[Sca-cooks] al-Bagdadi substitution question
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Mon Jun 7 15:50:38 PDT 2010
Serena da Riva wrote:
>Urnin wa-khubz al-Abazir
SNIP ORIGINAL RECIPE
>Specifically the Date filled version. While I love dates, I have 2
>large fig trees in my yard and no date trees. I have several pounds of
>dried figs from last year's harvest languishing in my freezer and was
>trying to decide if I could substitute figs for dates. They have
>similar textures and flavor profiles and both were available in the
>time period and region.
>
>This isn't for an A&S entry, but if it is completely out of line I
>don't want to do it.
First, i radically disagree with your assessment that they have
similar textures and flavor profiles.
I don't recall recipes for sweets from al-Baghdadi calling for figs,
but i need to double check, i could have just lost the memory...
Dates are quite commonly used in sweets. In al-Baghdadi, they seem to
be nearly the only fruit used in sweets, other than almonds, etc.
I have found figs in savory dishes, cooked with lamb, among mid-15th
c.Ottoman recipes. But figs don't appear in recipes for sweets, and
the Ottomans use a *vast* range of fruits, as well as gourds,
carrots, and eggplants, in a wide range of sweet dishes:
Almonds; Sour Apple; Sweet Apple; Apricot; Arab (i.e., w/spices);
Candied Cheese; Carrot; Sour Cherry; Sweet Cherry; Citron; Coconut;
Cornelian; Date; Eggplant; Ginger; Gold Leaf; Gourd; Grape; Honey;
Honeydew; Lemon; Lime (possibly); Mint; Orange (i dont know if this
was bitter or sweet); Bitter Orange; Peach; Pear; Green Pear;
Pistachios; Sour Pomegranate; Sweet Pomegranate; Pomegranate Flowers;
Poppy Seeds; Quince; Rose Petals; Sumac; Tamarind; Fresh Young Green
Walnuts; Water Lily; Watermelon
However, why not give it a try. These are in many ways period
Mamul... or in your case, Fig Nutanat...
(there is no e and no o in Standard Arabic, plus I have made a fake
Arabic feminine form: nutana, sing.; nutanat, plural, for Newton ;-P )
--
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita
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