Banquet dels Quatre Barres (2nd edistion)

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I tried this dish and had two very unusual reactions. I tried it with beef and loooved it, then duplicated the recipe with chicken. The mint sprinkled on top just makes the dish that much better.

Narsun

Meat with Pomegranat and Vinegar

Translation:

This is a Persian name, and its root is anarsirk, which means pomegranats and vinegar. The recipe of this dish is that yu cut up fat meat small and put it in the pot with water to cover, and you put the spices on it and moderate its salt and skim it. Cut up a small amount of onions and wash them and put in the pot. When it is nearly done, take pomegranate seeds, as much as needed and what the pot will bear, and pound them fine. Throw vinegar on them macerate them well by hand, then strain them and add the juice to the pot. Take walnut meats also as much as needed pound them fine. put as much water as needed in a pot and macerate the walnuts well and add them ot the pot wehre the meat is. Moderate it’s tasate with salt as desired and crumble bunches of dry mint onto its surface. Throw in whole pieces of walnut meats, and sprinkle a little rose water on top of it. Wipe the sides of the pot with a clean cloth and leave it on a quiet fire then take it up. (Rodinson, pp. 320)

Ingredients:

Basil 1/2 cup fresh

1/3 tsp cinnamon, ground cardamom, ground all spice, ground mace pinch of saffron

1/2 cup ground walnuts

1/2 cup whole walnuts

salt to taste

2 TBS vinegar ( I used balsamic)

3 TBS pomegranate concentrate

1/4 onion

1/2 lb fatty meat

Redaction:

I tried this with beef and chicken. The spices were chosen for what I think works well with pomegranate concentrate and balsamic vinegar. Your dish, your taste so be creative.

Chop the quarter of the onion into small bits but not fine. Remember the spicing is for 1/2 lbs.

Here is both the beef cubes and the chicken. The pomegranate molasses, vinegar and walnuts are added later.

The more poundage used the more spices needed.
Put the meat with the spices, onion, ground walnuts into a pot with a little water.

Let it cook down until almost done, then add vinegar and pomegranate concentrate. Taste adjust as needed with salt, vinegar and pomegranate concentrate.

I forgot to add the ground walnut meat at the start so had to add towards the end. still turned out tasty. I didn’t like the walnuts. I found this did nothing for the taste, even taking away from the tart, minty, sweet. Personally, I wouldn’t use the walnuts again, but you may find you like the dish(es) better with than without.

Pull out and put into a bowl. Sprinkle with walnuts and dried mint. I had fresh but not dried so I used a handful of chopped mint (to taste).

Slow cook at 250 for two hours.

I was not impressed with the chicken. To me the sauce didn’t cook down enough to be great at flavoring. Perhaps if I had taken the chicken out and poured the juices into a pan to slow cook down the chicken dish would have been better

June 20, 2019 | No comments

I had left over lamb that needed to be cooked and chickpeas that needed to be eaten. I found a dish that incorporated both with tasty results!

Alhams Walluhum

Chickpeas and Meat

Translation:

…flavor meat with asafetida and cook it. Add chickpea pulse. Add cumin, fenugreek, asafetida, salt, turmeric, pepper, lime juice and garlic; cook it until it is very tender. (The Nimatnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu, pp. 35)

Ingredients:

2 C. meat (lamb cooked with asafetida)

1 C. chickpeas (lightly ground)

1 tsp. ground cumin, fenugreek, turmeric

1/2 tsp. asafetida, salt, and ground pepper

2 tsp. lime juice

Redaction:

Here are the gathered ingredients.

I used lamb, sprinkled with asafetida, that had been previously cooked. Leftovers put to good use.

I ground the chickpeas only a little bit. I didn’t want to make a mush of them but I did want to break them down a bit.

Next I added all the spices. A note about asafetida, it’s called the devil’s stink weed for a reason. It’s like garlic on steroids. A little goes a long way, so use it sparingly! If you don’t have asafetida, just use garlic.

Finally the chance to taste what was smelling so amazing!

The dish itself is rather unremarkable looking, slightly bland yellow. However I wanted to add a touch of color while getting my healthy on. Not to worry, the sauteed spinach IS optional. If you don’t want to have spinach, don’t. I added it because it breaks up the plating just a bit. Mostly I did this for decoration and greens instead of a salad at dinner time.

