of the Caliph’s Kitchens, around pages 596-7, Nasrallah gives the connections between faludhaj and lokum that Serry mentioned, and there’s an entire chapter of faludhaj variations (chapter 93). Since corn hadn’t arrived in Europe in the 10th century, the recipes here use wheat or rice starch instead, along with saffron, camphor, rose water, and other flavorings and colorings.

    This is the recipe she cites as particularly similar to lokum / Turkish Delight:

     A recipe for chewy faludhaj, fit for royalty (mulukiyya): Put 3 ratls (3 pounds) honey in a clean tanjir (copper cauldron with a rounded bottom) and light the fire under it. [When it comes to a boil,] skim its froth and pour on it ½ ratl (1 cup) olive oil, shayraj (sesame oil), or fresh clarified butter (samn). Let it cook on a low-heat fire until it comes to several good full boils. 

    Finely pound 1/3 ratl (5 ounces) sweet starch in a mortar and taste it lest it should be sour. Add water, rose water, and crushed camphor or musk, and knead them together. Do not let it be too thin in consistency. In fact, it will be better if it is rather thick. Add ½ dirham (1½ grams) saffron to it and stir it into the pot. 

    Keep stirring the pot from the moment you put it on the fire until you take it away from it. Do not neglect this for the secret of good faludhaj is good quality honey and starch, and constant stirring (darb). When the pudding starts to thicken, gradually feed it with more and more fat, beating all the time until fat starts to separate from the pudding and comes up. Now, start removing the fat as it comes up while you beat the pudding. Do this until faludhaj develops the desired color and thickness. Remove all the remaining separated fat and put the pot away from the fire. Ladle (and spread) the pudding on a platter, God willing. If you want to make it extremely chewy in consistency (mu’allaka shadidan jiddan), use more honey and less starch, thicken the pudding as mentioned above, and let it cook much longer. It will come out very chewy, God willing.” (Nasrallah, Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, pp 383-4)

    (For comparison, the recipe after it lists “1 uskurruja (½ cup)” of starch per pound of honey, which works out to 1 ½ cups starch for 3 lb (or 1 quart) honey, if you have an easier time finding volume measures than weight measures.)

    A modern rendition and alterations

    Most modern lokum and Turkish delight recipes involve cornstarch, so I haven’t been able to try cooking them myself. But Nico’s recipe at the Yumsome blog looks delightful for those who can have cornstarch! 

    Kate Valent is an absolutely delightful author and human who’s as enthusiastic about recipes as I am, and she took this pomegranate Turkish Delight recipe and made her own coconut variation on it (along with adorable flying carpet ceramics from the Daevabad LitJoy box!)

    Low spoons: In addition to the many vendors’ versions of rose-flavored Turkish Delight that can be bought online, Aplets and Cotlets are made using pectin from fruit, some of which are vegan, and they ship. The founders were particularly looking to replicate “rahat locum” from Armenia, and you can see the language connection there!

    Vegan: I’ve made several flavors of Japanese kanten from agar seaweed; there are many variations online, often with fruit and fruit juices rather than nuts and rosewater. But agar will absolutely give you something solid enough for easy cubes that are finger-food compatible. Just One Cookbook has a vegan recipe including options for all three forms you may find kanten / agar in, and several flavor options.

    Kathleen’s cornstarch-free Turkish paste: My friend Kathleen knows that cornstarch is a no-go zone for me, which means most salesfolks’ rahat al-hulqum variations are off my menu now — as is most anything rolled in powdered sugar, which regularly includes cornstarch for anti caking. So for the holidays last year, she made me some specially cornstarch-free variations on her family’s gelatin-based Turkish paste recipe, including mulled wine, mint, and (in this case) coconut milk. She kindly gave me permission to share her recipe with you:

    Turkish Paste, coconut variant 

    (Kathleen Fuller, from a recipe by Martha Manderson) 

    The technique here is a bit different because the coconut milk needs to be heated gently to avoid splitting. I use canned coconut milk, which I believe has a higher fat content than the carton variety. Shake the can well before starting and be prepared to do some further stirring to integrate the cream layer. 

    • Soak for 10 minutes: 
      • 3 Tbsp (4 envelopes) granulated gelatin 
      • 1/2 cup coconut milk 
    • Warm to barely simmering, stirring constantly: 
      • 2 cups sugar 
      • 1/2 cup coconut milk 
    • Add together, continuing to stir until thoroughly integrated. Remove from heat. 
    • Add: 
      • 1/3 cup coconut milk 
      • 1/2 tsp coconut extract 
      • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract 
    • Pour into 8” x 8” pan. (Rinse pan in cold water first.) Cool and remove from pan. Cut in squares and roll in confectioner’s sugar. If the paste is stored in humid conditions it will get sticky; just roll it in sugar again. This should be stored in the refrigerator.

