[Sca-cooks] Khabisa with Pomegranate

David Friedman ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Mon Mar 24 21:12:13 PDT 2008


>As provided by this list:
>
>Khabisa recipe form the FOOD_SWEETS section of Stevens Florilegium: 
>Addlsn- Pstres-art
>Andalusian Pastries by Dinah bint Ismai'l
>
>Khabisa with Pomegranate
>
>Take half a ratl of sugar and put it in a metal or earthenware pot 
>and pour in three ratls of juice of sweet table pomegranates (rumman 
>sofri)and half an u qiya of rosewater wit a penetrating smell. Boil 
>it gently and after two boiling, add half a mudd of semolina and 
>boil until the semolina is cooked. Throw in the weight of a quarter 
>dirham of ground and sifted saffron and three u qiyas of almonds. 
>Put it in a dish and sprinkle over it the like of pounded sugar and 
>make balls of this.
>
>
>Here is what happened.
>
>1.25 cups of raw sugar
>1.25 cups of pomegranate juice (I used commercial 100% pomegranate juice)

I'm puzzled about how you got these quantities. A ratl is a unit of 
weight--roughly a pound. The original recipe has a ratio to six parts 
juice to one of sugar. You have a ratio of about one to one.

>3 tablespoons of orange juice (no rosewater, and my usual source was out)

An uqiya is a twelfth of a ratl, so the original is 72 parts of juice 
to one part of rosewater. Your ratio is about 7 to 1. I'm not sure 
how important that is, given that you aren't using rosewater anyway, 
but if you try it again with rosewater I would think you would want 
to use the relative quantities specified in the original.

Semolina is a kind of wheat flour, so I'm not sure rice flour makes 
sense as a substitute, but I haven't experimented with it. I'm not 
sure what you are basing your quantity on. I believe a small mudd 
would be about 4 1/2 cups, a large mudd about 18, but I no longer 
remember my source for the numbers.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com



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