SC - Whipping eggwhites

[upsxdls_osu@ionet.net]

We made the version Perry refers to for an event last fall.  It is, I suppose, a
sort of baklava, but uses a pancake-like layer rather than phyllo, which I
understand is not period.  However, the filling is a syrup with nuts mixed into
it.  The dish was called Gullach, and came from the "Chu-chia pi-yung shih lei"
and was one of the Muslim recipes in an article Charles Perry and Paul Buell
wrote (can't find it at the moment, but will send the reference as soon as I find
it).  My redaction of the recipe follows:

Gullach

Mix evenly egg white, bean paste and cream [to make a dough].  Spread out [dough]
and fry into thin pancakes.  Use one layer of white powdered sugar, [ground] pine
nuts and [ground] walnuts for each layer of pancake.  Make three-four layers like
this.  Pour honey dissolved in ghee [“Muslim oil”] over the top.  Eat.

2 Egg whites
½ cup soy flour
½ cup table cream
1/16 cup water
3 tbsp. Powdered sugar
½ cup Pine nuts, ground
½ cup Walnuts, ground
½ cup Honey
3 tbsp. Ghee

1. Mix egg whites, flour and cream to make a dough
2. Fry into thin pancakes
3. Mix sugar and nuts together.
4. Heat ghee and mix in honey
5. Build 3 layers, alternating pancakes and sugar/nut mixture, finishing with
sugar/nut mixture.
6. Drizzle ghee/honey mixture over pancakes.
7. Serve as warm as possible.

As you can see, it does greatly resemble baklava, and Perry and others believe
that it is a "proto-baklava".

Hope this helps!

Kiri



david friedman wrote:

> Hrolf Hrolfsen apparently wrote, about Baklava:
>
> >"The recipe is easy.   As for documentation - someone else seems to have my
> >recipe books.  Try Min or Lorix as the most likely culprits.  In fact you
> >can easily document the existence of baklava by finding early collections of
> >Mullah Nasrudin stories (which date from the 13th century).  There are
> >several which involve baklava by name as it was his favourite dessert.
>
> 1. Do we know whether "baklava" (in the modern arabic form)  is in
> the 13th c. original? If not,  "baklava" might be simply the
> translator's guess at the nearest modern equivalent. Indeed, are
> there any surviving 13th c. Nasrudin stories (i.e. ones we have in
> the form they were written down then), or is that merely a conjecture
> about when the stories we now have originated?
>
> 2. Even if the original said "baklava," without a recipe we can't
> tell if it is what we now call "baklava." "Harisa" is a very common
> medieval Islamic dish--and has almost nothing in common with two
> modern middle eastern dishes that have the same name. Or compare
> medieval gingerbrede with modern gingerbread. Or compare modern
> halvah with hulwa in period.
>
> 3.  I am reasonably sure that none of the three medieval Islamic
> cookbooks that I know reasonably well has a recipe for what we call
> baklava. There are recipes that produce lots of thin layers of dough
> (I'm thinking of Musamanna, which I made yesterday), but it isn't
> made the way filo is made. There are lots of recipes with pastry and
> nuts and sugar and butter, but that doesn't add up to baklava.
>
> 4. On the other hand,  I think I saw something somewhere by Charles
> Perry referring to a medieval baklava--and he knows lots about
> medieval Islamic cooking.
>
> Any chance of getting Hrolf Hrolfsen onto the list? His comment that
>
>   " I can say that this is one of the areas of the world where methods do not
> change (with the exception of the tomato / tamarind swap and the ready
> adoption of chilli - which was done in period) over the centuries."
>
> strikes me as implausible, and I would be interested in the evidence
> he has to support it. Alternatively, can someone send me his email
> address?
> --
> David/Cariadoc
> http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
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