[Sca-cooks] A Cinnamon Tart

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Barbara Benson writes:

>OK, on to the question. I prepared the below item and entered it into our
>local A&S competition (at that point I had not found the German, I had only
>the English translation by Valoise Armstrong). One of the questions that was
>brought out by the judges was regarding the almonds.
>
>The way I read the receipt it did not specify that the almonds be blanched -
>it just says ground. So I ground unblanched, skin on almonds and it provided
>a lovely flavor. The judges questioned weather or not the blanching would be
>a matter of course. I am not certain how to figure out the answer to this
>question - would the almonds have been blanched or not?

I know there've been a number of responses to this already, most of
which seemed eminently sensible. I'm going to throw in another aspect
I don't recall being mentioned in other responses.

If, as it seems, your judge is simply assuming all almond dishes
would have been based on blanched, peeled almonds, perhaps the
simplest solution would be to show specific documentation for the
practice of not blanching them. Both de Nola and Platina, among
others, both include recipes for mirrauste de Catalonia (spelling may
vary from source to source), calling for the almonds to be ground and
used specifically in unblanched form. The same goes for both Le
Menagier de Paris and Taillevent, who include, IIRC,
terra-cotta-colored "tile" dishes (generally meat sauced with spiced
milk from unblanched almonds, to give it a russet color, fairly
similar to the mirrauste dishes).

One could argue that, since these dishes are specifically mentioned
as being made from unblanched nuts, other dishes that don't specify
must be made from blanched almonds. But just as easily, one could
argue that if the recipe intended the almonds to be blanched, it's no
skin off his almonds to say so.

There now. I've got through all this without once saying a word about
silly artificial competitions and incompetent judges... ;-)

Adamantius