This is a recipe that drifted across my Facebook feed a couple weeks ago, and it looks so delicious I had to make it.
It’s from a 10th Century Arabic cookbook, Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ, in Arabic: كتاب الطبيخ, or “The Book of Dishes.”
Barida refers to a cold starter dish. The theory at the time was the stomach needed to be “warmed up” before starting a full meal. It’s like stretching but for your digestive system. The chicken bits are cold, but the spices used are “warm.”
Pound black raisins very well. Stir and mash it with a small amount of vinegar. Strain the liquid and add a small amount of cassia, galangal as needed, and a little ginger. Pour over it some olive oil and add a small amount of chopped rue. Pour sauce over [roasted] pullets.
Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, Kitab al’Tabikh Chapter XXXI (The Book of Dishes, trans. Nawal Nasrallah)
Galangal is a spice that’s very common in medieval cooking, and INCREDIBLY common in Thai cooking. You may not be able to find it at your neighborhood grocery store, but check the international section or get it from Penzeys, or just go to Amazon (and then Amazon will offer you all sorts of other Thai spices for a while). It tastes a little like a spicier version of ginger, I think? Cassia is very similar to cinnamon. It’s redder and tastes like a stronger cinnamon. In this case, I used cinnamon that I had on hand.
Rue is an herb that is super super bitter. In addition to being difficult to come by, it’s also an abortifacient, so I never use it in cooking (I just feel that the risk of someone unknowingly ingesting it is too high to even allow the possibility). Previously, I’d substituted parsley or celery leaves for rue, which is fine, but maybe doesn’t get the same bitter quality. I recently saw someone suggesting substituting arugula for rue, so I thought I’d give that a shot. Also arugula is delicious.
I used chicken wings, mostly because they were on sale, but also my favorite wing place recently became a vegan restaurant, and I’m kind of in a combination of mourning and “Well, I guess I’ll be cooking my own wings now.” I tossed them in oil, and roasted them in the oven at 400 for about 45 minutes, then put them in the fridge overnight to cool down. (This became a two day process because it was just too hot during the day to roast anything.)
For the sauce, I ground up…well, it was 4 of those small boxes of raisins that you had in your school lunch, and those are one ounce each, but I also did eat a bunch of them, so realistically, it was more like 3 ounces. I used my mortar and pestle to grind them up for verisimilitude and also I don’t have a food processor.
I soaked the raisins for about an hour or so in enough red wine vinegar to cover them, then strained and squeezed as much juice as possible out of them, and then tossed the raisin guts.*
Then I added to the reserved liquid about a teaspoon each of galangal, cinnamon, and ginger (dried, ground ginger since that’s what I had on hand) a solid splash of olive oil, and whisked it all up, and dunked the cold chicken wings in it. Then I chopped up the arugula (CHOPPED ARUGULA SMELLS SO GOOD) and sprinkled it on top.
This was good, and easy, and really nice on a hot and humid day, BUT there’s a few things that I would do differently: more raisins, mash them longer, and maybe let it soak overnight. I’d use fresh ginger, or at least not ginger that’s really older than it should be, and was possibly bought at the Christmas Tree Shops.
As hot weather dish, or something to say, bring on a picnic, or to a potluck, I HIGHLY recommend it. But again, if you are serving this to people, especially people you don’t know, DO NOT USE RUE. I think the arugula is a great sub for it, and it means you have a bunch of arugula for salads and sandwiches or to pile on top of your pizza. Everyone wins!
*I could also see a version where you don’t squeeze out all the vinegar, but use the pulp of the raisins to make the sauce, but that’s not how I interpreted the recipe. I checked with a few other people as well, and they also agreed that their first instinct would be to use the liquid and throw away the raisins. I feel fairly confident in my interpretation.
What are your favorite hot weather foods? Have you ever had Black Barida?
I was thinking that if you made a side of rice, you might incorporate the raisin mash into that somehow, either during or after cooking. Maybe throw in some nuts? Other dried fruit? I don’t know, there are interesting rice dishes from all around the world, I’m sure something will inspire you. (Or use a rice substitute. Couscous.
Barley. Whatever.)
This recipe sounds delicious, so many new things. Chicken wings are always a good choice and now I’m hungry.
This sounds good, and ms bookjunkie — your pilaf/couscous idea sounds great — making shopping list now . . .
Hm.
I could start the raisins soaking now, and then pick up a rotisserie chicken when I shop.
{adds to grocery list}
If you have an Asian grocery in your area they often carry fresh galangal, which is incredible and worth the trip. When I was taught to make tom kha gai (Thai coconut soup) the woman teaching me insisted that only fresh galangal will do, no ginger 😉
If I haven’t mentioned it before – I love, love, love this cooking series! Thanks for doing it.
To me, Galangal tastes like if ginger and a pine tree had a baby. I had some Larb Salad from a local Thai place a few months back and it was so strong I thought I was eating Pine-Sol.
More love for this series from me, and love for fresh galangal too. But I suspect dried galangal would be more authentic for a medieval recipe. This sounds like a really unusual dressing for chicken a nice change from the common ones.
my favorite wing place recently became a vegan restaurant
Nooooooooooo………..
Otherwise, this sounds delicious. Even the raisins part which is always a bit questionable.
Jennifer in GA, you just solved a mystery for me. I actually stopped eating at one Thai restaurant because the food tasted like they’d gotten cleaning solution in it.
I wonder if lovage leaves might also work as a substitute for rue. It’s more pungent than bitter. I’ve got a huge rue plant in my garden, and I’ve never thought about eating it. I just grow it because it’s a good companion plant for roses, it’s very attractive all through the summer with those bluish green leaves; and it’s a favored food for swallowtail butterfly caterpillars. The funny thing is that several people from far flung parts of the world(Puerto Rico, Mexico and Yemen) who visited my backyard recognized the plant and suggested various uses for it. It was the Puerto Rican woman who told me it was an abortifacient. fyi, so is pennyroyal, so don’t use it as a mosquito repellant!
I feel like the first step is just a way of making bootleg balsamic vinegar? Was the taste similar at all?
Re: cinnamon and cassia – As I understand it, if you used powdered commercial cinnamon, then that is “cassia” (Chinese cassia) by the botanical definition, while stick cinnamon is more likely to be “true cinnamon”. Of course, whether the medieval Arabic cookbook writers stuck to those definitions (or simply used cassia for anything in the family, as we do cinnamon) is a separate question.