In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food (7 page)

The Sultan’s Date

There are said to be eight hundred separate uses for dates in Arabic cuisine, including wine; the naturally alcoholic juice from the tree is Islam’s sole “legal” source of alcohol (it tastes a bit like peanut butter), and is so popular that the Egyptian government had to ban the cutting down of date trees. The following recipe for Rutab Mu’ ass al (dates in saffron) comes from the classic eighth-century Baghdad cookbook
Kitab al-Tabikh
, as adapted in David Waines’s
In a Caliph’s Kitchen
. The original manuscript was written by a member of a royal family and a female slave and is Islam’s earliest culinary text.

1 pound fresh dates, preferably
Khustawi
variety
Blanched almonds, one per date
3 tablespoons rosewater
¼ teaspoon saffron
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons superfine sugar, plus more to cover
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Slit and remove the stone from each date and replace with one blanched almond. Squeeze closed. Bring the rosewater, saffron, and honey to a boil and simmer for three to four minutes. Let cool and pour over the dates. Make sure every date is coated. Let them sit for a couple of hours or overnight. Mix sugar and cinnamon together. Remove dates from the syrup and roll in the sugar/cinnamon mixture (see endnotes for more elaborate recipe). Store in a cool place, covered with more sugar. Dates (frozen) are available year round but are best in the fall, when you can get them fresh.

Angel Food Cake

The diet enjoyed by human souls in the afterlife seems relatively clear. But what about the angels? The nature of angelic cuisine has been debated for centuries. Islamic scholar Ibn Majah said the Heavenly Host dines exclusively upon the “Glory of God,” washed down by “Proclaiming His Holiness.” Mark Twain felt certain that the heavenly food must be watermelons. The preponderance of evidence, however, suggests angels prefer toast. Psalm 78 of the Bible states that these spirits (we’re talking Judeo-Christian-Islamic here) live on “the wheat of heaven,” or manna. The former suggests bread, but manna? In the biblical language of Aramaic, manna is said to mean, “What is this?” Hardly definitive. Fortunately, the Bible contains some interesting clues, particularly in the bit where the Jews fleeing Egypt run out of grub, and, boom!, this manna stuff starts falling from the sky. Moses immediately tells everyone to grab it up because “this is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.” Everybody gathered the stuff up and baked it into something that tasted “like wafers made with honey.” It turns out there’s a mosslike lichen,
Lecanora esculenta,
that clings to cliffs in the Middle East. High desert winds will sometimes scatter this stuff throughout the desert until it falls like rain on Bedouin settlements. It has a naturally sweet flavor. The locals call it the “fat of the Earth” and use it to make a kind of bread that is sometimes flavored with anise and honey called
Panakarpian
(popular in Alexandria). Bread made from manna, the ideal food of the angels. It’s best enjoyed fresh from the oven or toasted. It also makes a nice jam.

Should Jehovah ever offer you a slice, however, don’t be as greedy as the Jews, who, after forty days of nothing but manna, started kvetching. “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt,” they whined, “the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks and the garlic. But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes.” So Jehovah obligingly sent over some delicious little chickadees, actually quails, which, just like the manna, fell from the sky at their feet and waited to be eaten. Fires were kindled, wine decanted, and everybody set to. But it was a trick. The LORD, it seems, was “most wroth” at their display of gluttonous ingratitude—what if all his angelic employees started complaining about manna?— and “while the flesh was yet between their teeth . . . the LORD smote them with a very great plague.” Food poisoning, in other words. It turns out that this tale is also likely true because quails traditionally migrate through the area en route to Africa. It’s a long flight, and by all accounts the birds arrive completely exhausted, hence the bit about their flopping down at the Israelis’ feet. The Heaven-sent “plague” stems from the fact that quails eat the herbs hellebore and henbane, both of which contain toxins. This is not normally a problem, but when the birds are seriously dehydrated, the poisons can get dangerously concentrated in musculature. The Greeks knew about this, but the Jews did not, and the quails gave the entire Nation of Israel one serious stomachache. Those who’d complained loudest about the manna were buried on the spot.