  • Queer Your Bookshelf and Shai Rahim’s Bazmaward Wraps

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    The day I’m posting this (March 14, 2026) is the latest Queer Your Bookshelf day! For one day only, hundreds of queer books will be available for 99 cents (or as inexpensively as the vendors allow in other currencies). Have a browse, click some links, queer your bookshelf, wins all around.

    Also, here’s the first of my recipe batch from Chai and Charmcraft — Shai Rahim is one of the mendicant priests of Upaja who comes to Tel-Bastet for the Greater Convocation, and he sends Faraj a basket of treats and poetry as a gesture of courteous goodwill. (Photo credit to Olgucz at Openverse. Don’t worry if your wraps look different than these, though– these aren’t officially bazmaward, just the closest photo I could find in Creative Commons-land!)

    The Earl of Sandwich really wasn’t the first one off the post here, for all that he’s got the press in English. Bazmaward would be right at home on any banquet table with the decoratively arranged canapes: You make a roll with soft flatbread (lavash or tortillas are quite reasonable cousins), an assortment of barida (think cold deli food), some herbs and spices and hard-cooked eggs, and then you roll them up and slice them into rings. It’s documented that bazmaward was often served at the start of a banquet because they can be made ahead of time, for logistical reasons that are likely similar to the trays of canapes now. 

    From the recreation images I’ve seen involving sliced hard-boiled eggs, they tend to make the wrapping look chunky, and we also know that the medieval Egyptians were very fond of omelet-type things. So I’m sneaking in the “cook a thin omelet and use that in place of hard-boiled eggs” option in my version because the whole object will roll more smoothly for you.

    The historic version

    From al-Warraq’s 10th century Kitab al-Tabikh, translated by Nawal Nasrallah and described in her blog post recreating it:

    Use cold [cooked] meat of two legs and shoulders of a kid or lamb. Finely shred the meat into thread-like pieces. Choose whatever you like of leaf vegetables, excluding watercress (jirjīr) and endives (hindibāʾ). Finely chop them until they resemble sesame seeds and mix [part of] them with the shredded meat. Set the mixture aside.

    Now choose good quality sharp cheese, scrape it with a knife, and collect the scraped cheese. Coarsely grind walnuts and add them [with the cheese] to the [set-aside meatless] chopped vegetables. Also add some chopped herbs and rue. A portion of the chopped vegetables should have been set aside unmixed with the meat. Next, peel and chop some olives and add them to the [meatless] chopped vegetable mixture.

    Spread a soft and large ruqāqa [similar to lavash/markook bread], cover it with some of the meatless vegetable mixture and sprinkle it with seasoned salt. Next, spread the meat and vegetable mixture [to which you should have added] some spices. Then arrange a layer of eggs sliced lengthwise. Next, spread another layer of the meat and vegetable mixture followed by a layer of the meatless vegetable mixture. Sprinkle them with fine-tasting salt and drizzle them with sweet vinegar and rose water.

    Tightly roll the bread with the filling and slice it crosswise into discs. Arrange the [pinwheels] on a platter and pass them around, God willing.” (Nasrallah, Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens, chapter 23)

    Daniel Newman has a tasty-looking rendition using chicken rather than lamb on his blog as well. He also mentions substituting lemon for some of the historical predecessors.

    The modern rendition

    In her blog post, Nasrallah declines to give exact quantities because the amount needed will depend on how many you want to make. She’s got a really good point, but I’m going to give some suggested ranges to work with, and some low-cooking-needed options that may get an assist from your local market.

    • 2-4 large fajita-sized tortillas, or more small ones, or lavash
    • About 1 lb shredded cooked protein: Your choice among pot roast, pulled chicken, minced (and cooked) lamb, canned salmon, or your preferred meat substitute – fried tofu or quorn may work well here
    • About 1 ½ cups finely minced greens (spinach, kale, arugula)
    • 2-4 Tbsp minced walnuts (or pecans / almonds / pumpkin seeds if nut-sensitive)
    • 2-4 Tbsp minced fresh herbs (your choice among basil, parsley, tarragon, fennel fronds, mint, celery leaves) – if you don’t have fresh, or need easy mode, a splash of vinaigrette or Italian dressing could substitute for both the herbs and the later vinegar dressing. (I wouldn’t recommend 4 Tbsp entirely of mint, it’s pungent…)
    • 2-4 Tbsp minced olives
    • 2-3 eggs, either hard boiled and minced fine enough to sprinkle or cooked into a thin omelet or two and sliced into strips
    • As much (or little) cheese as you like – from the scraping description I would suggest a hard cheese like Parmesan, but the historical Mad Alchemist’s boiling acid qanbaris cheese might work too
    • Dressing: “Sweet vinegar” suggests sushi-seasoned sweet rice vinegar to me, with a few drops of rose water in a couple tablespoons and sprinkled as necessary. (To make your own, heat 3 Tbsp rice vinegar with 1 Tbsp sugar until the sugar dissolves, then cool, then add about 1/4 tsp rosewater.)
    • Salt for sprinkling, possibly sea salt if you have it

    To prepare in advance and refrigerate until ready:

    1. Either hard-boil and mince your eggs, or make thin omelets and slice into strips.
    2. Cook and shred your meat or meat substitute (or get your deli container).
    3. Mince your olives, removing any seeds along the way.
    4. Harvest or buy your greens and/or herbs.
    5. Prepare or buy your sweet-tart dressing, and add rosewater to your personal taste.

