All posts by SoshaRuark

Banquet dels Quatre Barres (2nd edistion), Esparechs (Fried Asparagus)

Esparechs (Fried Asparagus)

April 4, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Now I love asparagus, especially in spring when greens are craved. This recipe combines asparagus with butter and what a better combination can be had?

Esparechs

(Fried Asparagus)

Translation:

If you wish to eat asparagus, take them, and clean them, and parboil them. And when they are parboiled, flour them with wheat flour; and then put them in the paella, and fry them until they are cooked. And they go on platters. And whoever wishes, put vinegar on it.

(McDonald, pp. 19)

Ingredients:

Asparagus

1 C. wheat flour 2 Tbs salted butter ¼ C. red wine (or balsamic) vinegar

*McDonald suggest olive oil instead of butter and red wine vinegar – I liked butter and balsamic vinegar better, so cooked the asparagus accordingly.

Redaction:

The ingredients for this are pretty straight forward. Wheat flour, asparagus, and butter.

I took a large handful of asparagus and cut off the last 2-3 inches so that only the tender top 5 inches were left.

The ends are cut off as they are usually tasteless and woody. Not some thing even the best butter can remedy, so just remove them until you get to the green tasty parts!

I then placed the spears into water and let these be parboiled for 1 minute. After that the spears were drained.

Parboiling does a quick cook with out destroying. Note: do not over boil! Just a quick hot boiling bath for 1-2 minutes. to soften up the asparagus cell fibers and you are good to go for the frying! (well after draining off the water that is.

The wheat flour was spread out onto a small plate, where the individual spears were rolled.

After the spears were rolled in the wheat flour, 1 Tbs of butter was melted into a pan and half of the asparagus was fried until golden brown on all sides.

*hint: if you want to use 2 Tbs of butter per batch, don’t hesitate. There can almost never be to much butter where asparagus is concerned!

Then the cooked spears were removed onto a clean plate.

The last Tbs of butter was melted and the remaining asparagus was fried.

Once all the asparagus was cooked, a bowl with balsamic vinegar was placed to the side for easy dipping. These are excellent either plain or with vinegar!

This batch never made it out of the kitchen. I munched on these till they were all gone. So the word of warning is: if you like asparagus and are serving more then just yourself…make LOTS!

Judhaba (Apricot or Banana Savory Pudding), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Puddings Baked under Meat (Jawadhib) and Puddings (Akhbisa)

Judhaba (Apricot or Banana Savory Pudding)

April 3, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

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.

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.

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

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.

These were then sprinkled with a little rose water.

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

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.

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.

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!

Moretum Goat Cheese with Herbs, Roman Cookery, Roman Vegetarian

Moretum (Cheese with Herbs)

March 25, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I had been wanting to do a little bit of Roman cooking for a couple of weeks now. I had this really cheesy salty garlic recipe on hand and thought I’d share.

A little bit of history here about this period Roman dish. There are several variations to the cheese with herbs recipe. Some call for leeks, savoy, and rocket leaves while others call for a plethora of spices. There is one Roman cook who describes the making of this recipe with so much garlic that the person grinding the garlic into a paste has tears coming from his eyes at the strong fumes given off by the garlic.

Moretum

Cheese with Herbs

Translation:

Four garlic cloves/ 4 garlic bulbs (depending upon which translation is used), celery, rue, coriander, salt grains, and cheese.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup garlic cloves the heart of 1 celery bunch 1 tsp coriander

1/8 tsp salt (or to taste) 2 cups Feta 4 Tbs olive oil

3 Tbs. vinegar

Herkotz, pg 54/Grant, pg. 72,73.

My Redaction:

I have taken liberties with the recipe from both Herkotz and Grant. The type of cheese is unspecified in the original recipe. The assumption would be that any soft goat or sheep cheese would suffice. My choice is a feta cheese, unfortunately cow instead of goat feta. The cow feta has a nice sharpness that compliments the multitude of garlic used.

