Tagged ‘recipe’

Creative Cheate I

February 27th, 2013 by KM Wall

Bramer - sacks to the mill

Before bread there is flour; before flour there is the mill; before the mill there is grain.

Sacks to the Mill!

Markham’s  cheat bread, redacted

1 # leaven in salt

Soooo – how do you get leaven (which is another name for a starter) if you don’t have some left from the last batch because, just maybe, this is your FIRST batch?

Punt. Hence, Creative Cheate.

I’ve tried lots of different things. Essentially you want a mixture of water and flour and yeast that will help your bread rise give it good  sourdough qualities – it’s not just for flavor, but alterations in the pH that improve keeping time, etc.

My latest?  1 bottle of beer (any kind); 1 Tablespoon of yeast or a packet (I buy it by the pound, so I’m not sure how many teaspoons are in the packet, but close enough for this)


2 Q H2O
flour for dough:
2# each corn, rye, wheat
OR 3# corn, 3# wheat

1TBL yeast
salt

Dissolve starter in 3 Q H20 ; Add 3# flour (I like to start with corn – the longer it soaks, the better it is)
Cover and fridge overnight
Next morning
Add salt to taste (1 tsp/# – the starter adds some)
The yeast
The rest of the flour
Form into rough dough
Let sit at least 10 minutes and then knead until as smooth as a babies bottom
Let rise in clean greased bowl (with cover – flour and towel – to keep crust from forming on top)
Knock down and cut into 8 – 2# loaves and 1# new starter
Mould loaves, let rise
Bake 500° convection oven 1/2  hour ; put oven to 350 and keep in for another half hour. It will sound hollow when knocked on bottom. It smells different, too, but I’m not in your kitchen to tell you when.
Cool on racks
Cover with towel or freeze.

And what if you don’t need this much bread? The saga continues……

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Chewet

February 25th, 2013 by KM Wall

My little pie maker - this is not an endorsement - doesn't it look like a muffin tin????

A chewet pie.
Take the brawns and the wings of capons and chickens after they have been roasted, and pull away the skin; then shred them with fine mutton suet very small; then season it with cloves, mace, cinnamon, sugar, and salt;then put to raisins of the sun and currants, and sliced dates, and orange peels, and, being well mixed together, put it into small coffins made for that purpose, and strew on top of them good store of caraway comfits: then cover them, and bake them with a gentle heat, and these chewets you may make also of roasted veal, seasoned as before shown and all parts of the loin is the best.
-Markham,G. The English Housewife, Best ed, p. 103

  1. Roasted chicken or capon – there’s no reason to avoid a store rotisserie bird  – pull off the skin and shred the meat. Or use roasted veal., should you have some of that around.
  2. Mutton suet is pretty hard to find these days, and we’d probably prefer less fat – a little butter would do, but out chicken are also pretty fat…
  3. Season the chicken with spices – it should smell good and taste great, and a little cloves goes a long, long, way
  4. Raisins of the sun, little tiny currents, (the Plymouth County girl in me wants to say ‘Crasin’. Just saying.)Sliced dates or chopped if you got ‘em
  5. Orange peels  – you might want to grate this.
  6. Mix it all together. Smell and taste.
  7. Make pastry for the coffins (it’s not hard, and these are little pies). If you don’t trust your pastry skills, use one of the several little pie makers on the market or the Texas size muffin tins to act as your forms.
  8. Roll, fill.
  9. Add caraway comfits, which are caraway seeds coated with sugar, or just use regular old caraway seeds. I know at least one of you is thinking, “Caraway in German is Kummel, in Yiddish…..” Yes, you are.
  10. Put on the lids, crimp.
  11. Bake – 350°ish  until the pastry is nice and done (the chicken is already cooked, no danger of raw chicken)
  12. Chewet. Chewet, Good.

another sort of little pie maker...also not an endorsement

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Nuts in the fire

January 12th, 2013 by KM Wall

The Story of the English Underground, Colonial Edition.cont

Hollow hearted - not so young or small. Don't try to cook this - better for the pig!

Young, small turnips should be cooked in water without wine for the first boiling. Then throw away the water and cook slowly in water and wine, and chestnuts therin, or, if one has no chestnuts, sage.

-Pleyn Delight, #17. (The Menagier de Paris, 1393)

 

Sage

The Monkey and the Cat - Abraham Hondius (and chestnuts)

Singe et chat - another version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Monkey and the Cat

The Monkey seing nuts in fire
Doth force the Cat to plucke them neir;
Which showeth the Enuious doth not care,
whose House do burn eso they haue share.