June 13, 2018 | No comments

Finding myself with excellent lamb chops, I decided I needed to try a new dish. I was skeptical at first due to the boiling of meat the recipe called for and the inclusion of jujubes and mastic. Both of these spices are strongly overpowering if to much is included so add these sparingly! This is an amazing dish with flavors that dance over the palate. Try it once and you’ll be a fan!

Mishmishiya

(Fat Meat with Apricots)

Translation:

Take fat meat. Boil it in a little water and take its scum away. Take dried apricots and remove their pits and replace them with blanched almonds. And when the meat is done, throw the apricots on it, and raisins, atraf al-tib, a stick of Chinese cinnamon, mint mastic, saffron and jujubes, and sweeten it with sugar and honey. It comes out well. (Rodinson, pp. 356-357)

Ingredients:

4-6 lamb chops or 1 lb. cubed.

1/2 C. apricots

Enough almonds to stuff each apricot

1/4 C. raisins

1 tsp Chinese cinnamon, mint, and honey

1/16 ground mastic

4 jujubes

Pinch of saffron

Redaction:

Take your apricots and stuff them. Then gather all your ingredients together in one spot.

Also I hate jujubes. Note for one steak, I only had one squished jujube in the entire spice dish. I consider jujubes to be the worst spice ever! Use it in very small quantities! Otherwise your dish will taste like nothing more than jujubes and a hint of something else. Don’t go overboard on the mastic. It’s type of pine resin and also has a strong taste. A little goes a very long way!

Take a deep frying pan and fill it half way up to the meat’s side.

Let the meat sit in the water for 4-5 minutes on each side. Continually removing the scum as it surfaces (it won’t be much).

While the meat is boiling, put the apricots and raisons to the side, then grind together all the spices except the honey.

When the meat has been cooked on both sides and the water has been boiled away, remove it from the pan. Sprinkle the ground spices over the meat,

scattering the dried fruit over the meat. Dribble the honey over that.

My first thought on this recipe is that boiling meat is just blah! I was pleasantly surprised at how tender and very juicy the meat came out. The ground spices smelled amazing! Even with the jujube and mastic, the saffron and cinnamon and mint blended with the others wonderfully.

June 5, 2018 | No comments

What happens when you have a cocky rooster who attacks small children? Dinner. This rooster got to age for 2 days in the fridge and was fork tender after roasting but I needed the perfect sauce. Something sweet. Something sour. Something best served hot. I had just the right new recipe to try out on the damn cock who went out with a squawk.

Limonada – Lemon Sauce

Translation:

First make broth of chickens and the broth should be well cooked and flavorful. And then make of it milk of peeled and minced almonds. And put this to cook in a good pot, with spices, much ginger, saffron, and lots of white sugar and juice of lemons. And make it to boil a lot. And if you wish to enhance it, put in a chicken wing well minced, so that it disappears. And this sauce should be well colored, and you should give with chickens from the spit or the pot. And you should have much sugar and juice of lemons, in the stew that the one pull the flavor of the other. And flavor it with salt and with spice, of sour and of sweet. And if for chance you don’t want to make it with sugar put in of good honey.

From the 14th c. Sent Sovi. Translation copyright Edan Rain. From: A Brief Overview of Early Spanish Cuisine. Pg. 30.

Ingredients:

1 tsp ginger

1 pinch saffron

1 Tbsp. sugar or honey

1 C lemon juice

1 C almond milk

1 whole roasted chicken

1 C chicken broth

Redactions:

Roast a whole chicken.

This rooster will offend no more. So fresh if I squeezed he’d still be crowing. Gather up your ingredients. I had to wait till the chicken was roasted for the drippings. That’ll teach me to get ahead of the recipe!

Take the juice from the roasted chicken and pour into a pot.

This came straight from the roasting pan of the above rooster. I would suggest saving the drippings from any future chickens just in case you have a period sauce you want to make. They used a LOT of what we would consider wastage now…i.e. the roasted juice and fat of a fresh cock.

Add the almond milk,

with spices with lemon juice,

and add the sugar.

Give everything a stir till blended then boil.

