[Sca-cooks] Honey Butter? No! No!

[phoenissa at netscape.net]

lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

>I may also serve some other "spreads". I'll explore my Near Eastern
>cookbooks. A local Persian shop sells "carrot spoon fruit" - not that
>i think carrots are fruit, but the carrots are finely grated, cooked
>with sugar, orange peel, sliced almonds, and spices. I vaguely recall
>something slightly similar in something i read...

Well, here's a "carrot paste" from the Andalusian cookbook:
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Carrot Paste
Take a ratl of carrots, of which you have cleaned the interior.  (Do they mean core them??)  Cook it in a ratl of water, some two boilings, then take it off the fire and let it dry a littl, over a sieve.  Add it to three ratls of honey, cleaned of its foam, and cook all this until it takes the form of a paste.  Then season it with ginger, galingale, cubeb, and flowers [of clove?], half an uqiya in all for each ratle.  Eat it like a nut at meals.  Its benefits: it fortifies coitus (!) and increases desire beautifully; it is admirable.
---
Good grief.  Who would've thought carrots were supposed to be an aphrodisiac :-/

Anyway, it doesn't have quite the ingredients you mentioned, but it is sweet and made from carrots - only one I know of so far.  The one you describe above sounds yummy, even if it's a figment of your imagination :-)
On second thought, the recipe I just gave isn't really s spread - it sounds more like a very solid paste.  Like membrillo, that fabulous Spanish quince stuff...it's a solid paste and you cut it in slices (and eat it with manchego cheese - yummy!)  But it might still work.  If it really is that thick, people can still slice it and eat it on bread.

>So perhaps i also hallucinated Medieval Near Eastern carrot sweets -
>although there are quite a few carrot sweets in modern Persia and
>India. If i don't find a "period" recipe, i'm not making it.

Well you could make it for yourself for experimentation's sake, just not for the feast :)  Actually, I may experiment with it too.  It really does sound rather nice.

By the way, I don't know what era you're planning for this "around the world" feast - or is it "around the timeline," too? ;) - but for Italian food, Platina's got some good stuff.  My favorite is the fava beans with sage and figs..but I have just learned the hard way that fava beans are NOT practical to make in very large quantities.  Sigh.

Vittoria
slowly catching up on email after a busy weekend
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