The meat dish of the banquet (me-e puhadi)
Tuh'u — lamb stew with chard and leek
FestiveReconstruction🧂 🍄moyen2 h
A deep, rich lamb stew, simmered with leek, garlic, chard or beet, thickened with fat and barley flour, seasoned with coriander and cumin. The long, patient broth-cooking of great occasions.
The meat dish of the banquet (me-e puhadi)
A deep, rich lamb stew, simmered with leek, garlic, chard or beet, thickened with fat and barley flour, seasoned with coriander and cumin. The long, patient broth-cooking of great occasions.
When the new moon festival comes, I place the meat before Nanna before any man touches it. We brown the lamb in its own fat, throw in crushed leek, garlic, and onion, drown it all in water and cover with chard leaves. Cumin and coriander rise in smoke to the goddess's nostrils — and what the gods have breathed, my guests then eat, with joyful hearts.
Ingredients
- •Lamb shoulder — a fine piece (stew meat)
- •Lamb fat (fat tail) — as desired (cooking fat)
- •Leek and onion — several (aromatic base)
- •Garlic — a few cloves (flavor)
- •Chard or beet — an armful (leafy vegetable)
- •Coriander and cumin — to taste (spices)
- •Barley flour — a handful (thickener for broth)
- •Salt — to taste (seasoning)
How it was made : The only known cuneiform recipes — the three Yale culinary tablets (Babylonian collection, ca. 1700 BCE, thus slightly later than Enheduanna) — describe about thirty meat stews of this type, including "tuh'u." Meat was cooked in water and fat with leek, garlic, onion, and herbs, without tomato or chili (unknown in the Old World).
Sources : Yale Babylonian Collection, culinary tablets YBC 4644, 8958, 4648 · Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, University of Chicago Press, 2004