Once the sauce has thickened and reduced by 1/3, take the chicken and quarter it. Place on a plate and pour the sauce over.

I had to add a bit of honey because the lemon juice I used was organic, so it was NOT a mellow lemon flavor. This juice had bite. So be sure to taste this before you serve over the hot chicken. My daughter was delighted with the taste of the sauce and her former pet rooster. The circle of life was had this night!

March 30, 2016 | No comments

Ok, so this wasn’t my most sought after posting. I mean really, who other than a serious foodie eats head cheese these days? However, like many things medieval, head cheese was popular and fairly tasty. Period head cheese is sweeter than the modern savory but that’s more of a taste thing.

Head cheese.

To prepare jelly from pigs’ snouts, ears and feet.

Translations:

Scappi mentions jelly made from pig in two sections. The second sections (#243 from Book II) goes into greater detail than the recipe from (#97 from Book II).

Get twenty pigs’ feet, six pounds of fresh pork rinds with the fat off, four snouts and four ears; was and clean everything. Boil it in a cooking pot with eight liters of white wine, eight of water and one and a third, more or less, at your discretion of vinegar. When you have skimmed it with a wooden spoon, put in a little salt, an ounce of crushed pepper, an ounce of cinnamon, an ounce of ginger and two nutmegs. Boil it all together. When the ears and snouts are a little less than done, take them out and finish cooking them in another pot with wine vinegar, pepper and enough salt, so they’ll be more tasty. When the decoction is cooked, do the test described in the previous recipes. Skim off all the fat with a wooden spoon and strain the decoction. When that is done, put in two and a half pounds of sugar, half a pound of firm honey and eight well beaten egg whites bringing it all to a boil as in the previous recipes and then putting it through a bag. When it has been strained, have the ears and snouts already split in two and arrange them carefully in dishes the bottoms of which are covered with three fingers of set jelly; then fill up the dishes with cold jelly so that the ears and snouts are held between the two jellies In the interval between jellies, with the ears and snouts you can put the feet, which have been cooked separately from the jelly in the same way as the snouts and ears are cooked. It has to be a deep dish or else use an earthenware baking dish or a shallow basin. When the jelly has set and is firm and you want to take it out of the pot, warm the pot in hot water so the jelly warms then quickly flip it over into a dish. Large or small depending on the depth of the jelly, because that way the jelly will rise up above the dish. If the inside, by the ears and snouts, you would like to put cleaned almonds, that is optional. For decoration around the dish put bay leaves. That jelly needs to be somewhat acidic and give it a tang with spices.

(Scappi, pp. 260/Book II. Rcp #242)

Ingredients:

1 or 1/2 pig head

1 trotter

2 tsp ground pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger

1/2 gallon wine

8 cups water

1 1/2 C vinegar

1 tsp salt

2nd cooking

4 tbs sugar

4 tbs honey

1 C broth from above

Redaction:

As you can tell I didn’t use 20 pigs feet. Just wasn’t going to happen. Not enough room in any of my pots or at the market. So I improvised. I used half a pigs head and scaled down from there. There is NO way I would ever have enough need for a full head (or 20 feet) of jellied pig meat unless serving a whole bunch of head cheese at a feast.

Here is half of Wilbur’s head, cleaned and ready to go!

Take the cleaned pig’s head and put in a pot with your wine (I had to use mead because one bottle of wine was just not going to be enough).

Yes you leave the eye, ear and tongue in…It just is.

Add your water and vinegar than add the spices. Let the head cook for a few hours till the meat is ready to start falling off the head. This takes about 2 to 2.5 hours. The head was still frozen when I put it in the pot and the meat was pealing from the bone at 2.5 hours. Skim the fat off the broth every hour or so.

Once the meat is ready to fall off the head, pull the head out and pull off the meat. Put the head bone back into the original broth and cook down. Here I used a slow cooker overnight set on low. Put the meat in a pot with the sugar and honey for the second part.

When the meat has cooled slice it into bit sized chunks, slicing the ears into strips.

I had to improvise at this point. The ears were indistinguishable from the other bits of meat and skin. I didn’t have the foresight to keep track of the ear before peeling off the meat.

I took the fat from the cheek and blended it smooooooooth like butter in the Cuisinart. For a more period feel, use a mortar and pestle…it’ll take about an hour.

