Tish Pishti

[Alice Faber]

Mark A Mandel wrote:
>On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Alice Faber wrote:
>
>#Mark A Mandel said:
>#>For Passover my wife made a "soaked cake" called Tish Pishti. The recipe
>#>was described as a Judeo-Spanish dish, but the book it was taken from
>#>(with attribution) says it is Turkish, which is a much more plausible
>#>source for a name like that. *Is* it Turkish? Are the "i"s front or
>#>back? What does it mean?
>#
>#There's no contradiction. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, a
>#lot of them fetched up in Turkey (and the Balkans and...). My Claudia Roden
>#cookbook (The Book of Jewish Food) describes it as a "Judeo-Spanish
>#specialty of Turkey". It looks delicious, but *awfully* sweet...
>
>Yes, I know that bit of history. The apparent contradiction was between
>the immediate source's description of it as "Judeo-Spanish" and a name
>that was obviously nothing of the kind.
>
>We have the Roden book and (somebody) Nathan's cookbook (Passover
>Recipes???) as well, but Rene used the recipe from the NY Times Magazine
>of April something, 2000, Molly O'Neill's column. It is sweet, but the
>sweetness is not overwhelming (to my taste), being absorbed and
>distributed through the "pastry".

Ah...so Molly O'Neill just wasn't careful with her description. I
wonder how her recipe compares with Roden's. Perhaps she was trying
to make a less gooey version.
--
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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                                     fax (203) 865-8963