Garlic seems to be used sparingly, in most Roman cooking, as garlic breath was considered to be plebian by the more urban Romans. Herkotz chooses to use only 4 cloves while Grant writes of how 4 bulbs were used. That is a very big difference in amount for these two recipes. I have chosen to go with roughly 2 bulbs worth of garlic and finely chopped instead of ground. Grinding would have formed a paste blending well with a soft creamy cheese however with the use of a crumbling Feta I believed the finely chopped garlic was a better choice.

Both Herkotz and Grant suggest the addition of oil and vinegar, to which I agree are excellent additions. The feta and garlic mixture with just coriander and celery is moderate in taste; however the addition of just a little oil and vinegar makes the dish much tastier. Sea salt was used to taste.

The celery is not pictured in the above ingredients. So we’ll add the picture below.

This is the heart of a celery bunch being finely chopped. The leaves, for many period cultures and dishes were the prized ingredient not the fibrous ribs, we eat today. Seems the flavor is strong in the leaves with out any extra work being required to eat the stems. No stuffing of cheese or pate into stems for the Medieval Gourmet, they wanted all the flavor with out any of the work of actually chewing and chewing and chewing!

Once the ingredients are set out, mix together. There is no need to apply heat…just mix and eat!

I would suggest a good flat bread and a nice bit of red wine to go with, as this dish is very VERY garlicky. Ok, so I cheated a little and used triscuts. They were on hand to help convey the cheesy spread from bowl to mouth!

Candied Pears, Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Sweetmeats (Halawat)

Candied Pears

March 23, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I like pears…a lot! Sweet crunchy or not but always very juicy. I saw this recipe and thought of how pears in period were not always tasty (being rather small and hard even when ripe) and that this was a great way to make a rather hard to eat fruit into a really tasty treat!

Candied Pears

Translation:

I believe that the translation is as follows. The recipe is unclear as to whether this is the authors transcriptions or the original recipe.

Peel, quarter, and core the pears, then put them in a large pot of boiling water; take them out when they have become soft to the touch. Drain them well and put them in a glass jar. Boil the vinegar with cinnamon, cloves and sugar, then pour the boiling liquid over the pears and let them macerate for 24 hours (let cool before sealing the jar).

Decant the liquid, bring it to a boil, and pour it over the fruit once again. Repeat this step a third time 24 hours later.

Zaouali, pp. 177

Ingredients:

Firm pears (# depends on the size of the glass jar(s) being used)

1 cup vinegar

1 cup sugar

6 cinnamon sticks OR ¼ tsp cinnamon

12 cloves OR ¼ tsp clove powder

8 cardamom pods or 1/8 tsp ground cardamom

My Redaction:

First I assembled the spices, vinegar, sugar and pears. Now the number of pears here are based on the size of the jar…not the jar based on the number of pears. As you can see…I had a rather large jar on hand though several smaller jars would have worked just as well.

I took the pears and peeled them, then quartered and cored the pears. Once the pears were ready for cooking, they were put in a pot of water though I would also suggest a good honey wine for that extra sweet kick if desired.

The pears are cooked till soft. Once they are soft to the touch, the water (or wine) is drained and the cooked pears are placed into a jar or jars.

Now while the pears are cooking, take another pot and place in the vinegar and sugar. Stir till the desired balance of sweet and sour has been achieved. I do recommend a good apple vinegar or a good wine vinegar, a regular vinegar is VERY VERY tart. Oh the tartness you can taste! Add the spices to the boiling mixture.

The cloves are not whole, but in ground form at that was what I had on hand. The cardamom was an addition of mine though I think the taste would have been better if ground and not just in pod form. The recipe did not clarify on whether the spices were removed prior to pouring over the pears or allowed to steep with the candied pears. I chose to remove the spices as cinnamon in stick form can some times over flavor the dish.

Once the mixture has boiled together and achieved the desired sweet/tart/spicedness, take the mixture and pour over the pears.

