The World That Was - Sumerian Tuh'u Stew

 Hello and Welcome to The World That Was!

Today, I'll be making another Sumerian Stew - this time, a lamb and beet stew called tuh’u (pronounced “tuh-i”). This is a luxury dish, given that meat was a rarity in the cuisine of ancient Mesopotamia - as well as in antiquity in general! 

The original recipe comes from one of the cuneiform tablets in the Yale Cuneiform collection - and a translation can be seen below, courtesy of Klaus Wagensonner.

As usual, you can follow along with this recipe using my video above! In any case, let’s take a look at The World That Was!

Ingredients:

250g lamb meat (any cut of meat will do)

1 tbsp olive oil (or melted butter)

240ml or 1 cup beer (wheat or barley beer would be best)

120ml or 1/2 cup water

1 onion, chopped

1 cup rocket leaves, chopped (also known as arugula)

1 cup minced cilantro or parsely

1 shallot, chopped

400g beetroot, skinned and diced

1 leek, chopped

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp cumin

Method:

1 - Prepare the Pot

Much like other Sumerian stews, we need to start with fat. I'm using olive oil here, but the original recipe called for sheep fat. As such, oil or butter would be a good substitute. Pour about a tablespoon's worth of oil into a pot, and put this onto medium heat.

2 - Prepare the Meat

While your oil is heating up, go chop some lamb meat. The original recipe specified "leg meat", but any cut of meat would do. Dice your meat into small pieces, each about as big as your thumb. Toss these into your pot when the oil starts to shimmer, and turn the heat up to high. Sear the meat until it's browned all over. If the bottom of the pot looks brown, that's just fond forming, and will get scraped up as we go!

3 - Chop your Onions and Shallots

While your meat is browning, go chop your ingredients. Slice your onion into thin rings, or into cubes - keeping them all the same size and thickness. Toss your onions into your pot, and mix everything together for about 5 minutes (or until they're translucent). Chop a shallot into small chunks or slices, making sure they're all the same size, and toss them into the pot with the lamb and onions.

4 - Dice your Other Ingredients

Sink and dice your beets these into large chunks (or small chunks, if you're not too keen on the texture of them). Be careful with the juices from these, because it DOES stain! Toss this into a bowl, and turn to your rocket.

Rocket is also known as arugula, and the leaves have a mild peppery taste. Chop about a cup's worth of these leaves, before tossing it into a bowl. Chop this the same way you would fresh herbs, by rolling it into a ball.

Much like how we can chop parsley! I’m not using the cilantro called for in the original recipe - given that it tastes like soap to me -so if it doesn't taste like soap to you, use cilantro here!

5 - Mix Everything Together

Toss in all the chopped ingredients into the mix, mixing so everything is combined. Add a teaspoon of cumin to the pot, and fold everything together. Keep folding and mixing everything for about 5 minutes, or until it smells fragrant. The water in the vegetables should evaporate during this time.

6 - Add Liquid and Cook

Pour in a cup's worth of beer, and a half a cup of water. Sumerian beer was somewhat more sour than beer today, and would have been brewed with barley.  I'm using a Weissbeer - German Wheat Beer - as a close modern substitute. The alcohol in this will boil off shortly, but the taste will remain!

Then, bring this all to a rolling boil, before turning it down to a bare simmer. At this point, take two garlic cloves, and crush them in a mortar and pestle. Finely chop about half a cup's worth of leek, and grind this in a mortar too. Mix these together into a paste, and toss into your pot. Give it a stir, and leave it to cook uncovered for about an hour. Keep an eye on the pot to make sure it hasn’t dried out too much. If it’s starting to look dry, add a small splash of water to it and mix it up, to keep it from burning.

7 - Plate Up

After an hour, your stew should look thick and vibrant. Pour this into a bowl, and garnish with some cilantro/parsley, and some leek slices, as seen in the video! The beet juices give this dish a very bright colour, and is really offset by the fresh greens of the garnish. The meat is tender and succulent, and mildly flavoured from the cumin. The beets are soft, and melt in your mouth - in my batch they retained the flavour of the beer I had used more than anything else, so keep that in mind when choosing what beer to use!

All in all, this is another fairly simple dish that would likely have been only eaten on special occasions - such as a royal feast, religious occasion, or other form of ceremony where meat would have been eaten!