[Sca-cooks] Al-Warraq and Hummus Kasa
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Sat Jun 27 18:46:48 PDT 2009
We had a very small cooking workshop today--Elizabeth, me, and one
other person. Devoted almost entirely to al-Warraq.
One of the things I did was the Khushananaj in the form of crescents
recipe. I've done al-Baghdadi's Khushkananaj for many years, but it
has a number of unclear things, and this is a more detailed recipe
for a fairly similar dish. Al-Baghdadi says to use scented sugar.
Al-Warraq tells you to use sugar, rose water, camphor and musk. I
haven't located a source for musk--which would probably have to be
synthetic--but we found an Indian grocery store that had edible
camphor after I visited three that didn't and called about five of
which one did. And Al-Warraq gives fairly clear explanations for how
you combine filling and dough. Came out very tasty.
I also tried, yesterday evening, making the hummus Kasa from
_Medieval Arab Cookery_. Has anyone else done it? It has hummus and
tahini, among other things, but pretty clearly isn't the hummus
dip/spread we're used to. It also has spices and ground up nuts. You
are supposed to roll it out and leave it over night, although I
haven't figured out the point of that--it seemed pretty much the same
in the morning. I'm wondering if the effect would be different if I
used a much higher ratio of nuts to chickpeas.
My other recipes were ka-ak--I redid it including the saffron which I
left out the first time because I couldn't find any, and no doubt the
result would be an improvement for those who like saffron--and the
crumbly crackers of Ibrahim ibn al Mahdi. The latter aren't
bad--something between a sweet cracker and a cookie. Someone else did
a lentil dish with eggs, similar to the dish of lentils we have long
done from the 13th c. andalusian cookbook that isn't Manuscrito
Anonimo but with cheese and greens, which I thought an improvement.
And Betty did a soused chicken from al-Warraq, which hopefully will
end up providing another item for her "Pennsic without a cooler"
class, and a redo of Platina's stuffed eggs.
Now we can collapse.
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
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