Friday, October 13, 2006

Is Semolina/Sugee Considered Flour?

I just had lunch with "Tan Sri", at Delicious, upon my suggestion, as we were trying to decide where to eat at Bangsar Village.

The place is a success story, and sticks to the simple formula of fairly good food at fairly affordable prices in fairly nice surroundings, with fairly easy parking. My nasi kerabu was fairly good, not the best, but certainly not the worst. "Tan Sri"'s mushroom soup looked thick and mushroomy, with evidence of shitake mushrooms swimming about.

Now, many many years ago, King of the Chinese used to lug back a Flourless Lemon Cake from Daimaru, Melbourne, for us everytime he came back. Not into baking yet at the time, I was intrigued by the term flourless, just like most of the non cake laity out there, (FLOURLESS? REALLY AH? HOW LIKE THAT? WHAT DO YOU USE?) but never really pursued the matter beyond going ooh and aah. Fast forward, many many years down the line, I wish I had done SOMETHING about obtaining the recipe back then.

So, I've been meaning to try the flourless orange cake in Delicious. Tan Sri and I dissected the cake, and tried using our tongues and imagination to decipher the composition. I told him that most flourless cakes have almond and egg, which was when he commented, it tastes like sugee. Now, sugee seems to be known as sugee only in this country, otherwise it is known as semolina. (Not salmonella, which is the poisoning from raw egg). From an internet search, I found that

Semolina flour;
Typically hard durum wheat which has been ground into flour. The resulting product is high in gluten and is used for making pasta and breads. Semolina is available in coarse or fine texture flour.
(courtesy of http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/)

Which begs the question. Is it a flour? If not, then an orange sugee cake can be classified as a flourless cake.

But back to the more important point, anyone out there has a recipe for flourless orange/lemon cake? (not from the internet la, must be tried and tested)

5 comments:

boo_licious said...

Wahhh! Tan Sris also so indepth discussion abt flour. I made one long long ago.

http://masak-masak.blogspot.com/2005/05/look-ma-no-flour.html

Folding in the egg whites works much better I reckon. Happy trying!

fatboybakes said...

HAHA, that's "Tan Sri" with the inverted commas dont forget. thanks for the link. will try.

Flower said...

Hi, I missed reading your blog for a few days, and suddenly there are a few that I miss already.

I have semolina flour in my pantry but didnt know what to do with it. Any clue?

fatboybakes said...

flower, make sugee cake la, with the semolina. if not, can use to make pasta oso.

Anonymous said...

Hello!

Interesting blog and very yummy. I love sugee cake and trying to make one. Do you know if it is better to toast the sugee first and then pour it over the butter? Tht's how my mum used to make it. But the butter just melts - so I dont have to cream it anymore?