Saints and Supermodels

Medieval saints and modern fashion models may seem to strive for very different types of perfection—one strictly spiritual, the other physical—but both have traditionally chosen extreme dieting as the surest means to express their divine natures. The current vogue for skeletal beauty is too well known to require comment. But they were closely paralleled by medieval holy women, half of whom engaged in compulsive dieting, often to death, and who were twice as likely as their male equivalents to engage in starvation fasts. In his book
Holy Anorexia
, Rudolph Bell postulates that the two ages’ shared obsession stems from outbreaks of anorexia nervosa, a psychological condition in which women starve themselves under the delusion that any eating is an act of gluttony. Others suggest it stems from women’s unique relationship to food and motherhood. Whatever the reason, the menus put together by both are enough to take away the appetite of even the most devout sinner. St. Veronica spent most of her life eating spiders and cat vomit, but eventually settled into a regime consisting of vegetable soup and two ounces of fruit for breakfast. Dinner was a few grapes. Margaret of Cortona in the 1200s lived on nothing but dry bread and minuscule amounts of raw vegetables. Modern models often follow remarkably similar regimes, especially in the weeks before a major shoot or show, during which they eat nothing but cabbage soup in order to reduce their body fat to an absolute minimum. One famous ballerina reportedly survived for years on an apple a day, while others have deliberately induced starvation by drinking enormous quantities of water to kill off their appetite. A number of well-known actresses follow more modern versions of the saints’ regimes by replacing the stale bread breakfast with a fat-free muffin and the raw vegetable dinner with a lightly dressed arugula salad.

What’s interesting about the female saints’ fasting is their motivation. Food deprivation among Judeo-Christians originated as a form of penance and as a reaction to the indulgence of pagan Rome. These female Christian mystics, however, used it primarily to alter their consciousness, a technique summed up by Margaret of Cortona’s comment that she fasted obsessively “in order to be more light headed and allow her soul to be fervent.” True starvation can lead to a complete absence of daydreams— or even dreams—but controlled deprivation tends to leave the subject prone to suggestion and hallucination. And trip out these ladies did. The most popular “vision” among the medieval Twiggies consisted of sexual encounters with Christ. “At first she kissed Christ’s breasts,” recounted Angela of Foligno’s confessor /biographer in the 1300s. “And then she kissed his mouth from which, she said, an admirable and sweet fragrance emanated . . . then she placed her cheek on Christ’s cheek and Christ placed his hand on her other cheek, and drew her close to him.” St. Teresa of Avila described how angels plunging “burning spears into my entrails” made her moan with desire. At times this supercelestial foreplay gets positively coquettish. The patron saint of Italy, Catherine of Siena, described how Christ teased her by “showing me His most sacred side (the open wound) from afar and I cried from the intensity of my longing to put my lips to the sacred wound. After He had laughed for a little while at my tears—at least that is what He seemed to do—He came up to me . . . and put my mouth to where His most sacred wound was.” In other passages she rhapsodizes about how Christ inserted a “red and gleaming” organ (a heart) into her body.

This has striking parallels with the modern dilemma. Models, of course, do not diet in order to have sexual hallucinations involving the Son of God. At least, not exactly. Bear in mind that the fantasies of the medieval saints described above were not private affairs. They were made for public consumption and usually told to a male confessor who shared the vision with the public via pamphlets like the incredibly popular fourteenth-century biography written by St. Catherine of Siena’s confessor. In lieu of achieving sainthood via priests, the modern “saint” creates otherworldly fantasies with fashion designers and photographers, who then share them with the public via an endless stream of magazines. That these tabloid visions are as sexual and paradisaical as those of the saints is beyond question. Perfect women drift through surreal settings of bucolic perfection and insane wealth. They lounge beside swimming pools shimmering with celestial light. To the reader, these are images of an unobtainable Heaven—only slender and perfect goddesses are allowed in these pages! The male models in these tableaus tend to have the same asexual look medieval artists used in portraying Christ: hairless, beautiful, and slender. The women are pictured touching the male model’s body reverently, almost in worship, and many of the photos are done in the “soft focus” look now associated with romance but which was originally connected to the diffused light shed by a halo. When St. Veronica died, her followers tore her body to pieces and then sold the various limbs as religious relics. Italian churches are filled with similar ghoulish trophies, and some have compared this practice to the experience of the runway model being torn asunder in an explosion of paparazzi flashbulbs to create “relics” for worldwide distribution.

In both industries women who have “purified” themselves through extreme fasting are working with or being manipulated by men—priests or fashion designers—who are in the business of selling illusory perfection and who are reputedly largely either gay or sexually inactive. Even the stereotype of the misogynous male fashion designer has an early Christian archetype. St. Jerome, a fourth-century monk, originated the waif look by urging his followers to dress their daughters in rags and make them fast without cessation in order to cool “their hot little bodies.” His definition of a true lady was “one I never saw eat,” and his followers forced their girls to dine alone in a darkened room so no one could see their shameful behavior. That Jerome’s theories should prove so sympathetic to Western fashion moguls isn’t really surprising when you consider that both come from a culture that considers the sexiest sin in history to be the gluttony of a woman named Eve. Jerome ended up in some hot water when one of his female followers, Blaesilla, starved to death under his regime. Likewise, reports indicating that the fashion industry’s obsession with emaciated femininity is creating a generation of women riddled with psychological problems relating to food—currently 84 percent of all American women are on a diet and one in two hundred female college students have been diagnosed with an eating disorder—has led nations like Denmark to hold tentative discussions on outlawing unhealthy media images.