The cheek meat went into the bowl with the other bits and pieces.

The sugar and honey were added.

I didn’t use the table sugar (I’m out) so used brown sugar. Don’t worry you can play around a little with the taste and what you prefer so don’t fear making small alterations! The meat was originally supposed to cook a little more; however I ran out of time and had to put the meat into the fridge overnight. Mix everything together.

It looks horrible but tastes great.

So this is where things get interesting. The trotter is used not only for the meat and fat but for the gelatin it produces when boiled. That clear gel seen when you’ve cooked chicken or pork on the under side where the juice sat…that’s what we want. The pig trotter adds enough to make a jello of the meat. (hence the original recipe calling for 20 trotters…here we just need one). If you have absolutely no chance of getting a trotter, you can use clear gelatin.

The pan was oiled with walnut oil first before I added the broth.

Place cool jelly on the bottom of the pan,

then the bits of meat with another layer of cooling jelly.

Let the jellies cool until solid.

If you’ll notice my head cheese has a much darker color than the more modern head cheese available in the deli’s these days. I used a red wine vinegar and brown sugar which gave the entire dish a deep caramel color. The taste is still excellent however the coloring in tune with the ingredients used.

Serve with bread or crackers.

I had pita bread on hand…and it was pretty damn good. A bit sweet but as the cook I was expecting that. Most people thing a meat gelatin to be savory so make sure that anyone who tastes realize they aren’t getting savory but a sweet meat dish. Will help in the strange category.

February 28, 2016 | No comments

Life has been busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest. Right now, my house looks like it’s been mugged by a grocery store as I get ready to feed 150 people at the Bryn Gwlad fall event. Excited but exhausting. No helpers, as my kitchen is sized for 1 and .5 butts. Luckily the meat is mostly done now I’m just down to the pilaf and stewed fruits. However I do have a few moments to post this wonderful little gem of a dish. One of many quick easy sauces that is absolutely divine!

Raisins of Corinth (Currant Sauce)

Translation:

…make a syrup of wine, raisins of Corinth, sugar and saffron, and boil it a little; mix powder of Ginger with a little of the same wine, and put thereto; then put away the fat of the stew of the capon and put the syrup of the stew and pour it on the capon and serve it forth. (Renfrow, pp. 94)

Ingredients:

1 C. wine

1 C. broth

1.5 tsp ginger

4 tsp raisins

1.5 tsp cinnamon

2 C. broth and NO wine.

Redaction:

I used a white wine from a previously opened bottle with chicken stock. The spices were all gathered with the stock and wine.

The liquid poured into a pot, set on high. The spices were added with the raisins. The spiced stock was then boiled for roughly 20 minutes (or until reduced to half).

At this point the sauce tasted excellent but was not very thick. I would suggest grinding the raisins prior to adding to the wine and stock or you can reduce the sauce then hit frappe in the blender. This sauce is nicely sweet and savory all at once with a touch of alcohol. If you don’t have a white wine, use a red or mead. Whatever your preference is or is on hand. Should alcohol (wine mead or beer) be an issue use 2 C. of broth, reducing down to one cup with all the spices included.

The sauce is just that easy. Minimal muss and fuss. Period sauces were use what you have and make it quickly but well.

The sauce was tested not on capon or roasted hen but on wine cooked tongue. The sauce and tongue were a great hit. Chicken is the next meat to be dipped into this sauce.

September 28, 2015 | No comments

So occasionally I find odd bits of meat pieces in the freezer. I know what they are and about when I put them there (no freezer burn please!) I just can’t remember what the ORIGINAL use was for, so I improvise. This improvisation came about during a “I want MEAT now!!!” phase and a few things from the cupboard. I’m rather please with how tasty it all turned out.

Murammala bi kam’a

(Beef Stew with Truffles and Garbanzos)

Translation:

Cut meat into small pieces, wash it, and put it in a pot. Add soaked chickpeas, zayt maghsul (washed olive oil), galangal and cassia, a piece of each, chopped onion, chopped fresh herbs, and a little salt.

Pour some water into the pot and let it boil, skimming the froth as it comes up. Add black truffles, chopped into small pieces like meat. If truffles are not available, substitute with carrots or gourd, also chopped like the meat. Add them to the pot along with black pepper, coriander seeds,…cumin, and a small amount of cheese and ground cassia.

