Category Archives: Puddings Baked under Meat (Jawadhib) and Puddings (Akhbisa)

Bananas in Savory Dough

This is the 2nd rendition of this recipe.  The first one has a chicken, showing raw dough and apricots.  I think that recipe is perfectly wonderful for apricots.  This recipe is targeted to bananas and the lovely cake/pie that can be made.

I know most people think of the lowly common banana as coming from South America but that’s not the case.  This wonderful and humble piece of fruit comes from South East Asisan area, found in Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern cooking in period.  This is one of my favorite recipes.  Sweet savory and melty banana stuffed bread.  Either plain or with vanilla ice cream, this is amazingly good.  You can use apricots if you choose, but do try this with bananas at least once!

Judhaba

Apricots (or Bananas) and Chicken

 Banana Pie Slice

Translation:

First Recipe: Banana

Take bananas that are fully ripe.  Peel them and immerse them in fine samid sour dough, kneaded as for pancakes.  Then take them up and leave on some thing woven.  Boil sesame oil, fry the bananas, take them out and throw them in syrup.  Then throw them in a dish with pounded, sugar, then arrange them in a tray with fine flat breads above and below.  Hang fat chicken above.

(Rodison, pp. 411).

Second Recipe: Apricots

Take some sweet and mature apricots; detach (the fruit) from the pit.  (Mix it with sugar.) In a clean baking pan…spread out (an already baked) flat bread) and place the mixture of apricots and place the mixture of apricots and sugar) on top.  (over this with another cooked flat bread.)  If you wish to add a bit of saffron , do so and sprinkle with rose water; then hang an excellent hen over (the dish), may it please God.

(Zaouali, pp. 82)

Ingredients:

5 Bananas firm bananas and 3 over ripe bananas       1/3 cup sugar    flat bread dough

Walnut  oil

½ C rendered chicken fat Or 1/2 stick of salted butter.

For Apricots

or 2 cups fresh or dried apricots 1 pinch saffron            1/8 teaspoon rosewater

 Banana Flat Bread Dough

4 C flour           2 TBS honey    1 TBS salt        1 C water         3 VERY ripe bananas

 

Redaction:

When I did this recipe the first time, I used sliced home made bread and apricots.  The bread burnt on the bottom..  The second time I used raw flat bread dough but not flat bread with banana, and a chicken sitting on top of the raw flat bread.  This was much much better.  I also did half apricots (mixed with saffron and rose water) and raw bananas (uncooked).  This time, I adapted the dough a bit and the stuffing. Originally I took a shallow tangine, and poured a little sesame oil down to coat the dish then laid down the raw flat bread.   This time I used a clay dish, deeper then a tangine unfortunately not deep enough as the dough raised and the rendered chicken fat could not all be used only a small portion.

First I made the dough.  Flour in a bowl.

flour in bowl

The ingredients honey, salt, yeast and water.

Honey, flour salt water

Are then mixed together.

ingredients for dough in bowl

This is very well mixed together.  You can see a bit of crystallized honey here.

Mixxing dough together

Next add in three very ripe bananas to the soft dough.

 Bananas added to dough

 Mix, in the bananas, very well.

finalized banana dough

The dough should be pliable and soft but not hard.  Some where between a pancake dough and a bread dough.  Divide the dough into two.

 banana dough rolled out

On a well floured surface, roll the dough out.  Here bits of honey that have not been well mixed are showing through.  I used honey that had gone granular due to the cold.  To fix this, in a period manner, just put granular honey in a bowl then place that bowl in another bowl with hot water coming to just the middle of the first bowl.  This should melt the honey. Or, modernly, just stick the bowl with the granular honey in a microwave for 30 seconds or so.

cooking pottery with walnut oil in bottom

Take a deep clay dish and oil the bottom.  Here I used walnut oil.  Sesame oil has a very strong taste and I wanted a nuttier flavor instead.  The recipe calls for sesame but I changed this to my taste.

Ibanana dough bottom

Place the dough in the bottom of the dish.

Next  take and chop 5 bananas.  These bananas need to be not overly ripe.  Green bananas to almost brown but not squishy.

firm bananas on cutting board knife and oil

Slice the bananas up as thicker or slightly thicker then a finger width (roughly ½ inch)

sliced bananas

 Take a frying pan and add walnut oil with 1/3 C of sugar.

walnut oil with just entered sugar

Then add the raw bananas until slightly browned.  Maybe 2 minutes.  Do not burn.  The sugar will caramelize adding a deeper color to the bananas so pay strict attention to this part.

banana filling cooking

And now yummy tasty divine cooked bananas.  These are so incredibly good, that I had to limit myself to only a couple of bites other wise I would have eaten the entire filling of cooked bananas.

cooked banan filling

 

Place the caramelized bananas on top of the bottom layer of dough.

banana cooked stuffing

Place the second layer of dough on top.  Place the dish into the oven at 350.

Topping of banana pie dough

This is where things get a little tricky.  In period, the oven area had hooks for the a chicken to be roasted on (Rodison/Zaouali,  Most people do not have such an item in their modern ovens or fire pits these days, which makes adding chicken fat a little rough.  There are two choices, place a raw chicken on top while the dish cooks or take the rendered fat from roasted chicken.

rendered chicken fat

I chose to take the fat from a roasted chicken cooked prior that week.  The fat/drippings were gathered in a jar and place in the refrigerator till I was ready to use.   I was not impressed with either the chicken on top of the dough or how the dough came out with a chicken on top.  With the rendered chicken fat the crust puffs up nicely and a golden salty brown crust results.