Aesops Monkey and a Cat on a trencher in the British Museum

and now in Spanish...Tomasso Salini Mao Una fabula de Esopo. El gato, el mono y las castana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Everything old…..

January 10th, 2013 by KM Wall

Purple dragon carrot..

…is new again. This year’s seed catalogs have carrots in many colors. Like purple, although it looks rather more violet to me.

 

 

 

 

Purple sun carrots - these are almost black

 

 

Atomic Red carrots

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yellowstone carrots

 

 

The Story of the English Underground, Colonial Edition.Continued.

Chapter: Carrot.

Before carrots were orange – which is Soooooo Modern – so back in the good old Early Modern days, carrots were violet. Or black. And white. Yellow and even red. Just beginning to be seen in orange. Orange is tres Flemish and Dutch. The Dutch are very fond of Orange. Consider it Princely, even. The English, on the other hand, were fine with things they way they had always been. They were latecomers to the orange bandwagon.

Carrots color wheel- 21st AND 17th centuries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carrot colors are fashion – and have been for the last 400 years.

“A Carrot Sallad.

Carrots boyled and eaten with Vinegar, Oyle, and Pepper serve for a special good sallad to stirre up appetitie, and to purifie blood.”

-        1617 Wm Vaughn in Dining with William Shakespeare. Madge Lorwin.(1976)  p. 299.

 

 

Willem Frederik van Royen The Carrot 1699

Check out the World Carrot Museum. It’s on the blogroll. Totally amazing.

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Idolatry in a crust

December 20th, 2012 by KM Wall

A modern mince pie

Mincemeat, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, was in fact, minced meat. Usually beef, sometime mutton, occasionally veal. Not just the meaty bits we now buy – sometimes tongue as well. But meat alone isn’t mincemeat. It also had copious amounts of raisins (a/k/a ‘raisins of the sunne’) and currents and sometimes dates and prunes, as well as generous amounts of spices and sugar. The weight of the dried fruit might equal or exceed the weight of the meat, and in the 1620 the raisins were much more expensive per ounce then the meat was.
Suet isn’t something we cook much with any more, but fat is another component of the mince pie. The fat is what makes it rich. During the 1700′s butter starts to come in as the fat of choice, and by the 20th century seems to be more common.
If I were making this mincemeat at home (and I have) I would take three pounds of beef, one to one and a half pounds of butter, three pounds of dried fruit, all cut small and well mixed (and be grateful that I don’t have to pick stems off the raisins and take the stones out of them) with some orange peel (two or three oranges worth – well washed, preferably organically grown oranges). Salt, pepper, cloves (this can be strong – not too much) and mace (or nutmeg if you have that – they have a very similar flavor profile). Put it into pastry – you can use pie pans if you want, sprinkle more sugar on top and bake them in your oven.
If you want to risk idolatry, make little rectangle pies and have them symbolize the manger where the Christ child was born. If you don’t want to fall into idolatry, make little rectangle pies just because they’re fun. You could even use frozen puff pastry and ‘let your soul delight in fatness’. And if you want to be thoroughly superstitious, go out on each of the Twelve Days of Christmas to a different house and eat a mince pie in each one to have good luck for each of the twelve months in the year ahead.

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Secret Life of Beets:Lumdardy Tarts Revisited

December 10th, 2012 by KM Wall

So, back to Lumdardy tarts…..

If beets are as likely the leafy green, what is a lumdardy? Years later, even after an update and revision and going on-line, the closest the OED gets to Lumdardy is Lumbard – is this a case of close enough?

lumbard

4.Cookery. [ellipt.: see B. 2.] Some kind of dish or culinary preparation. Obs.

1657REEVEGod’s Plea 130 The Hoga’s, and Olies, and Lumbards of these times.

Not terribly descriptive….but there’s more:

2.Cookery. In certain AF. names of dishes as leche lumbard (see LEACHn.1 2); frutour lumbard [frutour = FRITTER]; rys lumbard [F. ris sweetbread]. Also in lombard pie (see LUMBER-PIE).

?c1390 [see LEACHn.1 2]. c1430Two Cookery-bks. 35 Leche lumbarde. 1452Reliq. Ant. I. 88 Frutour lumbert..Lesshe lumbert. 1466-7Durh. Acct. Rolls (Surtees) 91 Et in 2 lib. dell powderlomberd empt. de eodem, 3s. 3d. 14..Anc. Cookery in Househ. Ord. (1790) 438 Rys Lumbarde.Leche Lumbarde.

