[Sca-cooks] Period Baklava

[David Friedman]

>
>In a message dated 4/4/2007 12:05:42 P.M. Central Daylight Time, 
>sca-cooks-request at lists.ansteorra.org writes:
>
>Now,  does anyone have a source for this isifunj Anne-Marie speaks  of?

From the Andalusian cookbook (13th c.)

Making Stuffed Isfunj

Take semolina and sift it, and take the flour and 
put it in a dish. Take water and sprinkle it 
lightly on the semolina. Then put your hand in it 
and gather it all up and cover it with a second 
dish, leaving it until it sweats. Then uncover it 
and mix it until it becomes like white flour 
[that is, the durum ground wheat should resemble 
soft wheat flour]. Throw oil in it, and mix it, 
and put in leavening and eggs, throw in a measure 
of five eggs and then mix the dough with the 
eggs. Then put it in a new pot, after greasing it 
with oil, and leave it until it rises. Then take 
almonds, walnuts, pine nuts and pistachios, all 
peeled, and pound in a mortar until as fine as 
salt. Then take pure honey and put it on the fire 
and boil it until it is on the point of 
thickening. Then take the almonds, walnuts, 
pistachios and pine-nuts that you have pounded, 
and throw all this upon the honey and stir it 
until it is thickened. Then take the semolina 
dough that was put in the pot, and make a thin, 
small flat cake (raghî f) of it, and put on it a 
morsel of this thickened paste. Then take the 
raghî f with your hand and turn it until it is 
smooth and round and bite-sized. [This sentence 
is in Huici-Miranda's Spanish translation but not 
in the published Arabic text] Make all the dough 
according to this recipe, until the filling is 
used up. The dough should be only moderately 
thin. Then take a frying pan and put oil in it, 
and when it starts to boil, throw in a piece of 
isfunj and fry it with a gentle fire until it is 
done. And if you wish to thicken with sugar, do 
so, and if you with to throw almonds, ground 
sugar, and rosewater into the filling, do so and 
it will come out aromatic and agreeable.

Tharda of Isfunj with Milk

Make isfunj from white flour and make it well, 
and fry it. Add to it while kneading as many eggs 
as it will bear. When you are finished making it 
and frying it, cook as much fresh milk as is 
needed and beat in it eggwhites and fine white 
flour, and stir carefully until cooked. Then cut 
the isfunj into small pieces with scissors and 
moisten with the milk until saturated. Then melt 
butter and throw on the tharid,  and sprinkle 
with sugar and use, God willing.

(there's a worked out version of that one in the Miscellany)

Making of Elegant Isfunja ("Sponge")

You take clear and clean semolina and knead it 
with lukewarm water and yeast and knead again. 
When it has risen, turn the dough, knead fine and 
moisten with water, little by little, so that it 
becomes like tar after the second kneading, until 
it becomes leavened or is nearly risen. Take a 
small new jug, wet it in water and then in 
clarified butter or fresh oil until it is soaked. 
Then take a fat reed. Cut off a length to reach 
to the bottom of the pot. Grease the reed with 
oil and put the lid on the pot and seal (the lid 
to the pot) with clay with the reed inside, and 
put it in the oven with bread, and let it be in 
the middle of the bread. When the bread is done, 
know that it (the "sponge") is also ready. Take 
it out, remove the clay and take out the reed. 
Take fresh or clarified butter and honey. Heat 
them [p. 74, verso] and pour them into the pot in 
the place where you removed the reed and leave it 
until the "sponge" soaks it up. When it has 
absorbed it, add butter or honey until it soaks 
up more. Then break the pot away from it, put it 
on a platter and cut it as you would cut 
watermelon. Chop almonds and walnuts and pine 
nuts and pistachios and lump white sugar and 
sprinkle it over it ...[about two words 
missing]... with cinnamon, Chinese cinnamon or 
the like, if God wishes.

