Friday 24 November 2017

A Meal In A Tent in A Desert

The Crown Princess of Montival and the Empress of Japan find a Jewish community in the desert.

They eat:

chicken soup with dumplings;

grilled lamb and emu with garlic and chilies on steamed semolina;

round risen wheat loaves, dipped in spicy and ground chickpea sauces;

mesquite bean flour, maize-meal and beans with caramelized onions and herbs;

sweet peeled prickly-pear fruit;

small honey-sweetened cakes with dates and pinon nuts -

- and drink:

herb tea;
cooled water;
sweet fruit liqueur.

SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Thirty-One, pp. 787-788.

Stirling always gives us food for thought.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Yet again, a very nice, very tempting banquet Stirling offers us! And, these people being Jews, what I noticed is that no dairy products, such as cheeses, were included in the meal. Goes back to the prohibition in the Book of Numbers, I think, to eating a kid cooked or boiled in its mother's milk.

And, of course, nothing made from pigs!

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Ostriches are tref; but emus aren't -- not having been around at the time of Leviticus...

Sean M. Brooks said...

Dear Mr. Stirling,

I had not known that emus were kosher! For a Christian, of course, this does not matter. All foods are kosher, is what has to be concluded from what Christ said in Mark 7.17-23 ("thus he declared all foods clean," verse 19).

Sean