[Sca-cooks] Period Recipe Fail.
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Wed Feb 29 20:46:03 PST 2012
On 02/29/2012 11:16 PM, Susan Fox wrote:
> Chronicled for future edification.
>
> Recipe: NUHUD AL-ADHRA [Virgin's breasts]
> found in KITAB WASF AL-AT 'IMA AL-MU 'TADA, The Description of
> Familiar Foods
> published in MEDIEVAL ARAB COOKERY
> translated by Charles Perry
>
> "Knead sugar, almonds, samid [semolina] and clarified butter, equal
> parts, and make them like breasts, and arrange them in a brass
> tray.Put into a bread oven until done, and take it out.It comes out
> excellently."
>
>
> So that's what I did. Almonds ground in food processor, conventional
> table sugar, fine semolina and ghee.
>
> Two shape versions: one in small balls in muffin tins, the other
> free-standing ovoids on a flat baking pan.
>
> Everything collapsed. The ones in the muffin pans crawled up the
> sides and over the edges. If these were in individual pie tins they
> might have made an interesting crust for a fruit tart. The ones in
> the flat pan just flattened out. Somebody is going to get a tasty if
> non-cohering baked treat in his lunchbox for a few days, anyway.
>
> Two things I'm considering here. Firstly "semolina" might have been
> too coarse, or maybe a better translation might be flour. I'm not sure
> that would help, this mix has much too high a proportion of butter to
> flour and almonds. Compare with my usual shortbread formula: 2
> parts butter, 1 part sugar, 3 parts plain white flour, 1 part rice flour.
I'm wondering: what if you left the almonds blanched but whole? More
gluten. It doesn't say to grind them, does it?
Adamantius, nudge
Adamantius
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