Lynn Strong

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Category: Rahat aka Faraj

  • Sharbat for the Shahzada

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    (One of the recipes from Chai and Cat-tales)

    This is based on several historic recipes, most particularly sharbat e badam. Sharbat and sekanjabin and ‘aqsima / oxymel are very old beverages. Similar syrups were recorded by the 11th century’s Canon of Medicine by ibn Sina (known in much of Europe as Avicenna), with further details mentioned in the Persian Zakhira-i Khwarazmshahi, written for the shah of what is now Khorasan.

    You’ll also find ‘aqsima variations in the thirteenth century Syrian Kitab al-Wusla, translated as Scents and Flavors by Charles Perry, and the fifteenth century Egyptian Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa by ibn Mubarak Shah, translated as The Sultan’s Feast by Daniel L. Newman. I owe both of them a considerable debt of knowledge, both for their research and for their choice to make their books available in digital form.

    (At the time of the original book, I’d been on a failed multi-year quest to achieve legible-to-me ebook access to Nawal Nasrallah’s works. I have partly-legible access now, though I’m struggling with how the ebook edition has both mangled the diacriticals in the Roman alphabet and decided to write every bit of the Arabic backwards. The quest for truly legible access continues…)

    Most of the sharbat and ‘aqsima variants involve making sweet flavored syrup concentrate, sometimes with vinegar or acid, and later diluting to taste to serve. (Yes, in essence we’re talking about medieval Kool-aid or Ribena here.)

    This particular variant is a little fancier, as befits the table of the shahzada. In my world-building, food and drink in the God-Emperor’s court takes many of its taste and scent cues from the Ayubbid and Abbasid empires, occasionally ranging into Mughal tastes as well. The boundary between what you call perfume, what you call incense, and what you call spice for food was more flexible in the medieval Middle East than it is in most places today.

    So I’m putting together sandalwood and vetiver and other incense notes with the more familiar cardamom and almond, and of course a shahzada’s table would be graced with saffron.

    But as a disabled person who can’t stand over a stove for an hour anymore, and with friends who are vegan, I’ve also got an easy-mode variation and a no-animal-products variation.

    (Many variations use kewra or screwpine essence where I’m using sandalwood. If you have access to it and you like it, enjoy! I don’t have access outside Rooh Afza, which brings a lot of red food coloring that knocks out the saffron gold.)

    The formal version

    The formal version makes about 4-6 servings:

    Optional, to brew overnight and strain ahead:

    • A couple pieces of food grade (not blended or preservative treated) sandalwood, or about ½ tsp powder, or alternatively a few drops of kewra concentrate if you have it and like it
    • A good sized pinch of vetiver roots, or khus concentrate (ideally undyed)
    • 1 cup hot water in a container with a lid

    Cautionary note: If you have any questions at all about whether your sandalwood is food grade, don’t make tisane of it. Instead, just burn it in an incense burner while you’re sipping your wood-free sharbat e badam, because scent is its entire purpose here.

    So, once you have guaranteed food safe ingredients here:

    Make a cup of very hot water. Let the woody parts steep overnight in a covered container on your countertop. Pyrex or a mug is often good for this.

    In the morning, strain the pieces from your sandalwood and/or vetiver tisane. If you used sandalwood powder, a coffee filter or cheesecloth may help with grit removal.

    Keep the liquid.

    (Decide whether the solids will dry nicely for a second brewing or if they’ve given their all. You could also set them out in a cup to scent your room.)

    Possibly also overnight, almond milk:

    • If you have storebought almond milk, you can use that. Skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you don’t have almond milk, choose whether you’re going to use almond extract or make almond milk. If you’re going to use extract, skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you want to make your own almond milk: Soak about ¾ cup almonds in water overnight. (This can be scaled up if desired.) Blanched peeled almonds will be faster; if you start with regular almonds you’ll want to rub the skins off in the morning. In the morning, after draining and/or peeling the soaked almonds, blend them in a blender, adding somewhere between ¼ and 1 cup of water, to make a smooth paste. (You can make a larger batch if you want to make the finished sharbat entirely vegan.) Pour the almond milk through cheesecloth or a flour sack towel and squeeze the almonds to separate the milk from the grit. (If you like oatmeal or cereal, you can scatter the leftover almond paste into that.)

    Making the sharbat:

    • Either 1 cup of your prepared woody tisane, OR 1 cup of liquid and a nearby incense burner
    • 1/2 to 1 cup of your almond milk (or another liquid with a drop or two of almond extract)
    • 6 green cardamom pods, cracked open and black seeds extracted, OR about ¾ tsp cardamom powder
    • A pinch of saffron threads
    • About ½ cup jaggery, brown sugar, or white sugar, with about 1 tsp reserved for grinding the saffron

    In a pot, add most of your jaggery or sugar to your tisane or water and bring it up to a simmer. Save 1 tsp for grinding.

