[Sca-cooks] Re: Hais report

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 10, 2005, at 6:43 PM, K C Francis wrote:

> The original recipe gives you the choice of sesame oil OR butter.

Yes. Actually, I believe it calls for sesame oil and then says at the  
end that you can use butter instead. Given that it also says that you  
can use fresh or preserved dates, it might make sense to assume the  
additional moisture content provided by butter might be one way to  
solve the dry-date/dry-bread problem.

I'd also be curious as to whether the untranslated original calls for  
straight butter or ghee.

>   So many people just seem to miss this fact.

Or interpret it differently. In The Joy of Cooking, there's a  
meatloaf recipe (okay, I'm making this up, but work with me) that  
calls for ground beef, or maybe ground beef, pork, and veal. At the  
end it says you can use ground turkey, but that doesn't necessarily  
mean the original recipe was designed for turkey or that most people  
use turkey. So, while butter as a substitution is well within the  
parameters of the original recipe, it still could be said to be a  
substitution, which might be why most people don't immediately think  
of it.

> I entered this recipe in my first Silver Spoon competition (snack  
> foods to be judged with the brewing competition).  I explained in  
> my documentation that I had tried it with the sesame oil and didn't  
> like it (neither the flavor nor the oily texture).  My second batch  
> had butter, WAAAAY better on both counts.  YET, a judge asked on my  
> judging form "why did you use butter?" as if I had made a  
> substitution for an original ingredient and hadn't mentioned it.   
> Go figure.....

So, when you used sesame oil, what kind of sesame oil did you use?

Adamantius



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04