Tangia? Tannur? Tandoori?

[Wolfert]

the only fault with this turkish folk tale being part of a learning experience is that bulgur is already cooked!

[Adam Balic]

I did wonder about that, but it is cooked and then dried again isn't it?

[Wolfert]

yes, it is dried again. But there are many Middle dishes that then use the bulgur with just a simple wet down. Tabouli and kisir being the most famous.

[Adam Balic]

I know some French-Algerians that make Tabouli with cous cous. Is this traditional thing or a cheat?

[Wolfert]

I don't think it is a cheat. The word tabouli is certainly borrowed from the middle east, but a type of couscous salad is made with freshly steamed couscous during the early summer when the women get together to roll couscous for year-long storage. At least in Tunisia it is. I've never seen a cold savory couscous in Morocco but a lot of things have changed in the 25 years since I left.

I have think the pied noirs in Marseille are more apt to make "couscous tabooli"

[Adam Balic]

I still have trouble imagining people actually making cous cous. It is an excellent product, but the effort involved in making it from scratch must be hugh. Especially some of the sub-Saharan cous cous made from maize or millet.

I have several sizes of cous cous, do they have different uses? I really like the very fine grade, as it is so tender and fluffy that it takes you away from and association with pasta and 'al dente'.

[Wolfert]

Actually it is very simple to roll your own....couscous.

it's certainly easier than making your own pasta. Problem is the mess of the little grains getting all over the floor. If you have a handly dust buster you're in business.

I always make my own couscous using medium grain semolina and pasta flour. It only takes 5 minutes to roll and sieve enough to feed 8. Steaming takes about 45 minutes but then I'm in the kitchen anyways making the sauce.

Do you have my mediterranean grains and greens cookbook? I explain how to roll your own step by step.

I know I'm bragging now, so please forgive me: I've taught a lot of professional cooks around the country. Once they've tasted the real thing they switch over to hand rolling.

[Adam Balic]

Sure, and next you will be saying that making warqa is a piece of cake (actually I have made this, it has a different texture to filo, which I like).

I have your book and Clifford A. Wright's book also describes it. But I have always assumed that it way purely something that cookbook authors place in there to tempt innocents and to mess up their kitchens.

I shall make fresh cous cous in a weeks time and I shall report back on this site about the result. Instant cous cous will be on stand-by though.

[Wolfert]

Just be careful about purchasing coarse semolina at this time of the year. Summer bugs like it alot.

[Adam Balic]

Just be careful about purchasing coarse semolina at this time of the year. Summer bugs like it alot.

My Summers are in Scotland, so not problem at all with bugs. Except midges.

[Wolfert]

I'll look for your posting.

[Adam Balic]

I haven't made the cous cous yet, but I did make a Tangia over the last two days.

I pretty much stuck to the description in Paula Wolfert's book, with a few alterations. Beef brisket (I haven't seen camel since Meknes) was cut into 1.5 by 2 inch cubes, these were mixed with crushed garlic and spices and placed in large terra cotta bean pot/amphora. Four uncracked raw eggs were added. pot sealed with parchemnt paper and string. placed in the oven at 80.C for 12 hours.

After twelve hours the meat was still pinkish, but the collagen hadn't broken down. I cooked the dish for a further 1.5 hours at 160.C. Meat now very tender and still pinkish in the middle.

I further flavoured the dish with citron zest and coriander (I lacked preserved lemons and I like coriander).

The meat was very tender, but there was a great deal of liquid and the flavours were a little unconcentrated. I think that I should have cooked it at a higher temperture (I was guessing the temp.)

It is a very good method for cooking a stew, but I need to modifiy the technique somewhat.

[Wolfert]

Did you use an unglazed pot? Did you use a lot of liquid? When slow cooking in unglazed clay you don't need to add liquid.

If you can get a copy of Adelle Davis' Let's Cook it Right you will find some very interesting material on slow cooking.

"In experiments where identical roasts were cooked at different

oven temperatures to the same degree of doneness, roasts

cooked for 20 to 24 hours were preferred in 100 per cent of the

taste tests to roasts cooked in 3 hours or less. Although the

cooking time seems startling at first, the meat is so amazingly

delicious, juicy, and tender, slices so beautifully, and shrinks so

little that meats cooked at higher temperatures no longer taste

good to you."

Adelle Davis. Let's Cook it Rright,

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1947

[Adam Balic]

The pot was a glazed Tuscan bean pot. I added a tiny amount of liquid (juice of one Citron). The meat had basically no contraction (I assume that the temp was to low to effect the conective tissue).

Based on the amount of liquid that was released by the meat and the rate that it was readsorbed/evaporated at, I would have had to cook the pot for at least 24 hours at 80.C, to get rid of the liquid. The white of the eggs had only changed to a light tan colour, if uniformly so.