    Put the remaining 1 tsp of your jaggery or sugar in a mortar with most of the pinch of saffron, reserving a few threads to top the glasses with.

    Use the sugar to grind the saffron into fine bits and add it to the pot.

    If you have cardamom seeds extracted from the green cardamom pods, grind those well in the mortar and pestle. Then add them to the pot of sugar water too.

    Add as much of the almond milk as you like to the pot and simmer until it’s reduced by about half and is a bit thicker, likely 15-20 minutes. Keep stirring to prevent scorching.

    Remove from heat and cool.

    For each glass:

    • 2-3 Tbsp of your chilled sharbat e badam concentrate, or to taste
    • 1 cup cold milk of your choice (cow, almond, coconut)
    • A couple of saffron threads on top
    • (Optional) Light an incense burner with some sandalwood if you have it

    And, as promised, there are simpler versions.

    Simpler Sharbat e Badam (vegan friendly)

    For 4-6 servings:

    • 4-6 cups almond milk OR cow milk/coconut milk with a few drops almond extract added
    • ¾ tsp cardamom powder (or ground from pods if you have ambitions)
    • About ½ cup simple syrup, to taste (can be store-bought or can be made by melting together equal parts sugar and water and stirring until clear)
    • Optional: kewra and/or khus concentrate, to taste
    • Optional but nice: pinch of saffron and 1 tsp sugar

    The night before, or whenever you can, grind your saffron with the sugar, add a few drops warm water, and stir until the sugar dissolves and the water turns golden.

    Add the saffron sugar water, the cardamom, and any flavoring extracts to your chosen milk.

    Sweeten to taste with the simple syrup.

    Refrigerate for a while.

    When ready to serve, stir and pour as is. (No dilution needed since we didn’t make the concentrate.)

    Add a couple threads of saffron to the glass if you have them.

    Light some sandalwood if you feel like it.

  • Neurodiverse fantasies and Sahar’s Misty Evening Chai Latte

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    Tomorrow (April 26), Karryn Nagel is organizing a big sale on cozy fantasy books at https://www.promisepress.org/. I don’t know what all the books are going to be, but Karryn says she’s got at least 45 authors on board and multiple books by several of them, so I’m eagerly waiting for when the sale page goes live!

    The Fantasy Romance February (FaRoFeb) team is also highlighting a collection of 8 books by and about neurodiverse folks in honor of Autism Awareness Month. Aside from being blown away that I’m on a recommendation list with some of my favorite authors (that supersonic squeal you hear might actually be coming from me), I’m honestly thrilled that folks are highlighting more varieties of neurodiversity than Rain Man and The Big Bang Theory.

    When I was growing up, “autism” was Rain Man. There was no other representation out there. So, obviously, I couldn’t be autistic, because I was literate and eloquent and not able to instantaneously count a pile of spilled nuts on the floor, even if I was painfully awkward and shy and I felt almost-physical scalding sensations if I had to make eye contact with someone who was angry with me. About thirty years later, a licensed psychotherapist said to me, “So, since you’re on the spectrum…” and after my brain got done making record-scratch noises, suddenly a whole lot of things about my life made a lot more sense.

    I knew Priye was autistic from the moment I started writing her. And I knew Rahat had a collection of neurodiverse thought patterns around anxiety and masking and social expectations and body shape expectations. But I didn’t realize he was also autistic until I was writing the sequel and he launched into a fluent analysis of the implications of different quality levels of frankincense resin and what that meant for what must have happened with natural disasters in the growing region (as opposed to piratical disasters, because natural disasters have implications for plant growth patterns) — and then he stopped himself short and said “at least I think it’s fascinating, I don’t know if anyone else would…”

    And I stopped and stared at the sentence that had just come out of my fingers, and I went, huh. Because that’s one of the language tics I’ve heard from so many autistic folks (including myself) who have been absolutely enraptured by something and started enthusing about it to a neurotypical person who stops pretending to be interested long before the autistic person stopped being excited by it, and sometimes the autistic person jerks their own reins short before the other person can. And I asked some friends on various spectrums, who took a look at some pieces, and they also went, yeah, we can see that too.

    From being autistic for a long time and talking to a lot of autistic folks over the years, I’ve noticed a common algorithm a lot of us learn for how to navigate society while trying hard to keep the Normal-Looking Mask on. It seems like the more training you’ve had in How to Act Normal, the better you get to be at learning when your own joy is an indicator that you need to stop yourself from feeling and expressing that joy because the person you’re talking to is going to be bored by it. And conversely, the more comfortable you are with the person you’re talking to, the more you feel able to let yourself relax into that joy a little longer than you would with an unfamiliar Other Person.