Before sealing make sure the pears are completely covered so as to prevent bacteria from getting in and ruining the entire jar. The recipe suggests waiting till cooled before sealing as well as multiple boils. I bypassed the multiple boils as I don’t believe this would have been done, though I could be wrong!

I would suggest the pears with heavy cream and honey after an excellent meal!

Khubz al-Abazir (Spiced Bread), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Pancakes (Quata'if) and Biscuts (Khushkananaj)

Khubz al-Abazir (Spice Bread)

March 20, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

When I first did this recipe, I was expecting a really spectacularly spicy flavored bread or bun. Not so much. There are no spices to speak, of just nuts. I think the naming (spiced) is a bit of a misnomer. I would have said nut bread myself but here you have it. A wonderful flavorful bun if not exactly spicy just nutty.

Khubz al-Abazir

(Spiced Bread)

Translation:

Take good flour and put a third of a pound of sesame oil on every pound, and an ounce of sesame seeds and a handful of pistachios and almonds, and kneed it. And when it has risen, bake it in the bread oven in round buns, the thickness of the buns is two fingers. When they brown and are done, take them and eat them with halwa.

Rodinson, pp. 431

Ingredients:

3 cups flour ½ cup sesame oil 1/3 cup water 1 tsp yeast

2 Tbs ea sesame seeds, almonds, pistachios

My Redaction:

I believe the term “spiced bread” may be a misnomer as there is no spicing in the bread other then sesame oil with seeds and nuts.

When making this, I combined the flour and oil together then water and yeast. I have made these with just flour and sesame oil, the oil overwhelms any flavor of the nuts; hence the cutting of sesame oil by half. The water is necessary to compensate for lack of oil. The yeast is not directly mentioned but it is referred to as commented in the translation as “…when it has risen…”. Most kitchens do not have enough wild yeast to elicit this type of rising with out help from yeast.

Once the dough was mixed together, I added the nuts. The original did not mention if the almonds or pistachios were chopped so I kept them whole. The dough was allowed to rise for an hour then formed into thick “patties” about a finger’s width in height.

When cooked the buns rose to about 2 finger widths in height.

These buns are a great delivery for flavor of just about anything sweet or even savory. (I tried these with a home made spaghetti sauce the other night too!).

These buns are excellent with plum jam or halwa paste.

Halwa (Sweet Paste), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Sweetmeats (Halawat)

Halwa (Sweet Paste)

March 17, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Halwa was an experiment as I was making spiced buns and the spread mentioned was this. There was one SMALL problem though. There was no readily available translated recipe. The recipes I do have listed are period but more like…the pirate guidelines rather then hard set-in stone rules. So a bit of trial and error was needed. This is the sweet lick your fingers clean result!

Halwa

(Sweet Paste)

Translation:

#1) Pick over the rice, wash it, crush it in a mortar, then cook it in water with the rind of a bitter orange. When the rice is almost cooked, add some milk and cook it over a gentle fire, taking care to stir it. When the rice has absorbed the milk remove the orange rind and add some sugar. Remove the rice from the fire and spread it on a dish. Sprinkle it with ground cinnamon and add almonds and hazelnuts toasted and ground.

#2) …a tea-cup of sugar, two tea-cups of samn (melted butter, sesame oil or fat), three tea-cups of flour. The sugar is boiled in half a cup of water. The flour is toasted in the hot samn until it turns russet brown. Then the boiled sugar is added. The mixture is poured into a receptacle and subsequently cut up as desired.

Rodinson, pp. 194-195

Ingredients:

1/3 cup water 2/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup melted butter

1 cup flour ½ cup milk

*spices: date syrup, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, rose-water

Redaction:

The translations aren’t given as recipes more like a map; to quote “Here is a recipe for muhallabiyya from the Jewish quarter of Tunis…” The recipes are then compared to the a dish called helva or helfa in Arabic. There is discussion that helfa is actually a Turkish pronunciation of the Arabic halwa. So as you can see this is more like negotiating on a committee to get exactly the right type of sweet…you end up with a camel.

