[Sca-cooks] Looking for Crab recipes

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Bronwynmgn at aol.com:
>In a message dated 1/11/2004 12:16:30 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>adamantius at verizon.net writes:
>
><<My theory, for lack of a better one, is that almond oil is _the_
>perfect waterproofing material for rice, and that rice to be cooked
>in almond milk either needs to be precooked in water or stock first,
>or bruised or pulverized in some way to speed up the process.>>
>
>Hmm.  There's a recipe called Ryse of Fish Day in, I think, Forme of Cury,
>which calls for rice to be cooked in almond milk made with water, and it's
>worked quite successfully for us, in feast quantities.
>Yes, it is Forme of Cury:  Blanch almonds and grind him, and draw him up with
>water. Wash the rice clean, and do thereto "sugar roche" and salt; let him be
>standing.  Frye almonds brown, and flourish it therewith, or with sugar.
>
>The only recipes I've seen that start with "wash rice clean" are for raw rice.
>
>We've also faked a sort of Rice of flesh by throwing ground almonds into the
>cooking broth, while the rice was cooking, rather than steeping the almonds
>seperately in a small amount of the broth and adding it in before serving, as
>the recipe actually says to do.

As I said, it was for lack of a better theory. All I can say for sure 
is what phenomenon occurred, and I have about 400 witnesses to that. 
I just cannot easily explain _why_ it occurred the way it did. Maybe 
it was really old rice, as with [was it Christiana's or Selene's, I 
forget which] blackeyed peas of last week or so. However, my 
experience with really old rice is that it gets mushy more easily, 
rather than staying rock-hard.

However, regardless, I'd still have to say that more rice recipes 
call for cooking in something watery first, and adding almond milk 
later, than for cooking it in almond milk, and that doing the 
water-phase cooking in advance is reasonably in keeping with that, 
and would have solved my problem, had I done it. Certainly it 
couldn't hurt, all other things being equal.

Adamantius