All posts by SoshaRuark

Elizabethan, Mincemeat Pie

A Minced Pie

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So I was drooling over the holiday recipes that every one has coming out and had wanted to do a mincemeat pie for ages.  Well along comes a recipe I could not wait to try out going “Hey!  This looks close to period!”.  I was soooooo wrong.  The period recipe goes like this…

A Minced Pie

Translation:

Take a leg of mutton, and cut the best of the flesh from the bone, and parboil it well: then put to it three pound of the best mutton suet, and shred it very small: then spread it abroad, and season it with pepper and salt, cloves and mace; then put in good store of currants, great raisons, and prunes clean washed and picked, a few dates sliced, and some orange peels sliced: then being all well mixed together, put it into a coffin, or into divers coffins, and so bake them: and when they are served up open the lids, and strew store of sugar on the top of the meat, and upon the lid.  And in this sort you may also bake beef or veal; on the beef would not be parboiled, and the beef will ask a double quantity of suet.

Ingredients:

1 lb Beef

½ lb Suet

8 dates

10 prunes

½ C raisons

Peel from 1 orange

1 tsp Cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves

½ tsp ground mace

2 Tbs sugar

Pepper and salt to taste

 

Redaction:

Now my redaction is mostly spot on.  I had to make one (1) change to the recipe.  I had NO currents.  My favorite shop for odd or not common items was totally out for once, so I had to substitute an apple.  Apples are a) period and b) can be found in other recipes, so I’m thinking it’s a “close enough” type of thing.  Due try to use currents though if give the chance!

I gathered up all my dry ingredients.

Note I am missing the beef, the lard and the chopped up orange peels in this shot.  Those will be shown a little bit later on.

Chop the dates, raisins, and prunes very well.

Here I have the apple shown chopped.  It’s not finely chopped.  I wanted some texture but not huge mouth filling pieces.

Cook the beef and chop fine if it isn’t already.

This is regular hamburger meat, in small bits.  The meat used is a bit lean actually.  The recipe was not specific on cut of meat or fat content just that the meat be chopped fine.

Chop the suet very fine and put with the beef.

Now this is a little on the hard part to find, unless you have beef fat laying around, which I did.  I trimmed up a brisket a while back and froze the fat.  Here the fat is thawed and finely chopped.  You want this pretty small as the fat does melt a bit but not completely.  It’s not butter.

Add the spices EXCEPT the sugar to the meat and suet mixture.  The sugar is for another step waaaay down the line.

Chop up the currents, raisins, prunes and dates.

Let me show the orange peels here.

This is the peel from one orange.   For a bit of added flavor not dependent on just orange peel, I added the juice of the orange as well.  Not all of it but just what I could squeeze out by hand.

Chop the rind up very fine.

This adds a brighter taste over all, in my opinion even though the recipe doesn’t call for that.  So adding the juice is extra addition on my part.

My thoughts on why orange juice is not called for or “the juice of an orange”;  is that period oranges were mostly very bitter.  The skin though, with the proper application of sugar and spices, is tasty.  So period orange juice = bitter while a modest application of modern orange juice, cuts down on the amount of orange peel needed for that orange taste,helping the taste along.

Once the peel has been chopped fine.  Add this to the rest of the cooking ingredients.  Cook everything till the meat and lard are well done and everything has a chance to blend a bit.

Make the dough.

Here is where a bit of research is needed.  Meat pies with red meats were suggested to be in heavy duty rye pastry shells, which were probably never meant to be eaten but used as a cooking vessel that could handle the heavy meat inside and being heated and served more then once.  No recipe was given, a person just knew this when cooking, which makes the modern attempt an iffy prospect.  So a little experimenting had to be done.  I did a 1/3 rye/ 2/3 flour approach.  1 Cup of rye flour and 2 cups of regular white flour with butter water and salt.  Period wise this may not have been eaten but I like my crusts tasty!

Add everything together.

And here you have dough!  Amazing isn’t it! /grin

Roll out the dough.

If a large “coffin” was to be made then this would be forming a rectangle.  However there is some debate on if the pies were square or round.  I have seen wooden forming “pins” fairly wide and deep used to form pies however as this is food there are no left over’s to examine.  This I think is an either/or thing.  Either way may be right.

