The Kitchen

Boiled Roast

Prepare the roast as in the recipe for fried roast, then put the meat in the pot with a head of onion, one to three red tomatoes, a stick of cinnamon, six grains of allspice, and four grains of pepper, with a little salt, half a cup of vinegar or wine, and a little ghee or a piece of fat. Cover the meat with water and leave it on a gentle fire for two hours. Then lift the lid of the pot, take two cups of the broth, and set them aside in a vessel.

Boil the meat until the water dries away from it and you can turn it over on both sides so that it browns with the seasonings upon it. Then take the meat out of the pot and put it in a warm place or in a slow oven so that it stays hot until mealtime. Put the broth you took back into the pot and boil the sauce a little, then strain it through a strainer, then boil it again and bind it with a little flour mixed with water, or with a spoonful of ghee.

Serve the roast hot with the sauce, with potato purée or fried potatoes, and with fluffed rice.

A hint: you can add water to the meat little by little as it boils, until it is done.

Roast with Laban

Take the boiled roast prepared as above and boil it on the fire with the salt, allspice, pepper, and cinnamon until it is done and about a cup and a half of broth remains upon it. Then take an oke of yogurt and strain it through a sieve; then boil it on the fire, stirring it until it comes to the boil; then pour it over the roast and boil it with it for half an hour; then add a little dried mint, chopped, and serve with fluffed rice.

A hint: after boiling the yogurt you may put it over the meat and set it in the oven for 20 minutes.

Dough-Sealed Roast

Prepare the roast as in the recipe for fried roast. Then steep it in salt and vinegar for an hour, and after that put it in the pot with two uqiyyas of ghee, or enough to cover it, and sufficient salt and allspice. Then peel as many potatoes as you need and set them around the meat in the pot; then cover it well. Then work a little flour with water and seal the pot so that the steam stays inside it.

Leave the pot on a gentle fire for an hour and a half, then open it: the roast will be ready, and you can use the extra ghee with stew or beans or peas.

7 cups of good-quality native flour, or Damascene flour, or fine sid flour
3–4 cups of water
1 teaspoon of European yeast dissolved in a little water

1 – Put the flour in a bowl, then add the yeast to it, and after that gradually add enough water to make the batter loose, like set laban; and leave the batter for an hour until the signs of fermentation show upon it. Then beat it well; then fill a tablespoon and pour the batter in small rounds onto a griddle or a hot stone slab over a wood fire of moderate heat, so that the underside of the qatayef does not burn immediately after the batter is poured onto the griddle. The qatayef batter, once poured onto the griddle or slab, is done when its underside is well browned.

2 – After baking the qatayef batter, stuff it with one of the following fillings:

Walnut filling — to the ratl, 4 uqiyyas of finely crushed walnuts and 3 uqiyyas of fine sugar.
Cheese filling — to the ratl, 6 uqiyyas of fresh cheese, or of cheese sweetened by steeping it in cold water.
Aleppo-pistachio filling — to the ratl, 4 uqiyyas of Aleppo pistachios, lightly toasted and coarsely crushed, with 3 uqiyyas of sugar.

Pine-nut filling — 4 uqiyyas of crushed pine nuts with 3 uqiyyas of sugar.
Mixed-nut filling — a cup and a half of lightly toasted Aleppo pistachios, half a cup of finely crushed walnuts, and half a cup of peeled and finely crushed almonds, with two uqiyyas of sugar.

After you stuff the qatayef you can make two or more kinds of them, by dividing the stuffed qatayef into two or more portions. Fry the first portion in heated ghee. Then set the second portion on a tray, put a teaspoon of ghee on each piece of qatayef, and bake it in the oven for 8 minutes. Then leave the third portion unbaked. After that prepare the syrup and pour it over the qatayef, and they are ready.

Knead as much Australian, French, or American flour as you need, with a pinch of salt, until it is a little softer than kmaj dough; then leave the dough an hour to rest. Then take a piece of it the size of an egg, grease the wooden board or the table with melted ghee, and roll it out with the rolling pin, or with your hand, on the board until it is as thin as it can be. Then dip a feather in ghee and brush the rolled-out dough; then fold it into a square and stuff it with sweet cheese, folding one part over another like a small envelope; then bake it in the oven until it is done. After taking it out of the oven, pour the hot syrup over it and serve it at once.

Hints: after you steep the cheese in water until it loses its salt, dry it well with a towel before using it to stuff the pastry; otherwise the pastries will turn leathery when they cool.

The best kinds of aromatic essences used in cakes, in creams, in ice cream, and in pudding (Pudding) are:

essence or extract of lemon
" " " of orange
" " " of vanilla
" " " of banana
" " " of cherry
" " " of damson
" " " of strawberry
" " " of coffee
" " " of almond
" " " of European raspberry

As for the aromatic essences used in jams, in fruits preserved in sugar, in syrups, and in sugared candies, they are:

essence or extract of apple
" " of peach
" " of orange
" " of plum
" " of lemon
" " of orange blossom
" " of pear
" " of mulberry
" " of rose
" " of violet
" " of banana
" " of damson

Dyes or Colors

The dyes or colors used in making cakes (cakes or gateaux), in creams and candies (drops), in jams, ice cream, and the rest are mostly extracted from flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Green, for instance, is extracted from spinach, and violet from the violet, and so on by analogy.

The dyes are used in moderate quantities, from one drop to six drops in a small mixture, whenever you add one of the dyes to a mixture into which some kind of aromatic essence enters.

You must therefore see to it that the color harmonizes with the taste: lemon dye goes with lemon essence.

Substances that help cakes to rise

carbonate of ammonia, "sal ammoniac powder"
carbonate of soda
salt of tartar
baking powder
eggs
laban
lemon juice
liqueur (Liquor)
cognac
European yeast

The action of carbonate of ammonia in cakes is stronger than the action of baking powder, but it lessens the sweetness of the cake, so that you must add a small quantity of sugar to the recipe to give the cake its needed sweetness.

On Baking

You must heat the oven for ten minutes, until it is of moderate heat, before baking the cake. Avoid opening the oven and taking the cake out to test its doneness before the cake has spent 15–20 minutes inside the oven, by which time it will have risen as far as it should.

Do not pour the mixture into the pan to a depth of more than one half or two thirds of the pan's edge, so that room enough remains for the cake to rise in during the baking.

If the cake sticks to the pan after baking, you can set the pan at once over a vessel of cold water for five minutes, then pass a broad, flexible knife around the edges of the pan on the inside; after that turn the cake out at once onto the back of a sieve; then, after another five minutes, turn it over onto the plate.