None of them sound to me much like baklava. 
Something a little closer, that I often make at 
Pennsic:

Preparation of Musammana [Buttered] Which Is Muwarraqa [Leafy]
Andalusian p. A-60 - A-61 (GOOD)

Take pure semolina or wheat flour and knead a 
stiff dough without yeast. Moisten it little by 
little and don't stop kneading it until it 
relaxes and is ready and is softened so that you 
can stretch a piece without severing it. Then put 
it in a new frying pan on a moderate fire. When 
the pan has heated, take a piece of the dough and 
roll it out thin on marble or a board. Smear it 
with melted clarified butter or fresh butter 
liquified over water. Then roll it up like a 
cloth until it becomes like a reed. Then twist it 
and beat it with your palm until it becomes like 
a round thin bread, and if you want, fold it over 
also. Then roll it out and beat it with your palm 
a second time until it becomes round and thin. 
Then put it in a heated frying pan after you have 
greased the frying pan with clarified butter, and 
whenever the clarified butter dries out, moisten 
[with butter] little by little, and turn it 
around until it binds, and then take it away and 
make more until you finish the amount you need. 
Then pound them between your palms and toss on 
butter and boiling honey. When it has cooled, 
dust it with ground sugar and serve it.

2 c semolina flour	1/4 c clarified butter 
for frying	1/4 c butter at the end
~ 5/8-3/4 c water	1 T+ sugar	1/4 c honey at the end (or more)
1/4 c = 1/8 lb butter, melted

Stir most of the water into the flour, knead 
together, then gradually knead in the rest of the 
water. Knead for about 5-10 minutes until you 
have a smooth, elastic and slightly sticky dough 
that stretches instead of breaking when you pull 
it a little. Divide in four equal parts. Roll out 
on a floured board, or better on floured marble, 
to at least 13"x15". Smear it with about 4 t 
melted butter. Roll it up. Twist it. Squeeze it 
together, flatten with your hands to about a 5-6" 
diameter circle. If you wish, fold that in 
quarters and flatten again to about a 5-6" 
circle. Melt about 1 T of clarified butter in a 
frying pan and fry the dough about 8 minutes, 
turning about every 1 1/2 to 2 minutes (shorter 
times towards the end). Repeat with the other 
three parts, adding more clarified butter as 
needed. Melt 1/4 c butter, heat 1/4 c honey. Beat 
the cooked circles between your hands to loosen 
the layers, put in a bowl, pour the honey and 
butter over them, dust with sugar, and serve. If 
you are going to give it time to really soak, you 
might use more butter and honey.

For regular flour, everything is the same except 
that you may need slightly more water. You can 
substitute cooking oil for the clarified butter 
(which withstands heat better than plain butter) 
if necessary.

It doesn't have the nuts of baklava, but it does 
have the many layers of thin pastry effect.

>
>
>
>
>I don't have a reference for isifunj, but in the Medieval Arab Cookery Book 
>there is a reference to Lauzinaj.  There are several variations of this  dish.
>  It is not exactly like baklava, but one could interpret the version  below
>into something similar.

The problem is that "thin bread," even if "the 
thinner the better," doesn't sound much like the 
phyllo sheets used for baklava.

>
>Here's how it reads.
>
>Take a pound of finely ground sugar.  Take a third of a pound of  peeled
>almonds, and grind them fine also, and mix them with the sugar and knead  with
>rose-water.  Take some thin bread, like sanbusaj 
>bread, the thinner  the better;
>the most suitable is kunafa bread.  Spread out a sheet of that  bread and put
>the kneaded almonds and sugar on it.  Then roll it up like a  belt, cut it in
>pieces and arrange them on a vessel.  Refine [viz. by  frying with spices] as
>much fresh sesame oil as needed, and put it on  them.  Then cover them with
>syrup to which you have added rose-water, and  sprinkle them with sugar and
>pistachios, both pounded fine.  And if the 
>pistachios are fried and thrown in the
>syrup, it is a marvel.
>
>Most modern references list this dish as marzipan,  stuffed or wrapped in a
>"tube" of thin pastry.
>
>Depending on how you interpret the "rolling up like a belt and cut in 
>pieces" could alter the appearance of the final 
>dish.  One could easily  visualize a
>"thin sheet of bread" spread out before you as you spread the almond  sugar
>mixture over it.  You could then roll it up like one would a belt  much like
>the jellyroll fashion then cut.  This would then give you many  layers to the
>end product.


-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com