Form into a “coffin”.

Instead of a round forming pin I am using a ceramic ramekin. Be sure to oil or butter up the outsides!  It gets messy other wise.

Here is the peeled off dough that has been re-pinched back into a cup like shape.

Fill the cup with the mincemeat.

Next add a lid but do NOT seal the lid to the pastry cup.  The lids need to be detachable to add sugar in a later step.

I added a bit of decoration to the edges so they did not look so rough, by pressing the tines of a fork around the edges.  The three cuts in the middle are to help escaping steam not bulge out the dough and possibly make things expand to much out of shape.

Cook the un-sugared pies at 350 for 20 minutes or until the top turns golden brown.  When the pies have been removed from the oven, lift the lid and sprinkle with the sugar.

Replace the lid.

And here is the edible pie broken into and ready for munching on!

This is not a modern day mincemeat pie.  There is no juice to add or sugar at the start.  Period wise this is a meat pie with a few rare treats (dates oranges and sugar) to add to the festive occasion.  Any juice was produced by the meat and lard as a broth to be soaked into the pastry.

As for the pastry, well, I wasn’t very thrilled with it.  The pastry did the job of holding every thing in and cooking very well but it was not very tasty.  Next time I will make this with a flour pastry and add egg to the crust as that is suppose to make the period pastry edible per the period manuscripts.  We shall see!

 

Elizabethan, Pumpes (Pork Meatballs)

Pumpes (Pork Meatballs)

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I was asked to help do a Nobles Luncheon a little bit ago.  I like luncheons.  I do!  They are fun more intimate and one person can cook for 20 instead of arm wrestling a horde of kitchen help to feed 120 who will laminate the feast is cold and late instead of pondering the wonderful tasty period food that was devised for their enjoyment.  (That’s another story for another day though).  So the original cook had to bow out, leaving me in charge of finding a period foods from England and France.  These were not my specialized area of cooking research but I had a few ideas.  Then the kicker part came down.  The entire luncheon had to be of finger foods.  Drat!!!  There went my idea of pork loin studded with garlic, cooked in wine and rosemary.  Soo I had to hit my library of cook books and come up with period food that was both tasty while cold and easily held in hand.  Here is the meat portion of that luncheon.

Pumpes

Pork Meatballs

Translation:

Take and seethe a good gobbet of Pork, & not to lean, as tender as though may; then take them up & chop them as small as though may; then take take cloves & Mace, & chop forth withal, & also chop forth with Raisins of Corinth; then take them, & roll them as round as though may, like to small pellets & at two inches round, then lay them on a dish by themselves; then make a good almond milk & mix it with flour of rice,   let it boil well but look that it is clean running; & at the dresser, lay five meatballs in a dish, pour thine pottage thereon.  And if though will, set on every meatball a field-flower, & above strew sugar enough &  maces:  serve them forth.  And some men make pellets of veal or beef, but pork is best & fairest.

(Renfrow, pp 152-153)

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork

½ tsp ground cloves

1 tsp mace

½ C currents

2 C low sodium beef broth

 

Redaction:

When I did this recipe for the first time I was not in my kitchen.  I was at another house with out all of my ingredients such as raisons/currents so I had to improvise.

Here everything is on hand.  Luckily you can’t hear me swearing at the lack of raisins while rummaging for a suitable substitute.

The spices look like they are in insufficient quantity here.  They aren’t.  Do NOT be tempted to over spice your pork balls.  Adding spices is easy but once added impossible to remove.

Here I put in about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of black raspberry jam.  A quick (and available) substitute for raisins that would at least give me an idea of what raisins would taste like in the finial cooking. (Remember this was the trial cooking here).  Improvising is very period so don’t be afraid of having to add or subtract if necessity dictates.

Now some people will say currents and raisons are the same.  They really aren’t.  Currents are much smaller and a bit sweeter; however if currents are out of your price range/feast budget go with raisins.  You’ll be much happier that way.  The first improvising was not the use of raisins in the recipe (though I did do that on the 2nd batch that was used in a Nobles Luncheon) I had to use a dark raspberry jam so that the sweet would permeate the meatballs.

