Al-Maḍīra (Meat Cooked in Soured Milk)

History

Al-maḍīra (المضيرة) is meat simmered in soured or curdled milk — al-Baghdadi's laban fārisī, 'Persian milk' — which he seasons with onions, Nabatean leeks, coriander, cumin, mastic and cinnamon, then finishes with salted lemon and fresh mint. It belongs to the sour-and-milk dishes that open his 1226 Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh, but by his day the dish was already old and celebrated. Its fame is above all literary: Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 1007) devoted one of his Maqāmāt entirely to it, 'al-Maqāma al-Maḍīriyya,' the Maqama of the Maḍīra. There the tempting, appetizing dish becomes the frame for a satire — a wealthy merchant hosting a banquet praises his maḍīra so endlessly, and digresses so garrulously about his wife and household, that the guest is tormented and never actually gets to eat, and the narrator ends up spurning the very name of the dish. That episode turned maḍīra into one of the most famous meals in classical Arabic prose, still reworked by modern writers. Its role as the merchant's proud showpiece reflects its standing as a prized dish of the well-to-do table.

Ingredients

• fatty meat
• tail fat
• salt
• onion
• Nabataean leek
• dried coriander
• cumin
• mastic
• cinnamon
• Persian milk
• salted lemon
• fresh mint

Instructions

1. Cut fatty meat into medium pieces (with tail fat, and jointed poussins if used); boil in a little salted water to cover and remove the froth.
2. When near done, add peeled large onion and large Nabataean leek (tails cut, washed and dried), with finely pounded dried coriander, cumin, mastic, and cinnamon.
3. When cooked and the water has dried off leaving only fat, ladle the meat into a bowl.
4. Put Persian (soured) milk into the pot (with salted lemon and fresh mint), bring to a boil, then quiet the fire and stir.
5. Once the boiling subsides, return the meat and spices, cover, wipe sides, leave to settle, and remove.