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

[Olwen the Odd]

>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.
>
>Anahita

Injera is made with ethiopian flat beer as an additive.  I suppose you might
be able to substitute a black and tan flat beer for that mixuture as the
liquid.
Olwen

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