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Andlsn-Pstres-art - 11/24/01

"Andalusian Pastries" by Dinah bint Ismai'l.

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NOTICE -

This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set

of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.

These files are available on the Internet at:

http://www.florilegium.org

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be

reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first

or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,

Mark S. Harris

AKA: Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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Andalusian Pastries

by Dinah bint Ismai'l

These recipes are from An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century as translated by Charles Perry. Duke Cariadoc recently webbed this cookbook. The web address follows the recipes.

The main thing I have notice with the Andalusian recipes, I have redacted is the use of oil, instead of other fats. I have used Olive oil as this oil, working on the knowledge that it is still a common oil in the region today.

Another ingredients use I have noted is that sugar is used as much as honey in these recipes. During the Andalusian time period, sugar was introduced to the Spanish peninsula as well in Sicily. I do not think that it was very common but much more common in the rest of Europe at this time.

The original recipes are followed by my redaction for it. That is except the last recipe, Recipe of the Necessities of Bread and Confection. In which the original is there but we will try to work this redaction here today.

Recipes

The Preparation of adhan (Ears)

Knead white flour with water and oil without leaven, then roll out little thin qursas, like the qursas of aqru n, and let them be as big as the palm of a hand or bigger. Fold in two, and mix fold with fold, and open their edges, and fry, after inserting thin sticks into them so that the open ends do not seal. And when they are fried, make a filling of pistachios or almonds and sugar and knead with rosewater, and stuff the "ears" with them. Whoever wishes to aromatize the stuffing [with spices] may. Then pour into a plate and moisten with stiffly thickened rosewater syrup, after sprinkling with rosewater. And sprinkle with sugar, galingale [literally, "wood"], clove and ground cinnamon and use.

[74] The "mix fold with fold" instruction is vague, but we may proceed on the assumption that the product will look like an ear when fried. I must say that the prospect of eating an "ear" stuffed with green paste bothers me. (CP)

My redaction:

Pastry

2 cups White Flour

1/2 cup Olive Oil

Water

Olive Oil for Frying

Filling

1 cup Pistachios or Almond, ground

1/2 cup Sugar

2 tbs. Rosewater

Syrup

1/4 cup Rosewater

3/4 cup Water

2 cups Sugar

Topping

Sugar

1/2 tsp. Galingale*

1/4 tsp. Clove, ground

1/2 tsp. Cinnamon, ground

Make the pastry dough with the flour and oil, adding as much water as nessary. This will make a very soft pastry dough, be prepared. Let the dough rest for at least a half-hour.

While the dough is resting make a sugar syrup with the rosewater, sugar and water. Cook in a thick bottom pot until thick (about 200F.). Cool and reserve. Mix the topping ingredients together.

When the dough has rested, form small balls of the dough and then roll into circles approximately 4 inches in diameter and a _ inch thick. Fold circles in half, form into a cone with a open end at the point. Deep fat fry in the other olive oil. Drain.

If you have access to a food processor, grind your nuts in it. When they are processed add the sugar and rosewater so that it stick together. Fill the cones or ears with the nut mixture. Drizzle with rose syrup. Sprinkle with the topping mixture.

Serve.

*note: This is hard to find, but not impossible. I substituted Ginger, a relative of it.

Stuffed Muqawwara, a Hollowed Pastry

Sift a ratl and a half of wheat flour [p. 29 verso] well, knead it with the yolks of fifteen eggs and as much fresh milk as they will bear. Put in a little leavening and let the dough be stiff, make a qursa like a raghîf of this, and leave it to rise. Then fill a frying pan with fresh oil and take it to the fire, and when it has heated, put in the raghîf, turn it little by little, and watch that it not break apart. Then turn it over and when it has browned a little, take it out and put it in a dish and hollow it out as one hollows out muqawwara. Take out all the crumbs that are in it and crumble it by hand until they are pounded fine. Then take sufficient peeled walnuts and almonds and sugar, pound them well and put a layer in the muqawwara, then a layer of crumbs, until it is full; and sprinkle sugar between every two layers and sprinkle during that with rosewater. Then boil fresh clarified butter and good honey, pour it on the muqawwara and when it makes a boiling sound, put the lid [the removed crust] back on top and seal it, and pour the rest of the honey and butter over the lid, sprinkle with sugar, and present it.

My redaction:

Pastry

5 to 6 cups Flour

8 to 10 Yolks

1/4 cup Milk

1 package Yeast dissolved in water

Olive Oil

Filling

Crumbs from Pastry

1/2 cup Walnuts, ground

1/2 cup Almonds, ground

1/2 cup Sugar

app 2 tbs. Rosewater

Syrup

8 oz. Butter (if you are using unsalted butter add _ tsp. of salt)

1 1/2 cup Honey

Dissolve the Yeast in _ cup warm water. Add all the pastry ingredients together. Mix as if making bread dough. Leave to rise. After the first rising punch down, form into balls approximately the size of a lime. Deep fat fry in the Olive oil. Drain.

When cool, take a sharp knife and cut off the top quarter of each of the pastries, reserve tops. Hollow out each one and reserve the crumbs for the filling.

Mix the walnuts with the almonds. Fill each of the pastries with layers of each of the fillings in turn – nut layer, crumb layer, and a sugar layer. Sprinke with the rosewater in between layers. Fill to the top.

