[Sca-cooks] Substitutions... how do we know?

[Lilinah]

Nichola wrote:
>Ok I am not doubting your typing in the recipe... I am sure you did it
>word for word with the few exceptions... but the way I am reading it...
>I have 2 dishes here....
>I have a sauce of well strained almonds with pomegranate juice on the
>side... (since it was strained...)
>AND
>Chicken and onions cooked with a paste of water sugar and spices.
>Thus a Chicken and onions with a Sauce of thickened Pomegranate Juice.
SNIP
>The recipe never says to mix the sauce with the chicken.

I believe it does.

Here are the steps in the recipe numbered by me:
1. Fry the chicken with lard and with onions.
2. Chop unpeeled almonds, temper them with pomegranate juice, and 
strain them well.
3. Mix a little water with sugar and spices.
4. Put this to boil for a little with the said chicken, and mix well 
with a wooden spoon, and put mixed spices above.

I interpret step 4 as telling the cook to add the almond-pomegranate 
mix and the water-sugar-spice mix to the chicken-onions and to cook 
it a while.

I realize the original is a bit vague, but i am quite familiar with 
this recipe in its various other incarnations, and all the stuff 
definitely gets cooked together. It's just that not completely 
specified "this" at the beginning of step 4 that's throwing you. I 
assume you're interpreting "this" just to be the water-sugar-spice.

The part i find unclear is step 2.

I've been through quite a few recipes lately in which straining is 
not a process of removing the big lumps of one ingredient from a 
blend with liquid, as in the usual European making almond milk. But 
rather, the straining is a way of making sure that small parts of 
some ingredient are incorporated with a liquid.

So is step 2 making basic almond milk using pomegranate juice? or is 
it a way of making a creamy mixture of finely chopped almonds and 
pomegranate juice?

Once i do the big reveal, i think the ambiguities should become clear 
- that is, not that this specific recipe will be that much clearer, 
but its antecedents and precedents will make clear that which is 
confusing you and what is confusing me.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah