[Sca-cooks] Period Baklava
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Wed Apr 4 17:13:18 PDT 2007
>
>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
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