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Wok eggs, fried rice and hot Dry Noodles.
From 4,000-year-old tablets, a thoroughly modern stew
Babylonian Lamb or Beef and Turnip Stew
The starting point for this dish comes from the translation of a recipe from the Yale Babylonian culinary tablets. To create a fragrant, full-flavored stew, we approximated and adjusted ingredients, and we turned to the oven for steady, constant simmering. Lamb is the traditional meat, and we opted to use lamb shanks, as the marrow gives the braising liquid body and richness; we shred the meat after cooking and discard the bones. We found the stew was just as delicious made with bone-in beef shanks (1 to 1½ inches thick). The culinary tablets reveal that beer was used as a cooking liquid in Mesopotamia, so we developed this dish with a wheat beer for notes of sweetness and fermentation; a lager works, too. Steamed bulgur (recipe follows) is an ideal accompaniment.
4-6
Servings
Tip
Don’t forget to rinse and dry the leeks. Leeks’ many layers trap dirt and sand. To prevent grit from winding up in the stew, be sure to wash and drain them after slicing, then dry them to remove excess moisture that would otherwise impede browning.
3¾ hours
1 hour active
Ingredients
-
4
12-ounce lamb shanks or 3 pounds beef shanks, trimmed
-
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
Directions
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