13th C Arabian eggplant with or without minced meat.
Take eggplant and boil lightly in water and salt, then take out and dry for an hour. Fry this in fresh sesame oil until cooked: peel, put into a dish or large cup, and beat well with a ladle, until it becomes like khabis. Add a little salt and dry coriander. Take some Persian milk, mix in garlic, pour over the eggplant, and mix together well. Take red meat, mince fine, make into small kabobs, add melting fresh tail, throw the meat into it stirring until browned. Then cover with water, and stew until the water has evaporated and only the oils remain. Pour on top of this eggplant, sprinkle with fine-ground cumin and cinnamon, and serve. – al-Baghdadi
My Version
Peel and cut the eggplant into slices. Boil in salted water until just tender. Remove from water and let drain spread on a cooling rack for about an hour. Fry the drained slices in sesame oil.
Mash the fried eggplant. Add salt and dried coriander leaves (cilantro). Mix yogurt and garlic. Mix the yogurt mixture with the mashed eggplant.
I decided to serve this with just the eggplant mixture so it remained a vegetarian dish.
Sources
– al-Baghdadi = al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Karim al-Katib al-Baghdadi, the thirteenth century author of a surviving cookbook. [selected recipes translated by David Waines in In a Caliph’s Kitchen and complete text in “A Baghdad Cookery Book”, trans. by A.J. Arberry, notes by Charles Perry, in Medieval Arab Cookery]
A Baghdad Cookery Book, that is, The Book of Dishes (Kitab al-Tabikh) by Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Karim, the scribe of Baghdad, usually called Al Baghdadi.