Ijjâs (A Dish with Prunes)
Take fat young lamb, cut it up and put it in a pot with salt, pepper, coriander, a little cumin, saffron, and sufficient vinegar and oil. Put it on the fire and when it is almost done, throw in "cow's eyes" [prunes] candied and steeped in vinegar. Cook it in the pot, then cover the contents of the pot with all this and leave it until its surface is cold and clarified. Then take it down [from the fire] into a dish, break eggyolks and garnish the dish with them and with meatballs, sprinkle with fine spices and present it. If you wish to put in place of mint juice the juice of rue, celery or clove basil, from each of these will come another dish.
From: 13th century Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook, trans. by Perry
Ijjâs (A Dish with Prunes):
What I did:
- take lamb and chop it
- combine in pot with: salt, pepper, coriander (I like this spice so tend to use considerably more than your typical pepper/salt seasoning), a little cumin, saffron (I never use much saffron, as it is quite costly and it takes so little to get colour) and "sufficient vinegar and oil" (I used enough of the liquids so it could simmer in them)
- Cook and throw in the prunes (these are described as being candied and steeped in vinegar, so I made up a sandy syrup and did the prunes up in it, and then steeped them in vinegar first)
- Remove from heat
- break egg yolks and garnish the dish with them... at first I wondered if these were raw or cooked and skipped it but now I'm wondering if they could be heard boiled and crumbled over the dish? It would dress up the dish a bit with colour
- Also garnish the dish with meatballs... I ended up making up Ahrash
- Serve with mint juice
Ahrash
I've made this many many times and must apologize for the lack of measurments in my description as I seldom think to stop and measure what I'm adding anymore. The recipe may be found through the same source as the one above.
Steps:
- pound a piece of meat (I used lamb)
- Knead this with murri (I had none made so substituted with thickened soy), pepper, cinnamon and coriander seed (note: there is a part of this recipe that is missing)
- mix in white flour to coat and hold together (I stopped adding before it got too pasty), then form into small patties and line a pan with hot oil in it and cook, flipping to make sure they are brown on both sides.
- (served on it's own, sauce to go with: vinegar, oil, garlic and murri)
For the murri, I sometimes cheat and have had great success with miso (such as barley miso) and have attempted, on occasion, to make a decent approximation. There is a good website with an aticle on it where you can find pretty good instructions on making it.
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