I mixed the spices and the jam into the meatball.

I know…this looks so very very inelegant and totally not appealing.  This gets much much better soon!

Then the making of the small balls and setting them to the side, until all the balls were formed.

I made these about 1 to 1 1/2 inches large.  I wanted finger food that wouldn’t choke a horse and allow sampling of more then one type of sauce for dipping.

Once all the balls were made, I placed them in a pan that had beef broth.

Now the original recipe calls for cooking in an almond milk with rice, being not in my house I had to improvise again.  I had no ground almonds from which to make the milk or powdered rice to add to this.  Hence the beef broth per the cookbook.

The first time I did this recipe I used regular canned beef broth.  Wow…that stuff is so salty!!  Use LOW SODIUM beef broth.  I can not stress this enough for this recipe.  The first batch was still very tasty but the second batch with the low sodium blew the first batch out of the water in taste.  There was a pork/beef taste but the flavor of the spices and the raisins also came through and not just a mouth full of salty meatball. (No jokes please!)

Place the balls in the pan for cooking in the broth.  Make sure the broth comes about ½ way to ¾ of the way to the top.  You could cover the meatballs but I would not suggest that.

When small fissures show at the top of the meatballs you know they are ready to be turned over for about 3-4 minutes to finish cooking through.  A batch of about 10-12 at a time takes 8-10 minutes total to cook.  Test out one or two off the stove to make sure your broth is hot enough and the cook time is long enough just to get an idea.  Also a taste test is a good idea.  The cook should be smiling when they are cooking not starving!

The recipe also calls for sugar and mace toping.  Since I knew I would be serving this at a luncheon to a bunch of fighters and their consorts I decided to forgo the sweet topping and just have a dipping sauce on the side.  Manly men don’t do flowers and sugar after a hard day of hitting each other up.  They don’t.  They want meat and lots of it.  So I did a mustard dip and a plum jam dip and made the recipe by 6.

The balls were greeted with great enthusiasm as were the sauces.  The balls were not served the same day they were made but the next day and were still moist and very tasty for having been essentially boiled the previous day and served cold.

Cucumbers, Ingredients and Spices

Cucumbers

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The English ‘gherkin’,  related to the German ‘Gurke’ meaning both cucumber and gherkin refers to cucumbers though the actual gherkin is a long rough skinned type of cucumber.  (Toussaint-Samat, pp. 529).  The cucumber is very period with seeds carbon dated from 9750 B.C. from Egypt.  (Staub, pp. 212)

The ways to eat the cucumber seems to range from drinking the squeezed pulp, cooked, eaten green or eaten raw with a little salt.   Another rather interesting way to drink a cucumber was to cut the top of a ripe cucumber off, stir the innards and let sit upright for a few days.  Now personally, I’m not so sure about this but I do come from the coke generation.  My drinks were made carbonated and sugared.  If this were not the case, I am sure I would find stirred cucumber innards rather tasty too!  The cucumber was considered a very versatile vegetable for both the edible and drinkable atributes and not just by one culture!

Cucumeres (Cucumbers Cooked/Pickled), Roman Cookery, Roman Vegetarian

Cucumeres (Cucumbers Cooked/Pickled)

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Cucumbers are a tasty little treat fresh from the garden.  Like many people, I find that fresh home grown cucumbers beat out those store bought.  Unfortunately, in the heart of Ansteorra at this time, fresh cucumbers are just about impossible to come across in most home gardens so store bought it was!

Translation:

When Scraped and cooked in olive oil, vinegar and honey, cucumbers are with out doubt more delicious.

Mark, pp. 135

Ingredients:

Cucumbers                   ¼ C honey

½ C vinegar               1/2 C olive oil

Redaction:

I did a little alteration, in the best of Roman way, with this recipe.  I chose not to cook the cucumbers  as I really did not want to deal with squished cucumber goo.  So, with that in mind, I chose to submerge sliced cucumbers in this wonderful little mixture and let them braise for 2-5 days at a time.

First gather all your ingredients.

Peel the cucumbers.

Now slice them into spears.

Now here you can keep the slices long or cut into half.

Mix the oil, honey and vinegar together.

Place your sliced cucumbers into the mixture.