So on to Lumber-pie…

Lumber-pie

Also lumbar-pie. [See LOMBARDa. 2.]

A savoury pie made of meat or fish and eggs.

1656 MARNETTÈ Perf. Cook II. 1 To make a Lumbar Pye. Take three pound of Mutton [etc.]. 1663 in Jupp Acc. Carpenters’ Comp. (1848) 206 It is..ordered..that the provision be as followeth; vizt..Roast Turkey, Lumberpie, Capon, Custurd, and codling tart. 1688R. HOLMEArmoury III. 83/1 Lumber pie, made of Flesh or Fish minced and made in Balls..with Eggs..and so Baked in a Pye with Butter. 1694MOTTEUXRabelais (1737) IV. lix. 243 Lumber-Pyes, with hot Sauce. 17..E. SMITHCompl. House wife (1750) 150 To make a Lumber pye. Take a pound and a half of veal, &c. 1849W. H. AINSWORTHLanc. Witches III. ix, There were lumbar pies, marrow pies, quince pies [etc.].

Still unclear, but….one never knows what causes light to dawn over Marblehead….

Hit the books – check. Now it’s time to get back into the kitchen.

So, beets as a leafy green – check . Grated bread still seems to be breadcrumbs – check.

Cheese – what would cheese be????

One named cheese that comes up from time to time is variations of ‘Parmysent‘ – Parmesan? The same cheese I would shake over my spaghetti and meatballs at school lunch? The same cheese I now buy in wedges and save the rinds to add to my pasta fazoole? It would fit the pattern of the so-called ‘Old Cheese‘ that is also sometimes mentioned.

This combination of Swiss Chard, breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese sounds vague familiar…what does it remind me of?

Lets cut some beets and go back to the kitchen…..

Beets, cut November 30th...

 

How to make Lumbardy Tarts

Take beets, chop them small, and to them put grated bread and cheese, and mingle them wel in the chopping.  Take a few corrans, and a dishe of sweet butter, and melt it.  Then stir al these in the butter, together with three yolkes of egges, sinamon, ginger, and sugar, and make your tart as large as you will, and fill it with the stuffe, bake it, and serve it in.

1588. The Good Huswifes Handemaide

 

And now my translation:

 

One bunch swiss chard

Breadcrumbs (plain)

Grated Parmesan cheese

Currants or raisins

Butter

3 egg yolks

cinnamon

ginger

sugar

 

Pastry for a top and bottom for a 9 or 10 inch pie.

Wash and dry the Swiss chard carefully. Pull of any sad or buggy bits. Cut off the stems and save for a side dish. Chop the leafy parts very small, nothing larger then ½ square.

Melt 2 – 4 tablespoons of butter; when somewhat cool beat the 3 egg yolks. Toss the butter/egg yolk mix with the chopped Swiss chard. Add enough breadcrumbs so sop up all the liquid (two or three handfuls – it depends on the size of your eggs and the how juicy the Swiss chard). Add enough grated cheese to make it smell good (it depends on how strong your cheese and how much you like it). Add a handful of raisins. If you like things sweet add one or two more handfuls. Mix together ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ginger and ½ teaspoon sugar. Mix everything all together. Smell it and decide – more cinnamon? More ginger? Make it good!

Put this lovely stuff in a pastry lined pie pan and cover with a top crust. Cut some vents for the steam to escape. Bake in a 375 oven for ½ hour. Turn down the heat to 350 until it is done – the pastry should be golden brown-tan and the filling should be a darker, denser green and it should smell wonderful.

Cool on a rack. Serve at room temperature.

 

Jan Steen - The Fat Kitchen (notice the woman eating the pie with her fingers!)

The minute the cheese and the Swiss Chard were mixed together it hit me – tortellini. It smelled like tortellini. If the cinnamon and ginger  were nutmeg….Could Lumdary Tart be a giant early modern English tortellini? Oh, the mysteries of of food. Oh, the power of smell to invoke memory.

Here in Plymouth now, talk  of tortellini  means  it must be getting close to Christmas…..and so it is.

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‘a most excellent and delicate sallad’

December 5th, 2012 by KM Wall

Beet roots (red roman beets)

“The great red Beet or Roman Beet, boyled and eaten with oyle, vinegar and pepper, is a most excellent and delicate sallad: but what might be made of the red and beautifull root (which is to be preferred before the leaves, as well in beauty as in goodnesse) I refer to the curiouos and cunning cooke, who no doubt when he hath made view thereof, and is assured that it is both good and wholesome, will make thereof many and divers dishes both faire and good.”