    When ready to roll:

    1. Finely chop your greens and/or herbs.
    2. In a large flat pan (or 10 seconds in a microwave), warm your tortilla or lavash until it’s soft and flexible and roll-friendly.
    3. Mix about half your chopped vegetables with your meat.
    4. Mix the other half of your chopped vegetables with your olives, optional nuts, and any fresh herbs. 
    5. Spread a layer of your chopped vegetables on your tortilla pizza-style (flat and spread to near the edges, not a burrito-style mound in the middle).
    6. Add a layer of your meat (or meat substitute) and vegetable mixture all over.
    7. Add either flat strips or minced sprinklings of your eggs all over.
    8. Scrape cheese (if desired) all over.
    9. Add your next layer of chopped meat (or meat substitute) and veg mixture.
    10.  Add the last layer of vegetables on top.
    11.  Lightly sprinkle your rosewater-scented dressing and a pinch of salt over the surface. (You don’t want so much that the bread gets soggy.)
    12.  Roll tightly from one edge to the other while your bread is still warm and flexible.
    13. If desired, wrap snugly in cling-wrap or tinfoil to help it hold its tight shape while you prepare additional rolls.
    14. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
    15. Slice into pinwheels and arrange on a decorative platter for serving.

    Alterations for food sensitivities or low spoons

    This really is as choose-your-own-adventure as you like!

    • Gluten sensitive? Choose a no-flour tortilla or substitute soft lettuce leaves or steamed cabbage for rolling
    • No vinegar? Squeeze a lime wedge into a couple tablespoons water and olive oil, shake or whisk, apply rose water or orange blossom water if desired
    • Prefer non-floral flavors? You could use orange, lemon, lime, or fresh ginger juice
    • Low spoons? Get some ready-made pinwheel rollups from your local market and lightly sprinkle with your choice of flavors (dressing, olives, nuts, herbs) before noshing

  • Preorders and Pickles: Sweet and sour rose pickles

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    (Part of the recipe collection from Haroun and the Study of Mischief. But also, it seemed like a pink and rose-petaled recipe was quite suited to start off February! And I’ve just opened preorders for Chai and Charmcraft this week; I’ll keep adding links to the page as more distributors come online. I seem to have an accidental Thing about preorders and pickles, remembering the pre-release post for Haroun too…)

    The distinction I make between quick pickles and slow pickles is whether you plan to sterilize things for long term use or whether you’ll eat them within a few days. You’ll also find that distinction noted in the medieval cookbooks – some of them note that they’re meant to be eaten after two or three days, and others say they’ll be good for a year (assuming appropriate cleanliness and saltiness in the making, of course).

    For all that turnips have an unfortunate reputation for being bland and unpleasant, that made them a marvelous candidate for medieval pickling. In the table of contents of Nawal Nasrallah’s translation of Kanz al-Fawaid / Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table, there’s over twenty recipes for pickling turnips alone. The Sultan’s Feast by Ibn Mubarak Shah, translated by Daniel Newman, offers many pickling recipes as well. (It’s a condensed version of Kanz al-Fawaid, but it’s available in an ebook, which means it’s more accessible to me; I’ve worked back and forth between the two.)

    Among just the turnip pickles alone, you get salted brines, vinegared brines with and without sugar, saffron for dyeing the pickles yellow, and yeasted brines. Like an upscale market’s olive bar, the cooks also took already-cured olives and applied new flavors to them: walnuts, hazelnuts, coriander seeds, salt preserved lemons, and olive oil, smoked olives, and so forth.

    Some of the recipes include instructions for scenting or smoking the jar they’re to be preserved in. And rose petal pickles are particularly fragrant.

    Sweet and Sour Rose Petals with a Low Spoons variant

    Recipe 609 in Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove either has three sub-variants under the same number, or this one might have been meant to be 611 but it just wasn’t numbered? I can’t tell for certain because of the clipping in the Google Scholar preview. I’m clearly going to have to try this with my damask roses this summer. And I was delighted that this historic recipe also contained a Low Spoons variation built into it!

    “Another recipe [for sweet and sour rose petals]:

    Take [the petals of] white roses of Nusaybin, put them in honey, and leave them in the sun until they wilt. Fold wine vinegar and a bit of mint into them, and put them [in a jar], and use [as needed].

    Those who do not have fresh roses can take ready-made rose-petal honey jam and add vinegar to it. If it turns out to be too sour, sweeten it [with sugar or honey]. This will be as fine as the first one mentioned. It will look nice, and it is quite easy to make.” (Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove / Kanz translation, somewhere between recipe 609 and 611)

    My modern note: You can find gulkand or Yunnan rose petal honey jam online if you’d like.