Bitter Herbs

Christina the Astonishing fed on milk from her own miraculously swelling breasts, but the preferred nosh of saints worldwide is a weed so noxious that its touch burns. It is called stinging nettles and makes a nice soup. The twelfth-century Tibetan saint Milarepa lived on the nettle soup
satuk
for so long that his hair turned green. St. Columba of Ireland followed a similar regime until he developed a mysterious weight problem. When the saint confronted his cook with the situation, he discovered she’d been using a hollow spoon to surreptitiously add milk to his broth.

Wear rubber gloves while cutting the nettles, and only use the tender tips. Serves four.

1 heaping cup young nettle leaves
Sliced leeks (for extra flavor)
2 cups combination of boiling milk and stock (or water)
1 ounce butter
2 ounces rolled oats (or rice)
Salt
Pepper
Parsley

Sweat the nettles and leeks without browning for two to three minutes. Add boiling milk and stock combination, the butter, and then the oats (or rice) and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer thirty to forty-five minutes. Taste and correct seasoning. Toss in some parsley and serve forth.

Red Lady

John pointed to a watermelon-sized pair of nipples hanging over our heads.

“These are for her milk, they say,” he explained doubtfully. A pair of worshipers paused to anoint themselves with the milky-looking water dripping from the concrete teats. “They say it is holy.”

We were in Amritsar’s House of the Red Lady. Amritsar is a city in the northwest of India, best known for the Golden Temple belonging to the Sikh religion. Like dutiful tourists, Nina and I had visited the temple and sat by the Holy Pool (“Please to keep your legs crossed . . .”). We’d watched the screaming, sword-waving worshipers make their pilgrimage. We’d gazed at the Sikhs’ Holy Book, which is surrounded night and day by chanting priests. As we left, our rickshaw driver (John) had asked us if we wanted to visit the “ladies museum.” A ladies museum? Our heads immediately filled with visions of some weird tribute to the women’s liberation movement, and we agreed, only to find ourselves at the house of a woman who’d achieved sainthood by intense dieting. That’s an understatement; the general belief is that she lived almost her entire life without eating a single mouthful. Though this is typical behavior in the West, it’s relatively rare in Hindu culture, where female saints, or gurus, tend to be plumpkins who dispense blessings via distinctly maternal hugs. It’s the men who go for the waif look in India. The Red Lady was almost Christian in her love of misery, spending most of her life alone in a little house where she eventually died in the mid-1980s. Word of her ability to survive on air, however, soon spread, and by the time we visited in late 1999 her house had grown into a temple complex with about twenty rooms.

The main room, accessed through a filthy alleyway, contained a brightly painted statue of the Red Lady wearing a pair of hornrim glasses. She looked suspiciously well fed. Dozens of older women snoozed on the floor at the base of the statue. The real action was upstairs, which blurred the boundary between a carnival madhouse and a church. You enter by crawling through a minuscule hallway meant to replicate a fetus’s passage through its mother’s uterus. Once “reborn,” one proceeds through a maze of odd-shaped rooms that wind their way up to the roof and then back down again. There were bright red rooms shaped like a tube. Others were covered in fake stalactites. There were painfully narrow hallways lined with pictures of the Red Lady and Hindu deities like Hanuman the Ape God, elephant-headed Ganesha, and the goddess Kali, her tongue lolling out bloodred and with a severed head in one hand. One room was covered floor to ceiling with beautiful orange and white flowers. The scent of incense was so strong it made one dizzy, and people were singing and praying in every corner. Children—reacting to the fun-house effect of the place—were screaming and running about in a frenzy. The last chamber was a pitch-black room full of water through which you waded in order to reach chanting priests, who led the faithful in a call-response routine before handing out magic coins guaranteed to make their real rupees multiply like jackrabbits.

John explained all the details with a skeptical grin and continually reminded us that he, a former Untouchable who’d become Christian, did not believe in such stuff. He also cast some doubts on the Red Lady’s claims to absolute abstention. Like her Western sisters, who’d had a distinct weakness for communion wafers, the Red Lady had been rumored to enjoy an occasional cup of milk from the sacred cow.