Now this picture is only for one cucumber.  I sliced up five and the bowl was not big enough so I had to increase the mixture to accommodate all the cucumbers slices.

Looks a bit like a forest!  But a very tasty forest at that.  This is a wonderful light savory sweet treat to be eaten with bread, cheese and figs.  Give this one a try during those hot summer months or on a cool winter evening when you need a bit of green!

 

Caseus cum Recenti Fico (Cheese with Figs), Roman Vegetarian

Caseus cum Recenti Fico (Cheese with Figs)

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This dish is more like an appetizer or an after dinner treat.  A little sweet with a bit of savory.  Simple elegant and easy on the tongue, not to heavy.

Caseus cum Recenti Fico

(Cheese with Figs)

Translation:

A recent idea has been to eat a fresh fig instead of salt with cheese.  Pliny Natural History. (Grant, pp. 79)

Ingredients:

Fig

Cheese such as Feta or a good sheep milk cheese (Has a very mild nutty slightly salty flavor)

Optional:  Honey

Redaction:

Fresh figs.

Cut in half.

Place a bit of cheese on the fig.  Consume.

I like mine a bit sweet so I added a touch of honey.  I almost consumed a full pound but restrained myself.  A few of these and both the sweet and savory tooth is satisfied!

As for the type of cheese I will suggest a good goat or sheep milk cheese.  Some thing light and or creamy.  Or even a creamy nutty flavor.  I used Feta for this redaction though a good sheep milk cheese such as Petit Basque. will work very well.

 

Figs, Ingredients and Spices

Figs

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Now that all vacation has been used (until the the great giving of gift high holidays), time can once more be resumed on important matters like cooking.

A little history on a very tasty subject first though.  Figs.  The fruit of a fig tree, I learned today, is not a fruit.  It’s a “hollow receptacle entirely lined with tiny flowers, which, in total darkness, manage to bloom and ripen seeds: that ruby or emerald flesh of which so many cultures have been so fond is actually a miniature (and nearly divine) interior carpet of spent blossoms!) (Staub, pp. 86).  This doesn’t make the “fruit” any less tasty or valued in medieval times.

The Greeks used the fruit as a preserver, fresh or dried.  A bit of cheese, bread and figs were considered a filling and nutritious meal.  However any where but the Mediterranean Basin, figs are considered a luxury.  In the Mediterranean and Middle East figs were so common that in some place figs went unpicked or unused being so very common.  (Toussaint-Samat, pp. 670-1/Rodinson, pp. 149).

Figs have been eaten with pleasure as early as 2900 BC by both the Assyrians and Sumerians.  Figs were in Crete by 1600 BC while Xerxes, King of Persia, consumed Attic figs as a reminder of his conquests that produced some thing so delectably exquisite.  (Staub, pp. 86)

With all this tastiness and enjoyment going around about a simple but unusual “fruit”, you’d think there would be more recipes dedicated to such an enjoyable item.  Unfortunately while the fig is employed IN a great many dishes; the fig is not a star player in recipes as being considered common, oh so very common.

 

Elizabethan, Savory Toasted Cheese (aka Cheese Goo)

Savory Toasted Cheese (aka Cheese Goo)

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Some recipes translate to the modern palate easier then others.  This recipe is one of the best I have ever tasted and made that I willingly take to parties or serve to my more culinary challenged friends.  You can not go wrong with this dipping sauce ever!

Savory Toasted Cheese

(aka Cheese Goo)

Translation:

Cut pieces of quick fat, rich, well tasted cheese, (as the best of Brye, Cheshire, & or Sharp thick Cream-Cheese) into a dish of thick beaten belted butter, that hath served forth sparages or the like, or pease, or other boiled sallet, or ragout of meat, or gravy of Mutton: and if you will, Chop some of the Asperages among it, or slices of Gambon of Bacon, or fresh-callops, or onions, or Sibboulets, or Anchovis, and set all this to melt upon a Chafing-dish of Coals, and stir all well together, to Incorporate them; and were all is of an equal consistence, strew some gross White-Pepper on it, and it it with toasts or crusts of white-bread.  You may scorch it at the top with a hot Fire-Shovel.