-1597. John Gerard, The Herball. p. 319.

Beetroot tops, November 30th (and there's more left in this bed)

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…whitings and blackings, and liverings and hackings…

November 30th, 2012 by KM Wall

More bits in the nose to tail guide to 17th century slaughter time eating.

Hog - the school of Rembrandt

Liver is another of the organ meats that has to be used fairly quickly. Liver-gut puddings are essentially liverwurst, which means liver sausage.

To make Pig’s Liver-gut puddings.

Take Pig-Liver, boil it until done, skim it. When it is cold grate it fine, the take half pint sweet Milk, a stuyver stale White-bread, cut off the crust, grate it fine, and place it in the Milk; let it boil together until it is a thick porridge, also a good piece of Butter in the porridge; when it is almost cold stir in the Liver, then take 9 or 10 Eggs well beaten, a little Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg, Cloves, and Mace finely crushed, and some melted Butter, all together well mixed, stuff the Intestines without forgetting the Pig’s-lard and let them cook for an hour.

- Rose, The Sensible Cook. pp.94-5.

Why is it, when the same thing is called pate it seems tastier, special, somehow refined? The naming of things is so important. So, from the Dutch Liver-gut puddings to the English Puddings of Hogs Livers.

Puddings of Hogs Liver

Take the Liver of a fat Hog, and parboyle it, then shred it small, and after beate it in a Morter very fine: then mixe it with the thickest and sweetest Creame, and straine it very well through an ordinary strainer; the put therto six yelkes of Egges, and two whites, and the grated crums of neere-hand a penny white loafe, with good store of Currants, Dates, Cloves, Mace, Sugar, Saffron, Salt, and the best Swine suet, or Beefe suet, but Beefe suet is the more wholsome, and lesse loosening; then after it hath stood a while, fill it into the farmes, and boyle them, as before shewed: and when you serve them to the Table, first boyle them a little, then  lay them on a Gridyron over the coales, and broyle them gently, but scorch them not, nor in any wise breake their skinnes, which is to bee prevented by oft turning and tossing them on the Grid-yron, and keeping a slow fire.

-Markham, Best ed. The English Housewife p. 68-9.

Grid-yron art:

Man playing a gridiron.....can anyone translate this?

livering

[f. LIVERn.1 + -ing, ? after pudding.]

A pudding made of liver and rolled up in the form of a sausage.

c1460Towneley Myst. xii. 217 Oure mete now begyns;..Two blodyngis, I trow, a leueryng betwene. 1556WITHALSDict. (1568) 49a/1 Tomaculum, ex iecore porcino cibus fit, vt supra, a lyueryng. 1591 A. W. Bk. Cookrye 12b, To make Liuerings of a Swine. 1611COTGR., Fricandeaux: Short..daintie puddings..rolled vp into the forme of Liuerings. 1624CHAPMANHomer’s Batrachom. 58 Lyurings (white~skind as Ladies). 1674N. FAIRFAXBulk & Selv. 159 The Darbyshire huswife..when she makes whitings and blackings, and liverings and hackings. 1694MOTTEUXRabelais V. xxvii. (1737) 122 Chitterlings, Links,..Liverings.

 

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Another Pumpion Pye (and a little nutmeg)

November 26th, 2012 by KM Wall

Nutmeg for John Gerard's Herbal (1597)

and a little NPR nutmeg backgrounder….before we go back to Pumpion Pye

To make a Pumpion Pye.

Take a pound of pumpion and slice it, a handful of a time, a little rosemary, () and sweet marjoram stripped off the stalks, chop them small, then take cinamon, nutmeg, pepper, and a few cloves all beaten, also ten eggs, & beat them, then mix and beat them all together, with as much sugar as you think fit, then fry it like a froise, after it is fried let it stand till it is cold, then fill your pye after this manner. Take sliced apples sliced thin roundways, and lay a layer of the froise, and a layer of the apples, with currans betwixt the layers. While your pie is fitted, put in a good deal of sweet butter before you close it. When the pye is baked, take the yolks of eggs, some white wine or verjuyce and make a caudle of this, but not too thick, cut up the lid, put it in, and stir them well together whilst the eggs and pumpion be not perceived, and so serve it up.”

-(1660)Robert May, The Accomplist Cook.