I took both recipes and looked for similarities, which are sugar, flour (wheat or rice) and fat. Spicing seems to be optional and up to the cook’s discretion.

Now some of this is white on white (unfortunately…I did try to mitigate that but not as well as I had thought!).

First thing I did was add 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar to boil. Notice the 1/3 cup not 2/3. The other 1/3 will be used a little later.

First the butter was added to a pot then the flour until a nice dark brown. I made a roux from the butter and flour.

Now this is what the mixture looks like after a couple of minutes cooking with stirring. The white of the butter/flour is browning slowly into a sweet roux.

This is about the darkest you want the roux to get. The difference time wise in cooking is only 3-4 minutes, so attention has got to be paid while stirring! Other wise…things just get messy and not in a covered in honey and lick it off good way.

The dark russet coloring in the roux took about 10 minutes with constant attention paid to the stirring and boiling of the butter/flour mixture. Once the roux was established at a good coloring, I added in the sugar water to the flour/butter mixture. There was extreme boiling and steaming when the two mixtures met, so watch the hand placement as an FYI. Once the sugar water and the roux had been combined the milk was added. The mixture thickens very quickly at this point.

Here I tasted the mixture and determined a bit more sugar was needed. Add the other 1/3 cup or not depending on if a sweeter paste is desired.

I then split the paste into 3 bowls to experiment with flavoring.

One was given 1 Tbs of date syrup, another 1 tsp of rosewater, the third ¼ tsp of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. I stirred each ramekin thoroughly and tasted the connections. My favorite was the spicing. The date syrup was very sweet and taste while the rose-water mixture was almost light and tripping on the tongue. Next time I make Halwa I will try with candied citrus peels or even candied ginger, perhaps maybe a few grains of paradise as well!

Khubz al-Abazir (spice bread) was used as the carrying medium.

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Plum Jam, Sweetmeats (Halawat)

Plum Jam (with Chicken)

March 15, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

Plum Jam

This is a reverse redaction as no recipe has been found other then a mention of “plum jam with chicken” for a wedding feast. When redacting how a plum jam could have been made I referred to the recipes used for both carrot jam and squash jam. Both of these jams required sugar (some times honey) and spices. So I imagine that some where a recipe reads as follows for plum jam

“Take ripe plums, with out stones, and cut them up small. Add sugar and spices to a clean pot with them and cook till thickened.

Ingredients:

8-10 ripe plums ½ cup sugar 1/3 cup of water

1/2 tsp ea: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, saffron, lavender

My Redaction:

Since this is being based on a comment and the recipes from two other jams the spicing is up to the whim of the cook. Spices may have been added or may not; however I feel fairly confident that any cook who would add a whole cornucopia of spices to carrot jam would be more then happy to bring spices to brighten the flavor of plums in sugar.

I cut up the plums and added them to a pot with sugar and water. The plums can be cut up very small or if desired ground. I did use a cuisinart on part of the plums though I found that the plums left un-ground cooked down almost as well as the finely chopped plums. The spices were added at about the same time as the sugar.

The pot was allowed to simmer (NOT boil) for about an hour or until the jam thickened enough when stirred with a wooden spoon that a line drawn on the back of the spoon did not drip.I have tried this with roasted chicken.

The jam can be used with roasted chicken, I might even suggest a nice bit of roasted lamb as well. This makes for a very sweet dipped chicken!

Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Mutajjanat (Lamb with Spices), Sour Dishes (Hawamid)

Mutajjan (Lamb or Goat with Spices)

March 13, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

I had a bit of spare lamb meat on hand from doing a presentation for another lamb dish, so I decided to try another dish of tasty lamb. Mutton is not some thing I am eager to eat on a regular basis due to the very strong flaovr however a good lamb should never be passed up!

Mutajjan

(Lamb or Goat with spices)

Translation:

#1.) Take a suckling kid, scald it and cut up into joints, then boil it lightly in vinegar and take it out. Then dry it off and fry it in fresh sesame oil. When it is done and lightly browned, throw soy sauce to cover on it and season it with the well-known spices, which are coriander, caraway and finely milled Chinese cinnamon. If you like, sprinkle it with a little lemon juice, and it comes out excellently.

