SC - Recipe: Spanish babka (was cinnamon rolls)
Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
Thu Nov 11 20:58:35 PST 1999
The recipe, as promised. Lots of footnotes and comments afterwards.
This one was easy to understand, but hard to translate. There are a lot
of terms that don't have easy English equivalents. (Hence, the
footnotes.)
Source: Diego Granado, _Libro del arte de cozina_, 1599
Translation: Lady Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)
PARA HAZER TORTILLON RELLENO -- To make a stuffed tortillon[1]
Knead two pounds of the flower of the flour[2] with six yolks of fresh
eggs, and two ounces of rosewater, and one ounce of leaven diluted
with tepid water, and four ounces of fresh cows butter[3], or pork lard[3]
which has no bad odor, and salt, and be stirring said dough for the
space of half an hour, and make a thin leaf[4] or pastry[5] and anoint it
with melted fat which should not be very hot, and cut the edges around,
sprinkle the pastry with four ounces of sugar, and one ounce of
cinnamon, and then have a pound of small raisins of Corinth, which have
been given a boil in wine, and a pound of dates cooked in the same
wine, and cut small, and all of the said things should be mixed together
with sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, and nutmeg, and put the said mixture
spread over the pastry with some morsels of cows butter, and
beginning with the long end of the pastry, roll it upwards, taking care not
to break the dough, and this tortillon or roll must not be rolled more than
three turns, so that it will cook better, and it does not have to go very
tight. Anoint it on top with fat, not very hot. It will begin to twist by itself
at one end which is not very closed[6], in such a manner that it
becomes like a snail. Have the pie pan ready with a pastry of the same
dough[7], somewhat fatty, anointed with melted fat, and put the tortillon
lightly upon it without pressing it, and make it cook in the oven, or under
a large earthen pot with temperate fire, tending it from time to time by
anointing it with melted cows butter, and being almost cooked, put
sugar on top, and rosewater, and serve it hot. The pie pan in which you
cook the tortillones must be wide, and must have very low edges.
A bunch of notes:
[1] I cannot find a Spanish culinary definition for tortillon. It is an 18th
century French term for a kind of hairstyle, and a modern French term
for an art tool -- a tightly rolled piece of paper, used to blur and soften
pencil lines. The French words apparently come from the verb tordre --
to twist. All of the recipes which bear this name have a rolled-up pastry
with some kind of filling. If I had to translate the Spanish, I would render
it as something like roll-pastry.
[2] Remember when we were having the discussion about flower
meaning the best of something? I was tempted to comment that some
Spanish recipes have a phrase that I would be obliged to translate as
the flower of the flour. Well, here it is: flor de la harina.
[3] Both of these phrases use the same noun: manteca. This can
mean either butter or lard. I have translated manteca de vaca as cows
butter, manteca de puerco as pork lard, and undifferentiated manteca
as fat.
[4] Ojuela -- literally, small leaf
[5] ojaldre (sometimes spelt hojaldre). Its etymology is also from
hoja (leaf). The modern definition is puff-pastry. The recipes I have
seen for pies made with ojaldre call for a rich unleavened dough with
eggs and fat, about half a finger thick . Its coated with melted fat, rolled
into a cylinder the thickness of an arm, then sliced into pieces two
fingers thick. (Presumably these slices are then rolled out, though the
recipe doesnt specify.) Its basted with melted fat during baking, the
better to separate into leaves. (Ojaldrar, one of those verbs which
require a sentence to translate properly.) Some recipes call for the
base or top pastry of a pie to contain a certain number of ojaldres. This
tortillon recipe seems to say that the dough can either be just rolled out
thinly, or it can be turned into a sort of ojaldre (though they are not
normally leavened, AFAIK). If the former, I dont think it is intended to
be too thin, since the roll is only supposed to make three turns.
[6] I gather from this that one end *should* be tightly closed, leaving the
other to expand into a snail-like trumpet.
[7] This pastry underneath seems to function as part of the pan, not part
of the tortillon. It appears in other recipes as well. A non-stick cookie
sheet might render it unnecessary.
Other assorted comments on redacting this:
Two pounds of flour is more than eight cups. Id be inclined to halve the
recipe, unless you were making a huge pastry to serve high table.
I dont know how much one ounce of leaven is in modern terms. For a
half recipe (four cups of flour), a package of dried yeast (2-1/4
teaspoons) would suffice.
I look forward to redacting this one, since yeasted baked goods are
something I enjoy making. I also loo forward to seeing what other folks
make of this one.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
mka Robin Carroll-Mann
harper at idt.net
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