When the stew was cooled, the liquid did not gel at all, so this makes me think that after 12 hours the collagen had not been broken down completely.

[Wolfert]

If I were to follow Adelle Davis' method: I would first "put the meat in a preheated 300 F degree oven for l hour to destroy ybacteria on the surface. Then adjust the heat to the internal temperature desired, and forget about it. The longer the meat cooks, the more tender it becomes."

I have done this method with pork roasts,always firstat 300F then down to 180 degree F for 12 to 18 hours depending on size. Fabulous. The key is to cook the meat to the internal temperature desired.

Edited September 11, 2003 by Wolfert (log)

[Nancy Berry]

Getting back to Suvir's comment about Dum Pukht in North India - for this they traditionally do pile coals on top of the pot, which in turn is sitting on more coals. Wonder therefore whether this is an indigenous invention (plausible) or another Arab / Persian adaptation (equally plausible).

The dutch oven has been used for a long time in the Western United States -- it was popular among pioneers, cowboys and other cooks who didn't have traditional kitchens available. I wonder whether some of the dishes described here might also be cooked using a cast iron dutch oven with legs and a flanged lid that holds coals on top and sits over a bed of coals.

[lueid813]

Re: Tangia?

I am curious that no one has mentioned a fact about the tangia which I took for granted, but now that I have thought about it I realize that, as far as I know, this particular fact comes from a single source, so I don't know if it's something that is widely true about tangia cooking or something that occurs rarely . . . namely:

Tangia are prepared in the morning and then taken to cook at the hammam (the public bathhouse) where they are left all day and collected in the afternoon.

My source for this is this article from the Guardian Unlimited website, First, preheat your sauna . . ., which relates taking a cooking class in Marrakesh:

A warm breeze stirs the palm trees as Nezha chops up some preserved lemons and hands them around. We pop them into a tall clay pot with a hunk of lamb, a pinch of cumin, turmeric and ginger, and a blob of concentrated butter. This is simple. So simple in fact that I even start to think I might try this one at home, until Frederic, our host and chef for the week, states: 'Now we go to the hammam!'

Pardon me, but this seems a rather odd point in the proceedings to be heading off for a communal bath and sauna. We are in the middle of a cookery class. But, as I am about to discover, to be authentic, tangia , a speciality dish of Marrakesh, must be cooked in the ashes of the fires that burn underneath the city's hammams, keeping the water piping hot and the steam rooms steamy. Traditionally the man of the house will prepare the tangia in the morning, drop it off at the neighbourhood bathhouse on his way to work and pick it up several hours later on his way home.

. . .

Using the fire of the public bathhouse for cooking brings to mind the communal village ovens that were once common all over the Mediterranean. The practice certainly saves fuel.

So I wonder, is this method of cooking a tangia still common today?

Edited March 25, 2004 by lueid813 (log)

[Adam Balic]

I can't tell you about your question, but Paula Wolfert's account suggets that it is made, but not very common.

RE: Tangia? Tannur? Tandooori? I wrote to and pestered Charles Perry on this topic. He was kind enough to point out that 'Tangia' is most likely named after 'Tangiers'. I am much embarrassed.

[Wolfert]

RE: Tangia? Tannur? Tandooori? I wrote to and pestered Charles Perry on this topic. He was kind enough to point out that 'Tangia' is most likely named after 'Tangiers'. I am much embarrassed.

<ı would not be embarrased. Tangıa ıs a specıalty of the south---maınly marrakech. <I doubt ıt has anythıng to do wıth Tangıers

[Wolfert]

RE: Tangia? Tannur? Tandooori? I wrote to and pestered Charles Perry on this topic. He was kind enough to point out that 'Tangia' is most likely named after 'Tangiers'. I am much embarrassed.

<ı would not be embarrassed. Tangıa ıs a specıalty of the south---maınly marrakech. <I doubt ıt has anythıng to do wıth Tangıers

[archestratus]

Tangia sounds like its a particular transliteration of a kind of cooking vessel used in the Maghrib, a cylindrical tin-lined stew pot called a tanjara.

[Adam Balic]

Or is it possible that tanjara is derived from tangia? It would seem more logical (if not nessarily correct) that the terracotta pot would proceed the development of the tinned pot?

[archestratus]

both tangia (tanjiyya, properly)and tanjara derive from the same Mauro-Arabic root T-N-J, which simply means "pot."

[Adam Balic]

Tangiers is named after a pot? Who knew.

I am getting the feeling that the Mauro-Arabic language group (?) likes this sound. Do they all have a root? I once read that tagine was rooted in Greek for pan/dish, but unfortunately the top google search for "tagine etymology" lists this thread and some comments I made at one point. I may not be that modest, but even I have limits of self-referencing!

[archestratus]

tajin (tagine) does indeed derive from the Greek teganon, the word for pan, as does the Italian tegame. Probably, tanjara and tanjiyya do too, ultimately.