To make this pumpkin pie:

  1. It’s  the same recipe that I posted last week – except that it’s twelve years later and in a cookbook by someone else, and it’s absent a few words…
  2. It’s going to take a while – give yourself PLENTY of time.
  3. Take  a pound (not a half pound - MORE pumpkin!)  of pumpkin (or squash) and peel and slice it. Take some thyme, rosemary, (No Parsley mentioned here, that’s the ()),  marjoram, stripped off the stalk and chopped fine.
  4. Add some cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and a few cloves (not necessarily 6) cloves. They should all be powdered.
  5. Beat 10 eggs. Add the spice and some sugar to the eggs.
  6. Add some butter to a frying pan. Add the slice pumpkin and the herbs.
  7. When the pumpkin start to get soft, add the eggs with the spice. Add a little sugar, turn the eggs around the pumpkin and let it set up. Froize means fried, rather like frittata means fried…when this is cooked through you could need to let it cool. I’m tempted to serve it up  with some nice crusty bread and a glass of wine and call it a day.
  8. But wait -there’s MORE.
  9. Make a pastry case – Use a deep dish pie plate, make a bottom crust and then add the cooled froize as the first layer.
  10. Put in some dried currents (If you only have raisins of the sun, they will do) in a layer over the froize.
  11. Add a layer of thin sliced apples (cores removed).
  12. Add butter.
  13. Put the lid on the pie and bake.
  14. Make the caudle – mix 6 egg yolks with wine or verjuice and cook them together until they’re thick (but no too thick).
  15. When you take the pie out of the oven, remove the lid, add the caudle and stir it all around until the eggs and pumpkin are blended in.
  16. So serve it up.

 

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Another way to enjoy turkey

November 23rd, 2012 by KM Wall

Another way to enjoy turkey

The Flesh Sallet of a Capon or Turkey.
Take of either, slice it very thin, as for a Hash, put that which is white of the breast and wings by its self, and that which is black of the legs, or other part of the Fowl, by its self, put the rump and sides of the rump in the dish, and the other bones of the legs and the wings about the sides of the dish like sippets; then season your meat with a few Sives, a little tarragon, Speeremint and Parslee, with the Cabbage or two of Lettice; mince these exceeding small, add a little small Pepper, Salt, and minced Nutmeg; with a little Horse Raddish; scraped and minced, mingle your seasoning together, and strow it on your Sallet, pour on your Oyl and Vinegar, so toss it up together; let your blackest flesh be laid all over the bottom of your dish and bones, and your whitest on the top of it all; strow on a Lemmon Cut in a Dice, and garnish it at your pleasure.
- Rabisha, William. The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected. London: 1661. pp. 96-7.

  1. If you call it Flesh Sallet chances are you’ll be eating alone…although if this were Halloween or the Zombie Apocalypse…or you have a household of nine0year old boys…
  2. What you do first is separate the white meat from the dark meat, and you can decorate the edges of your serving platter with the wings and the legs still on the bone. Make 2 bowls – one for white meat and one for dark meat – you’ll be seasoning each separately.
  3. Sippets are small toasts of bread that often are tucked under or around all sorts of dishes, often to soak up the sauces. Think of them as big English croutons.
  4. Season the meat with sives (chives), tarragon, spearmint, parsley. Always cook to your own taste. Fresh is better then dried for this, if you’re able. Chives and parsley are nice together; tarragon is always good with fowl. Spearmint becomes more interesting with the lemon at the end.
  5. A Cabbage of lettuce is a head of lettuce – a small head  – no iceberg lettuce in the 17th century – more like a Boston head of lettuce or a head of Bibb lettuce. Many lettuces in the 17th century are loose leaf. But since you’re going to mince it small… just don’t overwhelm with lettuce.
  6. Add pepper, salt and nutmeg.
  7. A little horseradish is very nice on turkey. Just saying.
  8. Olive oil and either wine vinegar or cider vinegar. A little on one and then a little of the other.
  9. Dark meat on the bottom (bones optional). Light meat on top. Dice a lemon and toss it on – dice is pieces cut 1/4 inch cubes. I’m assuming that it’s the flesh of the lemon, not the peel or the seeds. Lemon and spearmint are very nice together.
  10. Garnishes include a sprinkle of sugar or other spices (in powdered form).

Willem Claeszoon Heda - Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie

And although there was no pie in 1621, no doubt there might be a smidge near you, so by all means have pie for breakfast – it’s the historical thing to do!

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