[Sca-cooks] Flour question

[David Friedman]

>I am working on the menu for my upcoming A Day in the Middle East feast.
>  And I'm having a dandy time going through my new copy of "Annals of the
>Caliphs' Kitchens."  In several of the recipes, reference is made to
>"...pure, fine *simidh* flour (high in starch and bran-free)...".  The
>question is...would this be just a general all-purpose white flour...or
>should I use a specialty flour such as bread or cake flour?

I've been using semolina, since it's frequently mentioned in 
(translations of) other Islamic cookbooks, but I don't know if that's 
a correct translation or not. It seems to work all right.

Note that the draft of the 10th edition of the _Miscellany_ is up at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Misc10_Draft/Misc10_Draft.html

and contains my worked out al-Warraq recipes.

>
>Also...and I'm sure we've talked about this before...but please remind me
>what I could use in the place of the frequent references to camphor and
>musk.

You can get edible camphor from Indian grocery stores, although you 
may have to try a bunch of them to find it. It's still used.

I have not found any solution to the musk problem.

...
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com