[Sca-cooks] Period Recipe Fail.

Susan Fox selene at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 1 08:38:33 PST 2012


Bear:  Equal by weight.  Because that's how I roll.

Master A and I have been chatting on FB about this.  I was kind of in 
the nut-grinding mode already, making fesenjan for supper.  It's 
cookies, so it's ground into the dough like modern Chinese Restaurant 
almond cookies, right?  Maybe not.  Maybe it's more like Florentines, 
the candy-ish almond cookie, sometimes with oats.

Results were actually tasty, but Sad the maiden with breasts this flat.  
Perhaps the "virgin" descriptor is meant to imply a child, not yet blooming.

Cheers,
Selene

On 2/29/2012 8:55 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> Equal by weight or by volume?
>
> Bear
>
>> 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.
>>
>> Secondly the "brass tray".  I recall having seen specific brass trays 
>> with round depressions for serving of condiments or sweetmeats.  
>> Could this be the kind of tray they meant?
>>
>> Your comments, questions and alternate redactions are invited.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Selene Colfox
>
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
> http://lists.ansteorra.org/listinfo.cgi/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org
>




More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list