[Sca-cooks] Pt. 3 - Medieval Persian Iron Chef

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Sandra Kisner <sjk3 at admin.is.cornell.edu> wrote:
>>The original was made of some sort of semolina sourdough batter.
>>Although it is described as being for "pancakes", there really aren't
>>any pancakes like our modern ones that i can think of in the Near
>>Eastern corpus. Rather there are some very flat, almost translucent,
>>stretched-out, stove-top cooked pan breads. I haven't eaten any Near
>>Eastern sourdough breads that i know of... so this would be something
>>to test and experiment with.
>
>      I seem to remember a bread/spongy pancake made with tef that
>was quite sour.  Injera?  It may have been >from Ethiopia, however.

Indeed, injera (various spellings) is a somewhat spongy sourdough
"pancake" bread and yes, it is from Ethiopia. When i first began
eating Ethiopian (and Eritrean) food in the early 80's i think the
restaurants were really using tef or millet or something, but lately
some of the enjira i've been getting takes like Bisquik...

The Medieval Arabic recipe specifies samid, which is semolina, for
the flour. I'm not really a baker, but i don't see why one couldn't
make a sourdough batter with semolina. I just didn't have the time or
resources to experiment as i became head cook on short notice, have
no kitchen and my cooking gear is in storage.

I don't pre-test my recipes. I just go into the kitchen and cook. I
tend to start with smaller amounts of seasonings, then increase them
as the food cooks until it tastes "right". The recipes have what i
think i used for the feast, not what my original outline had, as i
increased a number of seasonings during the cooking and have tried to
incorporate this into the written recipe. So far, for the two feasts
i've cooked, the food has turned out fine.

In any event, a sourdough semolina batter could be experimented with.
I think the taste would be interesting: the sour dough, the sweet
fruit, the spiced syrup... I'm just not so sure about the roasted
chicken on top :-)

Anahita