From Shahrazad to Oeufs à la Constantinopolitaine
via Porters, Dalila the Crafty and a Forest of Figs
“But morning gained on Shahrazad and cut her speaking short.
“The strangest story!” said her sister.
“If I live another night,” she said, “I shall tell you stranger.”
The king decided he would spare her till the story’s end and kill her the next day.
When night fell, her sister said, “If you are not asleep, tell us a tale to break the waking night.”
And Shahrazad agreed.”
There will be no killings today but as you may have guessed we are taking a wander amongst some of the wonderful appetising foods of The 1,001 Nights as well as a quick peep at two of the many tales. These tales are an interesting balance of dark and light. I have spent the last two days immersed in various translations of the tales, leaving their magical world only for annoying mundane things like hoovering. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like kicking my hoover than I did when it pulled me away from the tales spun so bewitchingly by Shahrazad. I was enchanted in particular by two stories about women, particular in the translation by Yasmine Seale in the Annotated Arabian Nights. This is a new version for me and I fell in love with the stories all over again. The quotes are all from this wondeful translation.
In the first tale: The Story of the Porter and the Three Women of Baghdad, food sets the scene of a house where indulgences take place, a woman hires a porter and loads him down with so many goods he is almost unable to carry them and expostulates that she should have asked him to bring a donkey. I don’t know what the exact definition of a feast should be but I’d suggest that if you need a donkey to carry it home then feast should definitely feature in the description.
The woman who in Yasmine Seale’s translation is only ever referred to as the buyer but she is truly excellent at it. Who would love to visit a grocers and come out with this?
“she bought pale apples and musk apples, peaches and jasmine, Ottoman quinces and Damascus lilies, cucumbers fine as reeds, lemons from the coast and citrons from the sultan, myrtle and basil and henna blossom, daffodils and chamomile, anemones and violets, and pomegranate flowers.”
A slightly more mundane selection but still incredibly delicious and a very modern selection apart from the tarragon which possibly doesn’t feature in the foods we are used to from the lands where these tales are set.
“olives pitted and salted, white cheese and Syrian cheese, pickles sour and sweet, and tarragon”
A large selection of fresh nuts and roasted chickpeas are perhaps what we are more used to. I picture those amazing nut shops in Turkey where they seem to grind pistachios and portion them out so bountifully that you would think they were worth as little as dust on the ground.
“she bought shelled pistachios, almonds and walnuts, sugarcane from Iraq, fruit leather from Baalbek, roasted chickpeas, and all the seeds.”
This sweet shop however, completely captured my imagination, I think I can even smell the warm honey and spices and I love the names that Yasmine has chosen for some of the sets and pastries that have no modern names.
“until they came to the confectioner’s, where she piled a platter high with every sweet in the shop: honey lattices and almond rings, dumplings filled with cream and spiced with musk, soap cakes, anemone floss, pudding and fritters, amber combs and ladyfingers, widows’ bread, eat-and-thanks, judge’s bites, pipes of plenty, broth of wind, and delicacies of every description.”
This is only the very start of a tale which seeks to find the answer to why and how three wealthy women could live in Baghdad without a husband or other man. If you want to find out the solution to such a problem which also features the tales of three one-eyed dervishes, the porter, The Caliph himself as well as his vizier then you should hunt down a copy.
The second tale features honey fritters directly as part of the plot that drives the story forward. It is also known as Dalila The Crafty and is a wonderful story of a woman and her daughter making a name for themselves as tricksters so they can draw a wage from the state. Baghdad at the time had a history of making bandits and thieves into policemen for the same reason hackers are sometimes employed by the FBI. It’s a wonderful story, if a little on the cruel side in places but tricksters have to trick someone otherwise they make no impact.. That plot point that I mentioned? Dalila tricked a Bedouin traveller into the hangman’s noose by promising him more honey fritters than he could possibly eat (the reason he had travelled so far) as that was her punishment:
“I have an enemy,” she said, “a seller of fritters. I stopped to buy from him, but my spit fell on the fritters. So he complained to the governor, who ordered my hanging and said, ‘Take ten pounds of honey fritters and feed them to her as she hangs. If she eats them, let her go. If she doesn’t, leave her hanging.’ The problem is, I cannot stand sweet things.”
“By the honor of the Arabs,” said the Bedouin, “I have traveled here for nothing but to eat honey fritters! I will eat them for you.”
“It does not count,” she said, “unless you hang in my place.”
I have barely begun to discuss all the fascinating things I’ve learned about 1001 Nights stories, the people that told them and their delicious dishes, I have so much I want to share with you but for now I will leave you with the thought that in another life Shahrazad might have been a cook who held onto her life night after not by the promises of stories and endings to come but by the temptation of dishes that would leave any king wanting.
So after all that talk about food from the 1001 Nights, I thought you might enjoy some folklore about figs. Figs are endlessly fascinating and without them many ecosystems would collapse, they are also delicious no matter what anyone else thinks. So, if you turn down a delightful fig biscuit or push that deeply red, lusciously soft, fruit off towards the corner of the cheeseboard whilst scooping up the last bit of oozingly ripe gorgonzola dolce with the last of the walnut bread then you are definitely missing out. However you feel about figs, dried or otherwise I think you’ll enjoy just a few snippets of their folklore:
The ancient Greeks credit the goddess of fertility, Demeter with origin of figs. They believe that she gave figs to humanity to repay the hospitality of a king after he gave her shelter whilst she tried to find her daughter Persephone who had been kidnapped by the god of the underworld. Well some of them do anyway, others insist it was Dionysus, the greek god of wine who found the first fig tree. It wasn’t just the Greeks either. The Persian deity Mithra was believed to have been born from a rock beneath a sacred fig tree. The tree sheltered him and provided him with clothing from its leaves and food from its fruit.
The leaves also had a starring role in the Garden of Eden even if the jury is still out on whether the troublesome fruit was an apple, a fig or a pomegranate. All three of the largest Abrahamic religions do agree though that the fig tree was part of the story of humanity from the every beginning and In Buddhism, the fig tree is a symbol of enlightenment.
There is also an origin story in Indonesia that the first couple were formed from a fig tree by the gods. In Hong Kong it was believed that fig trees are home to spirits and on Borneo several of the indigenous peoples believe that that spirits dwell in the roots of strangler figs. The wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus sheltered under a fig tree, making them sacred to the Romans. Figs were also considered an antidote to poison.
Which brings us very nicely onto our remedy for this week which is from The Complete Housewife or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion by E Smith in 1773. I think this sounds quite nice actually, which is worrying. It might be because I grew up being treated for coughs with a really old fashioned herbal balsam that my Nan bought from somewhere mysterious and that I actually enjoyed the taste of. At least this doesn’t sound like it would do you any harm unless you had too much of course.
I couldn’t help but warm to this recipe, I picked it mostly because of its frankly ridiculous name but also because it comes from an adorable cookery book called the Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel (the noted herbalist) and Olga Hartley. The recipes were considered very daring when it was printed in 1921 (the book was also very successful) . It has some wonderfully named chapters, some of which I will be revisiting in future letters but this recipe is from the one named Dishes from the Arabian Nights. I’m not entirely sure what connection to our tales it has really but the recipe definitely sounds interesting if nothing else. I suppose Istanbul Eggs wouldn’t be the same but its infinitely easier to say.
Until next time, my lovelies. If you miss me before next week you can always pop over to my podcast and enjoy the latest episode featuring Petrosinella, a young woman with skills who knows what she wants, which definitely doesn’t include living alone in a tower forever as well a little too much history and folklore of parsley plus some excellent salad guidelines: Petrosinella or the Parsley Prescription