Cariadoc’s Miscellany http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/sauces.html#1

 

Ingredients:

1 wedge of Brie

1 stick of butter

1 bock of cream cheese (or farmer’s cheese)

¼ tsp of white pepper (or to taste)

 

Optional items:

Asparagus

Pease

Bacon

Anchovies

Mutton

Redaction:

Gather all of your ingredients into one spot.

Peel the rind from the Brie but do NOT discard.

Place butter into a metal pot and start to melt.

Add in the cream cheese and stir.

When the butter and cream cheese have started to incorporate

add in the brie and brie crust.

Keep stirring! Do not let the cheeses and butter burn.  If you wish add pepper.

At first the sauce looks totally weird and very unappealing.  It gets better!

With in moments of continual stirring the cheese goo turns into a smooth creamy tasty sauce!  You just have to push through the gooey ooey stage first.

For the optional items, the original recipe calls for  incorporating any of these tasty treats that catch your eye,  into the mixture then serving on toast.  My choice would be to fry up bacon then add into the recipe as well as peas and asparagus, though I did not do so for this display.  However that’s just me.  Mix and match as your taste buds desire.

I did use home made rye bread and sliced onions as a mode of transportation from plate to palate.  This is sooooo good!  This is a period dish that translates into a wonderful modern side dish for dipping.

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Samak wa-Agras (Hard Almond Candy), Sweetmeats (Halawat)

Samak wa-Aqras (Hard Almond Candy)

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Samak wa-Aqras

(Hard Almond Candy)

Translation:

A  pound of and a half of sugar; half a pound of peeled almonds, pounded fine and flavoured with a little musk.  Take half a pound of bees’ honey and put it in a cauldron with an ounce of rose-water until it boils.  Skim it, then take an ounce of starch and dissolve it with rose-water and put it on the honey, and stir awhile until it gets its consistency.  Then throw the pounded sugar and almonds on it, and beat it hard with a poker until it thickens.  Then take it down from the fire and leave it on a smooth tile until it cools, and make it into fishes and cakes and other shapes in carved moulds.  Sprinkle them with finely pounded sugar and pistachios.  Colour the fishes with a little saffron dissolved in rose-water, and take it up.

(Rodinson, pp. 459)

Ingredients:

1 ½ lbs sugar                ½ lb ground almonds                ½ lb honey       1/8- ¼ tsp rosewater

½ C sesame oil (optional mistake)

Redaction:

All the ingredients gathered in one place.  For candies and quick dishes, it’s always a good idea to have everything right by the stove and ready to go in the amounts you want.


If you will notice that I have saffron, cinnamon and turmeric at the bottom.  These were to color the candies at the final stage.  However due to the dark amber color the colors would not have shown through so I deleted the coloring step and these spices were not needed.  Please feel free to experiment coloring with spices or vegetable juices.  The caveat is that coloring in period with spices i.e. turmeric or cinnamon would usually change the flavor to inedible due to the amount of spice needed to color a candy.

I actually did this a little differently then the directions here.  I did not skim the honey as the honey I have is purified already with out any inclusions such as wax or bee parts.  So I mixed the honey and the sugar together.

Then I added oil (this is the accidental addition that is not prescribed in the recipe) and rose water.

Now here, I added sesame oil the first time (by mistake).  I was channeling the ingredients from a slightly different recipe when doing this redaction very early in the morning.  You can omit the sesame oil with out any worries! I am just adding this oops! as a this is what I did and the dessert came out pretty tasty still type of thing.

Once the honey sugar and oil were well mixed (I used a wooden spoon instead of a poker) I added the almonds into the mix with a little rosewater.

The mixture was boiled till reaching the soft ball stage of candy making.

The soft ball stage is where a drop of the candy being made is dropped into a bowl of very cold (icy) water.

If a ball forms then the candy is said to have reached the ball stage.  Hard or soft ball stage is determined on whether the candy ball in the water is soft or hard to the touch. (That is my understanding at least).

Here the recipe is a little unclear.  Do you put the pot that everything has been boiled in and set the pot to cool or pour the mixture on a smooth tile (which would be very messy) to cool.  I made the decision that they mean the pot and not pour the mixture onto a flat surface.  I did not let this stand for more then a few moments, while I pulled out the molds selected.

