[Sca-cooks] Paper revsion (was Re: AoAs and such (was Cheese and appetizers))

Christiane christianetrue at earthlink.net
Fri Feb 22 10:24:04 PST 2008


I received my AoA fairly quickly, my shire is small and I got very heavily involved from the get-go. It's easy to get overlooked in a larger group, though, especially if everyone is very active and involved.

Back on a food topic, I'm revamping my paper on Muslims in Sicily, and in the recipes section, plan to compare more Arab-descended Sicilian and mainland dishes with medieval Arab recipes: for example, pasticcio ibn al-Thumna with bazmaward; scapece alla Vastese with samak musakbaj; sfinci with isfunj; qubbaita with fustuqiyya; and martorana with samak wa-Aqras (I chose this recipe because the resulting paste is put into wooden molds and made into fish, lambs, loaves, etc. — and there is still a tradition today in Sicily of molding marzipan with wooden and plaster molds, particularly the Easter lambs and the St. Joseph's day hearts).

Luqam al-Qadi also reminds me of this rather icky sweet my grandmother made every year at Christmas — small fried dough balls, not as big as sfinci, dipped in sugar syrup and sprinkled with tiny colored nonpareils. They typically lurked on a paper plate, congealed into a inedible pyramid. They were good fresh, but wound up being just decoration because they grew rock hard very quickly. Luqam al-Qadi calls for pieces of dough no larger than hazelnuts, fried, and dipped into sugar syrup and sprinkled with sugar — and indeed, Grandma's inedible treats were no larger than hazelnuts.

Barad seems to be very similar to funnel cake, that Italian festival staple. Incidentally, I was looking up information about the town where my grandfather was born, in Calabria — Sellia Marina. This led me to YouTube, of all places, where there were several videos of a local saint's festival in Sellia Marina, with street games, etc. — and a funnel cake stand. No sausage and peppers, though!

Still looking for some recipes, and I realized that I've seen several references to samid (semolina) bread, but no recipes for the bread itself. The references in Perry are for a leavened bread. Anyone have a period samid bread recipe? I've got the ubiquitous pan riminciato for my modern bread.

Gianotta





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