A hearty braise and some accidental kabab history
Or a recipe for Tās kabab, meat with apples/quince and prunes, starting unwittingly from the the Persian Epic, Shahnameh from the 10th century
Hello and welcome to this issue of Noon! Before proceeding to read this piece with a little cultural and literal background, as well as a delicious, hearty recipe, may I remind of you my two upcoming events?
Saturday December 7th, Iranian cooking class, 2 spots left, info & booking
Sunday December 8th, Breakfast from the Middle East (and Italy) info & booking
One man’s mission to save the Persian language
Sometime in the late tenth century, a man from the ancient land of Khorasan, in the north-east of current Iran, sat down to write a story in verse and spent the next 30 years of his life doing that in order to save the Persian language that was in danger of disappearance. That man was Ferdowsi, the great Persian poet, and that story was Shahnameh, the ‘Book of Kings’. With more than 50,000 couplets, and three times longer than Homer’s The Iliad, Shahnameh is one of the world’s longest epic poems, and it tells the mythical story of how the first men and kings of Iran came to be, and the chivalrous battles of heroes, with some mentions of the history of pre-Islamic Iran. Although in part influenced by older stories and even the mythology of other cultures, Shahnameh has undoubtedly contributed immensely to the cultural identity of not only Iranic people, but also to those of Turkics and even Georgians, covering a vast geographical area starting at the gates of Europe in the Balkans, all the way to the borders of China.
The devil cooks (meat) for the evil king
From the feasts of kings, to the hunting exploits of heroes, there are many references to what ancient Iranians probably ate, although it’s very hard to guess the actual recipes. For example, early in the stories of Shahnameh, the devil (Iblis) appears to the evil king Zahhāk (or Azhi-dehak, meaning The Dragon King) disguised as a young and masterful cook, enticing the king with marvellous dishes of poultry, game, egg yolks, lamb and ‘a stew of sirloin of veal with rosewater, saffron, aged wine and musk’. The king is so pleased he wants to reward the young cook, and the devil, sly as he is, asks only to kiss the king’s shoulders. As soon as he does, two horrific black serpents grow out of the king’s shoulders, which would feast every day on the brains of two youths for many years of terrible tyranny, until the evil king is overthrown in a popular uprising led by Kaveh the Blacksmith and the righteous king, Fereydoun.
به روز چهارم چو بنهاد خوان خورش ساخت از پشت گاو جوان بدو اندرون زعفران و گلاب همان سالخورده می و مشک ناب
[...] and on the fourth [day] [he prepared] A chine of veal with saffron and rosewater, Musk and old wine.
Well, the truth is that I came upon that verse describing the majestic dish out of its contest and I went down the rabbit hole to find it in Shahnameh. I was kind of devastated to learn that a wonder like veal with saffron, rosewater, wine and musk was a recipe developed by the devil himself. Although Ferdowsi uses the word “khoresh”, which means stew in our times, in archaic Persian of the tenth century it was much closer to “victuals” in general, so not necessarily a stew. The description of the ingredients on the other hand matches more one of a kabab, rather than a stew. Interestingly a few lines before this verse Ferdowsi alludes to some sort of vegetarianism and implies the killing and cooking of animals was of the work of the devil-cook:
فراوان نبود آن زمان پرورش که کمتر بد از خوردنیها خورش ز هر گوشت از مرغ و از چارپای خورشگر بیاورد یک یک به جای
Foods then were few, men did not kill to eat But lived on vegetals of all earth's produce; So evil-doing Ahriman designed To slaughter animals for food, and served Both bird and beast.
But then this notion is easily contradicted. I searched for more mentions of kabāb in Shahnameh and it turns out that it is one of the most repeated culinary words throughout the epic, both in literal form — such as when the heroes camp on the plains, grilling game meat over an open fire – and as a trope, such as when describing the extraordinary strength of the hero Afrasiab, by saying he would make kabāb from a lion’s back.
Kabab, kebab, kebap? Grilled or not?
Kabāb (pronunciation slightly varies based on geography) as pieces of fire-grilled meat has such deep roots in Iranian culture that it appears in all sorts of proverbs as metaphor, too (similar tropes exist in Turkish as well). For example, if your heart is like kabab (burning, as if on hot coals), it means you have many sorrows. To eat kabab off one’s own leg/bone/back means to ruin one’s own chances, and to eat kabab off a darwish’s back means to ruin an already disadvantaged man.
In our times, the way most Iranians (and Persians and other Iranic peoples) imagine kabab is meat on skewers that is grilled, almost all of the time. But that has not always been the case. Kebab karaz for example — a Syrian dish present also in Anatolian Turkey and other parts of Levant — is a delicious meatball dish stewed with sour cherries and pomegranate molasses, not grilled. (You can find this recipe on page 161 of my cookbook Pomegranates & Artichokes).
Likewise, taas kabab, the recipe that follows, is not one of meat grilled over an open fire. Taas is an old word of Turkish origin for a bowl, or in this case, a cooking pot. Therefore taas-kabab is meat ‘grilled’ in a pot, with no water – in other words, it’s braised.
Tās-Kabab, a hearty braise of meat and vegetables
This dish exists in Turkey and Greece, too, although their version is a lot more saucy and tomatoey, whereas there’s usually very little or no tomato in Iranian taas-kabab. Vegetables – usually wedges of potato and carrot, but also apple and/or quince – are used on top. The key is to use onions in abundance, which melt over long hours of slow cooking, providing the meat with the liquid it needs for braising. If available, powdered dried lime is sprinkled over the meat and onion during cooking – and if using apples/quince, a touch of cinnamon. This is one of my most favorite dishes for a warming, hearty meal for the cold days, and whenever possible I make it with quince. Prunes shouldn’t be skipped in my opinion, but I personally never add carrots because I’m not a fan, but feel free to add some if you like.
Serves 4–6
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon oil
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) lamb meat, from the shanks, shoulder or neck, cut into big chunks1
3–4 onions (about 350 g/12 oz),
sliced crossways into 5 mm (¼ inch) discs
21/2 teaspoons salt
11/2 teaspoons ground turmeric
3–4 bay leaves
6 prunes, pitted2
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) potatoes, peeled and sliced cross ways into 1 cm (1/2 inch) discs
1 apple (or quince), peeled and sliced
crossways into 1 cm (1/2 inch) discs
11/2 teaspoons tomato paste (concentrated purée)
11/2 cups (375 ml) hot water
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Method:
Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Add one layer of meat, not too snugly. Sprinkle some of the salt, turmeric and some black pepper, then top with one layer of onion. Sprinkle that with some more salt, pepper and turmeric. Fit the bay leaves and plums wherever there are spaces between the pieces of the meat. Keep layering the meat and onion, and sprinkling with more seasoning, until you’ve used it all up.
Next, start layering the potato slices on top, again sprinkling with the seasoning. Do the same with the apple (or quince) slices, keeping them on the topmost layer, so that they cook only in the steam, and not in the braising juices, and don’t fall apart during the long cooking time.
Once all the meat and vegetables are layered in the pot, dissolve the tomato paste in the hot water and add whatever’s left of the salt and turmeric. Gently pour into the pot from one side.
Put the lid on and cook gently over the lowest heat possible for 3–31/2 hours. After this time, the lamb will be very tender.
Right before serving, sprinkle the cinnamon on top.
If you don’t have access to lamb or mutton, feel free to replace this meat with any form of tender, a bit fatty meat. Beef and pork should work well.
The type of Iranian prunes that we almost always with the pit. We just know that and are careful.