[Sca-cooks] Plantains: Period for Old World?
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Tue Sep 1 13:46:53 PDT 2009
I don't believe I have seen any period recipes using plantains.
Al-Warraq has a banana recipe that I'm tempted to try at our next
cooking workshop, and it's conceivable that he might use the same
word for bananas and plantains--it's a desert, bananas layered with
thin flatbread and sugar, drenched with rosewater, and baked
underneath a chicken (to get the drippings).
The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (14th c. Italian) has a
reference to bananas and a picture. It's clear that neither the
author of the text, which is itself based on a much earlier Arabic
text, nor the artist has ever seen one. The text does say that they
are known in Sicily, however (as well as Cyprus and the Holy Land).
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
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