#2.) Boil a kid, after being cut up into joints, in water and salt. Then fry it in sesame oil and season it with mentioned spices and put in vinegar and soy sauce mixed together. It comes out excellently.

#3.) Joint a kid and boil it in vinegar and throw it in sesame oil and fry it in it and flavour it with spices. If you want it sadhij, boil it in water with mastic and Chinese cinnamon, and fry it in fresh sesame oil and season it with spices. These recipes might be made with lamb also.

Rodinson, pp. 377

Ingredients:

2 lbs goat or lamb (cubed)

2 TBS sesame oil

1 tsp ea. cinnamon, caraway (seeds or ground), coriander cumin

1/3 cup vinegar

1/3 cup soy sauce

My Redaction:

The choice is between lamb or goat. Either meat has a rather strong flavor and requires a little extra seasoning. If beef is chosen instead cut the spices down by half. The meat I did go with was lamb, which is readily available. The cut of the meat is cubed leg. The meat will cook down so don’t worry if 2 lbs sounds like a lot.

The recipe does not specify a cut just that the meat is well marbled; and lamb meat is certainly well marbled!

Take the cubed meat and boil in water with the vinegar till tender. If a stronger vinegar flavor is preferred wait to use the vinegar till just before removing the cooked meat from the end stage of frying. Drain the meat thoroughly.

Place the meat in a large enough pan with sesame oil and cook till browned.

Add spices (and vinegar if desired NOT extra vinegar though) and toss so that all the meat is well coated.

The vinegar and soy sauce cut down the mutton taste (even in lamb) that is present, making the dish less gamy. The spices can be toned down or added to depending on the taste of the cook.

This dish would be excellent over saffron rice or even stuffed into bread with a garlic yogurt sauce. Very very yummy!

Uncategorized

Pickled Plums Update

March 7, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

There are now pictures to go with this posting! Yay…plums are in season (or at least available now)!!!

Digestive Beverages (Hadimat), Medieval Middle Eastern Redactions, Sikanjabin (Persian Mint Tea)

Sikanjabin Persian Mint Tea

March 4, 2010 SoshaRuark Leave a comment

During the hot Ansteorra summers at either home or on the road for events, some times plain water just wont quench that heat/fighting induced thirst that demands 2 gallons of water poured down the throat every hour. This tea is a little odd with the vinegar but quite tasty…so tasty I keep this in the fridge just for regular days and not as an event only drink!

Syrup of Simple Sikanjabin

(Mint tea w/vinegar)

Translation

Take a ratl of strong vinegar and mix two ratls of sugar, and cook all this until it takes the form of a syrup. Drink an uqiya of this with three of hot water when fasting. While mint is not mentioned in the period translation (there seems to be only 2 listed with both being used for medicinal purposes) it is included in a large variety of period drinks of flavored syrups that are meant to be drunk, either hot or cold, but cut with water prior to drinking.

A Miscelleny pg. 104

Ingredients:

1 gallon water

1/3 cup vinegar

2/3 – 1C table sugar

3 – 4 TBS dried loose leaf peppermint

My Redaction:

Add water, mint, vinegar and sugar in a pot and boil for 2 minutes.

That’s just about all there is; however I do add a few suggestions. I do not put the mint in a tea ball but let the water boil . The boiling causes the mint to sink to the bottom, so that when poured into a pitcher there is very little loose mint floating on the top or in the tea.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pretty pictures to show with the tea sitting in a decorative glass bottle. This is fairly utilitarian on my part. Give this a try though on one of those hot heat intensive days and you’ll be hooked!

Sosha Lyon's O'Rourk's Medieval Redactions English, Italian, Middle Eastern, Roman, Medieval Redactions and Recipes, Medieval Research Papers, Subtleties – Grill Mistress of the Pork