[Sca-cooks] Beans and Flour

[David Friedman]

Nasrallah, the translator of al-Warraq, lists soy beans among the beans 
used in the  Middle-east in his period. Does anyone know of evidence for 
or against? She also interprets one of the period beans as kidney beans 
which, according to everything else I've seen, are New World, which 
makes me think she may be too willing to deduce what a word meant then 
from what it means in modern middle-eastern cooking, with which she is 
obviously very familiar. Alternatively, of course, she may be using 
"kidney bean" to refer to something different from what we call kidney 
beans.

Also, many of her recipes specify "sami_dh_ flour (high in starch and 
bran free)." I've mostly used semolina, since that's what Perry seems to 
consider the best guess at their usual flour, but I don't actually know. 
In her notes, she mentions that samidh has less gluten than an 
alternative flour, less frequently mentioned, that's also bran free. 
That made us wonder if we should be using cake flour for samidh and 
bread flour or semolina for the other.

Anyone know? Has anyone experimented to see which of the modern flours 
works best with which recipes?

-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/