[Sca-cooks] Period Baklava at Last

[Sandra J. Kisner]

This sounds wonderful!  How thickly did you sprinkle the ground almonds?

Sandra

-----Original Message-----
From: Sca-cooks <sca-cooks-bounces+sjk3=cornell.edu at lists.ansteorra.org> On Behalf Of David Friedman
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 2:55 AM
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Period Baklava at Last

/A Persian Cookbook The Manual/ by Bavarchi is an early 16th century cookbook, translated by Saman Hassibi & Amir Sayadabdi. It contains four Baklava recipes. Two of them layer thin bread not with nuts but with cooked lentils, one isn't layered at all, but one is fairly close to what we think of as Baklava.

I made it for the first time this afternoon, using lavash I had made yesterday from a simple modern recipe. None of the bread recipes in the original are"excellent thin bread." I have a period flat bread recipe from al-Warraq, but don't know if it would be closer to the original, and it uses sourdough so would have taken longer.

There are various things I will tweak next time, but it came out pretty well. Here is the original recipe:

*Baklava II*

Take two large trays and some excellent thin bread and size [it] to fit the tray. Then, melt a /man/ of clarified oil in another tray and dip the thin bread, one by one, in that oil and place on the [other] tray. 
Sprinkle a fistful of sugar and ground almond over the bread. Dip another bread in oil [and place over the other one] and sprinkle sugar and ground shelled almond on it again [and repeat] until the tray is filled. Place another tray on top of it [to cover it] and place a coal fire underneath it so it boils slowly. Once the bottom side is [assumed to be] fried, lift the edge of the bread with the tip of knife to test, if it was fried, flip it in the [other[ tray, and place over the fire again so the other side is fried, too. Pour some boiled sugar syrup over it so it boils and absorbs the syrup [so the liquid is dried] and oil reappears. Serve in a china [dish] and sprinkle some rosewater.

I don't know what "clarified oil" is, but it's apparently solid at room temperature. The one candidate that occurred to me was ghee, so that's what I used.

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