Garnish the top with many poached eggs, and allow the stew to settle and rest for a while. Ladle and serve the dish, god willing. (Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, pp. 283)

Ingredients:

3 lbs. Stew meat

2 Tbsp. ea. Parsley and basil (dry if fresh is not available)

1 pinch saffron

1 Onion

1/2 C. Olive oil

1 16 oz. can garbanzo beans drained

1 Tsp ea. Ground cinnamon, black pepper, coriander, cumin, galingale

2 Tsp sea salt

3 Bruised bay leaves (fresh) or 3 whole dried to be pulled out at the end of cooking

2 C. Carrots

2 C. Water

3 or 4 eggs raw eggs or more

Cheese to taste (feta or manchago)

Redaction:

So the meat I used here is a bit of brisket with the fat trimmed. This is a tough chewy chunk of meat so needs a lot of slooooow cooking. A crock pot is really good for this or low and slow in the oven.

I cut up the beef (note the chunky quality?) This will cook down.

and onions (separately) then gathered all the herbs

carrots and garbanzo beans.

I was being a little lazy with the carrots (no truffles were on hand) and used baby carrots unchopped. If you have regular carrots and want to chop them by all means please do!

I poured roughly one half cup of olive oil into a crock pot then added the meat. Once the meat was in the crock pot, I added onions, spices, carrots and salt.

I also added about two cups of water and the garbanzo beans.

Give this a stir so that everything is well mixed and the water just a little under the ingredients.

Before serving crack 3 or 4 eggs over the stew to poach.

If you don’t feel comfortable with poaching the eggs in the broth, poach them prior then serve a poached egg per bowl over the stew.

This is what the poached egg in beef stew looks like. I was a little hesitant myself to do this as I was like “Really?! Poached eggs in a beef stew? Were they mad?!” Turns out this adds a really nice creamy flavor to the stew. I recommend this part highly!

When scooping out your stew make sure to get at least one poached egg to be broken in the bowl. Add cheese and server forth!

August 14, 2015 | No comments

Having a little bit of time on hand, I decided I wanted to try something new…again. I haven’t done a lot of Roman lately so back to Rome for their tasty pork recipes. I am going to suggest either a good ciabatta type of bread or jasmine rice to help sop up the very rich sauce.

Ius in Aprum Elixum: Sauce for Boiled Boar

Translation:

Pepper, lovage, cumin, silphium, oregano, pine nuts date, honey, mustard, vinegar, liquamen, and oil. (Apicius, pp. 263/translated by Cocock $ Grainger)

Ingredients:

2 lbs. pork butt

1 ts.p ground cumin and ground pepper

2 Tbs. fresh chopped oregano

2 C. sweet red wine

1 C. pitted and chopped dates

1 Tsp mustard (stone ground or Dijon)

1/3 C. balsamic vinegar

1/2 C. olive oil

1/2 C. honey

1/2 tsp. fish sauce

Redaction:

This recipe is for a much gamier cut of pork than we have available in the stores today. Our normal pork butt or shoulder is a bit fattier and tender then period cuts of boar would be.

I choice not to boil the meat but I did decide to use a slow cooker for this recipe. (My oven being broken the biggest reason).

If this were to be done in period, the meat could be slow cooked in the ingredients or roast the meat and combine the ingredients to make a sauce to be cooked down in which the meat can be dipped into. As in Rome, mix it up! No recipe was ever written in stone in Rome. The could make a sonnet recipe into an epic cookbook or a cookbook into three lines. Enjoy playing with this even if nothing more then making the sauce to dip pork chops into.

Gather all the ingredients together.

Ignore the orange. It wasn’t in the recipe, just making a cameo before breakfast!

Throw everything but the oregano (the green stuff) and the dates into the crock pot or what ever pot you are cooking with. Pit the dates. Then chop the oregano and dates roughly.

Throw these into the crock pot, then added the 2 lbs. of pork butt.

As usual the mixing and stirring doesn’t look like much. Give the dish a few hours until the pork is fork tender. Then you’ll be doing nothing but licking your lips.