Melt the butter in a heavy bottom kettle. Add the honey. Bring to a boil, cooking until thick. While still hot ladle syrup into each pastry, replace top and seal with more syrup. Let cool. Serve.

Khabisa with Pomegranate

Take half a ratl of sugar and put it in a metal or earthenware pot and pour in three ratls of juice of sweet table pomegranates [rummân sufri; probably tart pomegranates were more common in cooking] and half an û qiya of rosewater, with a penetrating smell. Boil it gently and after two boilings, add half a mudd of semolina and boil it until the semolina is cooked. Throw in the weight of a quarter dirham of ground and sifted saffron, and three û qiyas of almonds. Put it in a dish and sprinkle over it the like of pounded sugar, and make balls [literally, hazelnuts] of this.

My redaction:

2 1/2 cups Sugar

3 tbs. Pomegranate Syrup

2 1/2 cups Water

1/3 cup Rosewater

1 1/3 to 1 1/2 lbs. Semolina, Fine Grain

10 to 12 oz. Ground Almonds

4 or 5 threads of Saffron

Power Sugar to roll in

Add sugar, pomegranate syrup, water and rosewater together. Bring to boil, cooking until the syrup stage (approximately 200 F). Add the Semolina, cook until done. Soak Saffron in 2-tbs. warm water, until colored. Add saffron water and almonds to Semolina mix.

Let cool down until you can handle it. Form into balls about the size of a walnut. Roll balls in powered sugar. Serve, makes about 60 balls.

Recipe for Mujabbana (Fried Cheese Pie)

Know that mujabbana isn't prepared with only one cheese, but of two; that is, of cow's and sheep's milk cheese. Because if you make it with only sheep cheese, it falls apart and the cheese leaves it and it runs. And if you make it with cow's cheese, it binds, and lets the water run and becomes one sole mass and the parts don't separate. The principle in making it is that the two cheeses bind together. Use one-fourth part cow's milk and three-quarters of sheep's. Knead all until [p. 64, recto] some binds with its parts another [Huici Miranda observes that this passage is faintly written and only a few letters can be made out] and becomes equal and holds together and doesn't run in the frying pan, but without hardening or congealing. If you need to soften it, soften it with fresh milk, recently milked from the cow. And let the cheese not be very fresh, but strong without...[words missing]...that the moisture has gone out of. Thus do the people of our land make it in the west of al-Andalus, as in Cordoba and Seville and Jerez, and elsewhere in the the land of the West [here written as al-Maghrib].

Manner of Making it

Knead wheat or semolina flour with some yeast into a well-made dough and moisten it with water little by little until it loosens. If you moisten it with fresh milk instead of water it is better, and easy, inasmuch as you make it with your palm. Roll it out and let it not have the consistency of mushahhada, but firmer than that, and lighter than musammana dough. When the leaven begins to enter it, put the frying pan on the fire with a lot of oil, so that it is drenched with what you fry it with. Then wet your hand in water and cut off a piece of the dough. Bury inside it the same amount of rubbed cheese. Squeeze it with your hand, and whatever leaves and drains from the hand, gather it up [? the meaning of this verb eludes me] carefully. Put it in the frying pan while the oil boils. When it has browned, remove it with an iron hook prepared for it and put it in a dipper ["iron hand"] similar to a sieve held above the frying pan, until its oil drips out. Then put it on a big platter and dust it with a lot of sugar and ground cinnamon. There are those who eat it with honey or rose syrup and it is the best you can eat.

Pastry

Flour, white or Semolina

Yeast

Milk or Water

Olive oil for Frying

Sugar and ground Cinnamon

Optional: Honey or Rosewater/ Sugar Syrup

Filling

Farmers Cheese

Cream Cheese

Salt to taste

[69]Recipe of the Necessities of Bread and Confection

Take a ratl of wheat flour and knead it with twenty egg yolks, a little water and oil. Then make small, very thin round flatbreads of it, and as soon as they are made, fry them in plenty of oil until they are close to browning. Put them in a dish, boil honey a little and clean it of its foam, and cut almonds and walnuts into the honey, pour it into the dish, sprinkle with sugar, set whole pine-nuts about, and present it

(69)The word translated as "necessaries" (hawâ'ij), which can also mean "things," is used in some cookery writings to mean ingredients other than spices added for flavoring. (CP)

Flat Bread

2 cups flour

10 egg yolks or 4 whole eggs

2 to 3 tablespoons of water

2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil

Olive oil for frying

Syrup

1 to 1 1/2 cups honey

1/4 cup chopped almonds

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

sugar and pine-nuts for decoration

Mix the flour and egg yolks (or eggs) together until smooth batter. Add water and oil as nessary to achieve the texture needed. (I see this as a crepe or pancake batter.) Pour batter on to a frying pan to make small pancakes. Fry until they just become colored. Move to a waiting plate with a small lip.

Heat the honey until warm. Add the nuts to it. Pour honey mixture on to the waiting pancakes. Sprinkle with sugar and pine-nuts. Serve.

Sources

An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, Translated by Charles Perry

http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian_contents.htm

Recreational Medievalism, Cariadoc and Elizabeth SCA pages, http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Medieval.html

SCA Medieval/Renaissance Food Homepage, http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food.html

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

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Copyright 2000 by Dinah Tackett, 96 Von Steuben, St. Marys, GA 31558. <hta ckett at tds.net>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in

the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also

appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being

reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.