I gave the molds a quick wipe with sesame oil and then poured in the mixture to harden.

The molds used were simple candy molds of silicon and not the metal or Birchwood molds suggested.  I don’t have the metal casting skill or wood carving skill to attempt anything like that.  As for the coloring, the candies came out a really nice dark amber and any saffron painting would have been lost as to delicate.

A closer look for better detail.

The candies are crunchy and chewy.  Sweet and nutty.   Very nice!

Pork in red wine and fennel sauce

Pork in red wine and fennel sauce

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I was in the mood to try a little bit of Roman again.  I haven’t had a good wine and pork dish for a bit so turned to my trusted Roman books for inspiration.  And look!  We have a yummy tasty pork dish ready for the first days of spring and those first few blushing bulbs of fennel, not to mention a way to use all those bits of left over red wine from our dark cold Ansteorran winters.

Pork in a red wine and fennel sauce

Krea Tareikhera

Translation:

Cured meat or slices of ham, similarly raw meat: first the cured meat is boiled a little just to take away its saltiness.  Then put tall these ingredients into a pan: four parts of wine, two parts of grape syrup, one part of wine vinegar, dry coriander, thyme, dill, fennel.  Fry after putting everything in together at the start, then boil.  Half-way through the cooking some people add honey and ground cumin, others pepper, and after putting the sauce into a warmed pt they add little pieces of hot loin and bread. (Heidelberg papyrus)

(Grant, pp. 124-125)

Ingredients:

2lbs of cured ham or raw pork

1 pint red wine

½ cup grape syrup or Sapa

¼ cup red wine vinegar

1 tsp dry coriander

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp dill

¼ C fennel (roughly ½ a fennel bulb)

Optional:

1 tsp cumin

1 Tbs honey

1 tsp pepper

¼ C bread crumbs or 1 slice of bread

Redaction:

Gather together all your ingredients.

If using cured meat, boil for about 3 minutes till the saltiness is gone and drain.  If using fresh, cut into bite sized pieces.

Combine all the first round of ingredients into a pot.  Here I did things slightly different.  I used fresh thyme and dill from my garden roughly chopped.

Instead of using grape syrup or Sapa, I used port.  I like sweet wine so had some on hand.  I used balsamic vinegar as my vinegar, again as it was on hand.

I combined the wines and vinegar together, then all the spices.

This is the cummin added.

Here the thyme, fennel and dill are being added.

Stir everything together.

Add the pork and mix well.

At this point I put the lid on to the clay pot and placed in the oven for about an hour at 350.

This picture does not do the dish justice.  Once the pork is cooked pull it out of the clay pot and into a bowl.

If I had boiled the meat and sauce together in a pot, the remaining liquid would have thickened up and I would have then removed the meat cubes and used the sauce on the side.  What I wanted was slow cooked pork in wine and spice, with out a sauce.

So after removing the liquid from the clay pot, I took the remaining sauce which had not reduced much at all an, and placed into a regular cooking pot.

You want to boil this till the sauce has reduced by about half, forming a nice thick red wine and fennel sauce.  I can’t show you this as I left my pot boiling and ended up with a sticky burnt sauce.  I was very sad at this.  The pork was excellent with out the sauce but I’m sure the sauce would have added a sweet tangy tastiness.

So, if you want a thick sauce on the side you can cook everything together then boil the remaining liquid into a sauce or just boil everything together and let the sauce reduce that way.  Roman cooking lets you experiment with many different options and ways.  Do not think that just one way is the only way!

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Tharid - a brief overview, Tharid or Thaida

Tharid or Tharida

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This dish is considered by many modern day Arabs to be a holiday dish. In Medieval Middle Eastern times this dish was claimed by the prophet Muhammad to be the best of all dishes and there for entered into Tradition (sunna), to be respected, passed down and maintained. (Zaouali, pp. 68)

There are as many ways to make Tharid as there are to make modern day lasagna.  The basics are a tender meat with crumbled/broken bread that has been moistened with broth.  The meat, bread, spicing, vegetables etc vary widely from region to region and person to person.  There are spicy, plain or sweet Tharids available.  Some thing for everyone’s taste.