[Sca-cooks] Questions....

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Elaine Koogler:
>Hey folks...
>I have a couple of questions that I suspect you guys may be able to answer:
>
>In one recipe, I encountered a reference to "leavening"....from de Nola:
>
>Oranges from Xativa Which Are Crullers
>      
>Take fresh cheese and curds, and mash them in a mortar together with 
>eggs.  Then take dough and knead the cheeses with the curds, 
>together with the dough, and when they are all kneaded and 
>incorporated take a very clean casserole, and add to it a good 
>quantity of sweet pork fat or sweet oil which should be fine, and 
>when the pork lard or oil boils, make some round masses from the 
>aforementioned dough, like balls or round oranges, and put them in 
>the pot in such a way that the ball goes swimming through the 
>casserole, and you can make small rissoles from the dough, or 
>whatever forms and remarkable things you wish, and when they take on 
>the color of gold, remove them, and add a few more, and when they 
>are all fried, put them on plates, and pour honey over them, and 
>scatter ground sugar and cinnamon over them.  But note one thing: 
>that you should add a little leavening to the cheeses and the eggs, 
>and add flour to the other, and when you make the balls grease your 
>hands with a little oil which should be fine and then take them to 
>the casserole, and once they are in if the dough crackles it is a 
>sign that it is very soft; and you need to add more flour until it 
>is harder, and once the dough is prepared and fired add the honey 
>and sugar and cinnamon as is described above.
>
>What kind of leavening are they referring to?  Could I get away with 
>using yeast?

Presumably the recipe is calling for either sourdough starter or 
barm, which would be skimmed or racked (depending on the yeast and 
brew type) from actively fermenting beer or wine. Yeah, I think you 
probably could use dry or compressed yeast, if you first mixed it 
with a little water and maybe 1/2 tsp sugar, the way you often do to 
get a "sponge" before baking with it.

I have a Latino (Colombian, I think) bakery a couple of blocks from 
home, and they sell what I STR are called bunuelas that sound and 
look nearly identical to what this recipe describes. In fact they do 
look quite a bit like oranges. I like the detail in this recipe of 
the oiled hands and the comment on the cracked dough, because it 
seems likely you need to build a sort of gluten skin on each of these 
as you form them. The standard technique used in some Greek fritter 
recipes to achieve this would be to sort of squeeze a double fistful 
of the dough out between the fingers into a round ball shape, which 
you pinch off, leaving a smooth and unwrinkled surface to the 
fritter, rather than that sort of convoluted surface that foods 
rolled into balls can sometimes have. All I know is that when 
fritters crack, they seem to tend to absorb lots of fat in the 
cooking process, more so than when they don't crack, so this may be 
why this is important. The ones I see in the bakery are pretty 
astonishingly smooth and round.

>Secondly, I also have a recipe, from Cuoco Napoletano, for a Cherry 
>Torte that calls for rose petals.  Now I know I won't be able to get 
>these locally as I doubt we'll have roses in early May.  And I know 
>I can't go to a florist for them because those have been treated 
>with insecticides, etc.  Any suggestions as to where I could get 
>these...or could I simply omit them.  The recipe calls for 
>sprinkling rosewater over the torte after it has baked, so it will 
>get some of that flavor.  I don't know that I want to add rosewater 
>to the ingredients for the torte because it would be too watery.

Actually, if it's warm from the oven (which is when things sprinkled 
with aromatics are usually at their best), there's still going to be 
all sorts of internal steam activity; a _small_ amount of rosewater, 
even a few pumps of some kind of spray atomizer thingy, probably 
wouldn't hurt. We're probably talking about less than 1/4 tsp of 
rosewater here, so I doubt it would get watery. It might just take 
the edge of some of the crispness, but not too badly, I'd think. 
Another possibility, if you think it's appropriate, would be to get 
some candied rose petals and garnish with those.

Adamantius