The sauce will be nice nice and thick after a few hours. If you want to make sauce even thicker, take the meat from the crock pot and put aside. Remember it’s fork tender so treat it gently. Then pour the sauce into another pot and slowly simmer till reduced by 40%. You want to balance a good dipping/soaking sauce with butter knife cutting sludge.

There wasn’t a lot of leftovers, but the little that remained was wrapped in home made tortillas (any fried flat bread will do) and consumed the next morning. Still fork tender and rich in flavor.

January 21, 2015 | No comments

I made this dish with a group of friends a while back. The weather at the time was HOT and the kitchen even hotter. The weather has cooled off a bit making this one of those perfect fall/winter dishes. Make many because they will not last!

Sanbusag : Triangular Turnovers with Meat Fillings

Translation:

Take meat from the back between the two shoulders, the inner thighs, the rump and some sheep’s tail fat. Remove the veins. Pound (the meat) very well on a board, with a knife. Then pound with them, the whites (of onions) leak leaves, fresh coriander, rue, and some mint. Pound them extremely well. Pour over then Nabatean murri, as much as needed. Throw into it dried coriander, black pepper cassia (cinnamon), cloves, what you prefer or aromatic spices and ginger, kneading them well with spices and oil. Cook them well until done. The (preparation)( is Isfidhaj. If you would like to be sour, then throw into it some pounded (dried) yogurt whey, as much as you like, or some dried buttermilk or some sumac juice or any other souring agent, as you like, God willing. When you have finished doing that then fill then sheets of bread with it, folding them into triangles, squares or rectangles. If you would like to add some dried fruits, then throw in it that which you would like of walnuts, almonds, coconut, pistachios, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and anything else. If you would like to decorate it with eggs as is done during feasts and banuest, then do so. If you prefer to make them in the Babaki manner, then take yeast dough ad roll it out thin\. Cut out round with a round wooden mold similar to a small hollowed bowl. Stuff it with meat and seal the edges together with fingernail impressions. Deep fry in washed olive oil or sesame oil. Once they are browned, then remove them and eat them with what you like made of vinegar or mustard. This is the method of preparing Sanusaj and its various types of except of how to make them sweet. (al-Warraq, Abu Muhammad al-Muzaffar ibn Nasr ibn Sayyar, Kitab al-Tabikh wa Islah al-Aghdhiya al-Ma’Kulat wa Tayyibah al-At’imah al-Masnu’at/Salloum, pp. 85-86)

Ingredients:

Dough

1 lb ground lamb meat

1/2 a chopped onion

1 chopped white of a leek

1/2 tsp fish sauce

1 tsp dried coriander, black pepper, cinnimaon,

1 tsp fresh chopped ginger (1/2 tsp of dried will do if fresh is not available)

1/2 tsp of dried clove

Redaction:

Gather all of your meat spices and dough into one spot.

Brown the meat then add your spices. I decided not to get wild and funky with the filling the first few times. That is for another night. So I stuck with the basics of meat, spices and bread. Get the basic down first then start playing with the different types and tastes.

I started the meat sizzling and add spices to the pan with the meat while it was cooking.

While the meat is cooking roll out your dough to the size desired.

I did use the oil and spice dough suggested from Rodinson. This dough as a really good taste! You can use a good butter crust or a lard crust. This is one of those “I am the cook so I get to choose” decisions.

Here I used a small pie form, not because the dish called for the pie forms but because I liked the pottery. As you can see by this recipe mix and match is part of the fun of this dish. Place the rolled out dough into the pie plate or, if this is going to be a shell, place the dough on a cutting board to be filled.

Next take the now cooked meat and fill your dough “pocket”. Once the pocket is filled, seal the dough.

Here I was being very rustic i.e. lazy and flipped the dough ends up and over for a without regard to looks. These do NOT last long. If you are showing these in an A&S display use some creative imagination to make them pretty to the eye and not just yummy for the starving hordes in the house.

I didn’t have enough fresh olive oil to fry these so I placed them into the oven at the default temp of 350 till done, which is roughly 45 minutes, when the shell turns a nice golden brown. There were none left for lunch left overs the next day. They are just that good!

October 22, 2014 | No comments

Had a few issues with the site. Thank you for your patience as new posts will be updated very shortly! 😉

June 23, 2013 | No comments

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