[Sca-cooks] carrot cake

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Here's my recipe for the Carrot Paste in the Andalusian cookbook.
Nothing like carrot cake, though...

This will soon be on my web site along with the other recipes and my
notes from the Mists Bardic Feast. If anyone on this list was there,
please feel free to critique the food.

The meal as a whole was not from one time and place because the
Autocrat wanted a mixed culture feast. There was a thread tying much
of the food together:  most of the European food included main
ingredients (NOT counting the spices) or even basic recipes from the
Near East.

And there was modern baklava, also at the Autocrat's request, which i
selected from a cookbook i have on Eastern Mediterranean Patisserie -
the recipe was a Syrian-Lebanese variation.

I don't consider myself much of a baker, although eventually i want
to experiment with the dough for the layers in the baklava precursors
in The Book of Familiar Foods and in al-Baghdadi.

Anahita

---------------------

CARROT PASTE

ORIGINAL
The Anonymous Andalusian cookbook, 13th c.
from Charles Perry's translation,
on-line at Duke Cariadoc's website:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian10.htm#Heading519

(More wonderful info at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Medieval.html )

Take a ratl of carrots, of which you have cleaned the interior. Cook
it in a ratl of water, some two boilings, then take it off the fire
and let it dry a little, 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 ratl.

Eat it like a nut at meals. Its benefits: it fortifies coitus and
increases desire beautifully; it is admirable.

MY VERSION

5 lb. carrots
5 cup water
2.5 lb. honey
2 cups sugar
1 Tb. + 1-1/2 tsp. ginger
1 Tb. + 1-1/2 tsp. galingale
1 Tb. + 1-1/2 tsp. cubeb
1 Tb. + 1-1/2 tsp. clove

1. Cook carrots in just enough water to cover.
2. Add honey to carrots.
3. Cook until very tender, mashing occasionally.
4. Add sugar and a bit more water.
5. Cook until most of the water cooks out.
6. Season it with ginger, galingale, cubeb and clove.

ANAHITA'S NOTES:
First: I know that the recipe calls for equal weights of honey and
carrots, but i find the flavor of honey often overpowers what is
cooked in it, so i sweetened with some additional sugar and less
honey (and my version was probably not as sweet as the original was
supposed to be).

Second: This is very similar to a sweet that a Zoroastrian friend of
mine loves (i think it's gajjar halva but i could be wrong), although
that version is cooked entirely with sugar, not honey. It usually
also has butter, crushed pistachios, rosewater, and cardamom (and
probably no galangal), and sometimes even has silver leaf in it. His
aunt makes it for him. Apparently in his community it is usually
served to women who want to get pregnant or who are pregnant.

Third: It also is bears a distant resemblance to the "carrot
spoon-fruit" i buy at my local Persian market. Theirs is made with
grated carrots, orange rind, sugar, and lemon juice (no spices), so
the resemblance is indeed distant.