So every 15 minutes pour a few tablespoons on top of the dough.

chicken fat on banana pie

Pouring a little at a time will simulate the dripping of the fat from a chicken over the pudding dish instead of drowning the dish in chicken fat if poured on all at once.

Banana pie from oven

This is the final dish.  The crust is lightly browned, even golden, where you can see the chicken fat has crisped the dough along the edges.  If you do not have any chicken fat available use butter.  Put a few teaspoons on the crust about half way through for this lovely salty sweet crust.

Banana Pie Slice

The final taste test was incredible.  The top is savory sweet while the filling adds an extra layer of sweetness.  The bottom is perfectly done, sweet but not as savory as the top.

Period vs. Modern

The period dish would have been done in a wood fired stove with a hanging chicken on a hook or spit.  I had to do this dish in a gas fired stove with collected rendered chicken fat.  I used as many organic items as possible.  The chicken that would have been cooked over this dish would have been either a Sultan or a Russian Orlaff (Chickens in Period Research Paper).  I had to use a modern chicken for the rendered fat.  As seen in the photos, I tried to use as period dishes as possible for mixing and cooking.  The bananas would have been fried on a flat sheet of metal. (Rodinson, p. 286)

I enjoyed this dish very much.  I would have personally seasoned the dough with spices but the recipe did not indicate this was done.  I am betting; however that the love for spices was great enough someone somewhere would have thought to spice the dough up.  If I were serving this to friends, I would; however the dough at this point is a simple dough relying on bananas and honey for flavor.

Judhaba (Apricot or Banana Savory Pudding)

This is not your regular pudding.  This is both a sweet/savory crusty pudding much like a cobbler made with chicken fat instead of butter.   This sounds really weird…I mean who makes a pudding of chicken fat?!  Well if you wanted as many calories as possible and butter wasn’t always available, you used the fat drippings from a hanging chicken (or duck) and made a really tasty sweet and savory full fat dessert!

Judhaba

Apricot or Banana Savory Pudding

Translation:

Apricot Judhaba:

Take some sweet and mature apricots; detach (the fruit) from the pit.  (Mix it with sugar.) In a clean baking pan…spread out (a flat bread)  and place the mixture of apricots and sugar on top.  Cover this with another cooked flat bread.  If you wish to add a bit of saffron , do so and sprinkle with rose water; then hang an excellent hen over (the dish), may it please God.

(Zaouali, pp. 82)

Banana Judhaba:

Take bananas that are fully ripe.  Peel them and immerse them in fine samid sour dough, kneaded as for pancakes.  Then take them up and leave on some thing woven.  Boil sesame oil, fry the bananas, take them out and throw them in syrup.  Them them up and throw them in pounded sugar, then arrange them in a tray with fin flat breads above and below.  Hang fat chicken above.

(Rodison, pp. 411)

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh or dried apricots  or 4 sliced bananas              1/3 cup sugar                1 pinch saffron

¼ teaspoon rose water                         flat bread

1 chicken or 1 cup chicken fat

Redaction:

When I did this recipe I used dried apricots as fresh was not available.  Per several other recipes dried or preserved are acceptable substitutes (see recipe: Khaukyiyya [meat with plums]).  I chopped up the apricots roughly so that there were still chunks and placed in a bowl.  Once the apricots were chopped I then sprinkled on 1/3 cup of sugar and enough water to just cover the dried apricots.  If I had been using fresh I would not have added water as fresh apricots would have generated enough moisture from being sugared.

Judhaba spices

When I decided to retry this recipe, I had the ingredients on hand for either bananas or apricots.  I decided to try a half and half.   I did not dip the bananas in flour then fry them as the 2nd recipe suggests.  This would have made the bananas even more flavorful however I was running a little short on time, so I mixed the sugar and saffron together then poured 1/2 of the sugar onto the apricots and then the other 1/2 onto the bananas then set the two bowls of fruit to the side.

I made a quick flat bread dough using a bread recipe and divided the resulting dough into two balls.

tajine w dough

The first ball I rolled out and placed on the bottom of a oiled tanjin.

raw dough in bottom

Now the original recipe implies cooked flat bread.  I did this the first time and ended up with a burnt offering instead of a tasty dessert.  I have tried with and with out oiling the tajine and cooked or uncooked flat bread.  I go with oiling the tajine and uncooked flat bread.  There is much less burning of bread this way.

I then rolled out the other ball of dough, roughly shaped into a circle into the oven at 350 for 10 minutes (or until slightly golden brown on top).

While the second flat bread was cooking I divided the apricots and bananas onto the raw flat bread dough in the tajine.

sugared apricots and banana

These were then sprinkled with a little rose water.

The next step was to place the cooked flat bread on top of the fruit.

flat bread on top

Here is where thinks get a little different.  I did not have a hook from which to cook a chicken on while placing the fruit and flat bread underneath to catch the drippings.  What I did do is place a chicken on top of the cooked flat bread so that all the fat would be caught, covered with the top of the tajine and cooked till done.

chicken on top

This is where a cup of chicken fat can be used instead of the whole chicken.  If a cup of chicken fat is readily available, smear the fat on top of the cooked flat bread and bake the dish until the bottom layer is cooked (with out scorching) and the fat has been absorbed, roughly 30 minutes.   For just chicken fat a tajine is not necessary, any regular baking dish will do.  If using a whole chicken, cook the dish in a tajine until the chicken is thoroughly cooked, about 45 minutes to an hour.  The chicken comes out extremely tender and moist while the pudding has absorbed the chicken fat for a rich one of a kind dessert.

chicken fruit pudding

The apricot side tastes a bit like peach cobbler with chicken while the banana side was strongly banana flavored with chicken.   Sweet savory and very unforgettable!