    As a prince, Rahat has had a lot of training in how to Act Normal. But around Asharan, he also lets himself relax into joy, until something in the back of his mind jerks on those reins and reminds him that he shouldn’t.

    A whole lot of the things I’m exploring with these two involve anti-tropes and flipping the script. I’m writing the anti-Cinderella story explicitly, but future installments involve the anti-makeover story and the coziest dungeon ever (full of cat toys and sunbeams!). And I want these stories to be cozy for people who’ve felt that it’s not safe to relax into their own joy, whether they’re autistic or queer or fat or disabled or whatever it is that makes other people frown down their noses at the way they are and live and think and feel and love.

    When the survey asked whether Rahat al-Hulqum was an “own voices” story, I honestly wasn’t sure how to respond. On the one hand, I am clearly neither a medieval prince with prophetic visions, nor a medieval bath-house courtesan with magical cat-summoning powers. But on the other hand, I am someone who understands a lot about social anxiety, role-switching, masking, and also the makings of delicious chai variants.

    I don’t know yet how many of the neurodiverse fantasies overlap with the cozy fantasy sale, but I am very much looking forward to finding out!

    And because I’m me, here, have another tea recipe. 😀

    Sahar’s Misty Evening Chai Latte

    Sahar is Rahat’s summoned cat-familiar; she is gray and soft and round and elegant, and also very opinionated, because she is of course still a cat. In one of the sequel bits, she casts a fog spell over the city. And the local coffeeshops call the less-masala cousin of this a London Fog.

    I don’t know how widespread that name is, but I liked the symbolism of a chai blended with fog-associations for both a magical gray cat who casts fog-illusions and neurospicy folks who have to spin very careful fog-illusions to shield the light of their special interests’ joys from sensitive neurotypical eyes that might wince from the blaze of our shining.

    For two one-cup servings (or one really big mug):

    • 1 1/2 cups hot water
    • Two teaspoons of Earl Grey
      • If you like bergamot, there are delicious double bergamot varieties out there too. If you don’t like bergamot but do like lemon, a nice Assam with a squeeze of lemon can get you in the neighborhood too.
    • Either half a teaspoon of dried rose petals or a quarter teaspoon of rosewater, whichever you prefer
    • A piece of crystallized ginger if you have it
    • A couple of cracked white peppercorns if you like floral heat
    • Around a tablespoon of lavender syrup depending on your preferred sweetness level
    • A couple tablespoons of your milk-like preference (skim milk froths very nicely; oat and almond milks don’t tend to froth but are still delicious)

    Helpful hardware:

    • A fill your own tea bag, fine-meshed tea ball, or cup-sieve to work your alchemy without a mouthful of tea leaves floating around the beverage
    • A handheld milk frother (I’ve used several over the years and I prefer the ones with flat bases rather than angled, so you don’t have to keep track of the stand separately)
    • If you want to lean extra hard into cozy cat-ness, consider your mug too…

    Once your water is hot, brew your tea in your preferred tea-leaf containment system before you add your milk. (Adding milk tends to slow or stop the brewing process.)

    Sweeten it while it’s still hot, then pull out the tea leaves before adding your milk or substitute.

    The frother will also make less mess if the tea containment system is not in the container where the frothing takes place.

    If you’re reading this from somewhere that’s hot, consider pouring it over ice into a blender (or getting out a stick blender, or even a kids’ snow-cone ice shaver) and making yourself a frozen latte.

    Happy sipping, and happy fog-cuddles from Sahar and me.

  • Rahat’s namesake sweets: Rahat-al-hulqum / Lokoum / Turkish delight

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    This story started with Ashar’s rose chai and the idea that there should be more Prince Charmings in the world of different ages and colors and body types and confidence levels, but I needed something for Ashar to call him other than his own name. (Ashar is still pretending that as long as he never says Rahat’s actual name aloud, there is some resemblance of plausible deniability.)

    I’m also absurdly fond of rosewater in sweets ranging from my friend Kathleen’s amazing chocolate-cardamom-rosewater truffles to ice cream toppings to medieval-to-modern confectionery like rahat al-hulqum. And while the stuff doesn’t always come in rose-reds, I loved playing with the imagery.

    As a person with multiple disabilities, though, it’s often hard to cook anymore. So I haven’t personally cooked Yumsome’s variation on rahat/lokoum, but I loved the story they told about their encounters with it throughout their life and why rose is their favorite variation too.

    For those of us who are low on spoons but still interested in tasting it, Liberty Orchards sells them in winter (though they’re currently out) and Koska also sells it through Amazon.

    The origins of the phrase go back to 9th century Arabic medicinals for sore throats, though the candy version is mostly traced to a particularly ambitious confectioner who made a viral hit long before there was social media.

    (The image here is from When Feta met Olive.)