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This bread was a little on the different side. Ok very much on the different side. I’ve never used galingale or watermelon in a bread before and was a bit hesitant on how it would taste. It sounds horrible especially when you add in the garlic. I know!! Weird huh? However, I am very pleased with the results. This is one of those sweet spicy breads that needs to be eaten to believe. This is not your ordinary bread!

Galingale Bread with Watermelon

Translation:

Bread with lightly leavened white flour, cardamoms, ghee, honey, almonds, kironji kernels, pulp of the marsh melon, date sugar, galingale, garlic, sunf, poppy seeds. (Nimatnama, pp. 58)

Ingredients.

6 C. White flour

3 tsp. yeast

1 C. Date sugar

1 C. Ghee

1 C. Water

5 Tbs. Honey

1 C. Pine nuts

2 Tbs. Galingale ground

2 Tbs. Cardamom ground

2 Tbs. Garlic ground

1/2 C. Poppy seeds.

2 tsp. salt

1 C. Watermelon (seeded and drained of most juice) if in season

Redaction:

Gather up all of your ingredients.

As you can see I had to change out the actual watermelon for watermelon juice. Watermelon is out of season but I did have the juice on hand. Long story but it was a tasty one! The round hard puck, bottom center is palm sugar. This needs to be dissolved into your watermelon juice OR melt this over a stove or a microwave. It’s a t-total B*&^# to try and chop. Of course this is hind sight. I used the microwave, which melted the sugar a little bit, enough to get small(ish) chunks into the flour with the spices and nuts.

The galingale is the light colored powder in the small bowl bottom right. When bought dry it comes in dry root chunks that are tough and hard. This needs to be ground into a very fine powder. No one wants to bite into tough wood chunks! I used a coffee grinder that is solely for spice grinding that is wiped down between each grind.

The next step is add the dry to the flour and stir.

See how large the palm sugar chunks are? That is a bit larger than you want. At this sizes I might have been able to grind them…but I didn’t want to break either the spice grinder or my cuisinart and my child is to young to use as slave labor for the pestle and mortar.

The third step is to add in the butter and honey. The honey looks rather clumpy/granular in the picture. It is. The honey got cold so turned granular. It is perfectly useable in this form. If you want flowing honey pulse it for 10-20 seconds in the microwave or put the granular honey in a bowl, then place the bowl in a pot with water that is 1/3 the height of the bowl and heat the pot slowly. Other wise you will break the bowl and/or make honey water. Keep the bowl in the water till the honey melts. (See why I went with the granular?)

Add the watermelon slowly, a drizzle at a time. You want the bread to start forming a ball but not be wet and mushy.

This is the finished bread. The picture does not do the light pink tinge justice. Very pretty in an almost Hello Kitty way.

Let the bread sit for 90 minutes. The bread doesn’t rise a whole bunch (or at least mine didn’t).

When the bread has risen enough (or not much) I oiled my soapstone baking stone and put in the oven for 350 minutes for 60 minutes.

This is the finished bread. Nice and brown with a good hollow sound when thumped.

The crumb is not hard but a bit dense, more like a scone then bread. The taste is…sweet and spicy. Very tasty. I didn’t bother with butter, just nibbled pieces off the hot loaf.

January 30, 2015 | No comments

Galingale (not your ginger!)

Galingale is not your typical everyday spice. In fact, I am going to bet, you are going what the hell is galingale! I’m glad you asked. This exotic root is so rare that my go to book History of Food by Toussaint-Samat doesn’t even have this listed! I had to go on line to find this spice’s origin. Middle English and French has this as Galingal or Garnigal while in Arabic it is known as Khalanjan. This is a root/rhizome spice, in the ginger family. However do NOT think the two are inter mixable. They aren’t! Ginger has a very spicy taste while galingale is more mellow almost licorices (but not) mild spiciness. The origins seem to be European. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/galingale)

This spice is found in a lot of Medieval recipes. Some sweet and some savory. When using a recipe that calls for galingale don’t use ginger use powdered fennel seeds.

Here is a picture of fresh galingale. Sometimes this can be found in Chinese or Thai stores. I buy it dry and grind the dried root very fine. Do not leave large chunks as the pieces are woody and hard.

Galingale - Krachai http://www.tradewindsorientalshop.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_Galingale.html#.VMqpcCyy4ys

January 29, 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

Potage Dyvers (Venison or Beef in Wine and Spices)

Translation:

Noblys of the venison. Take the Nobles of Venyoun, and cutte him small whyle they been raw; than take Freysshe brothe, Watere, and Wyne, of eche a quantyte, an powder of Pepir an Canel, and leth them boyle to -gederys tyl it be almost y-now (done); an thene caste powder Gynger, an a lytil venegre an Salt, an sesyn it vp (up), and then serue it forth in the maner of a gode potage. (Renfrow, pp. 465)

This is almost exactly as it is in the book Take a !000 Eggs, except I had to make a couple of spelling adjustments. It’s not your eyes playing tricks.

Ingredients:

4lb Venison or beef

1 bottle red wine

1 tsp each salt, pepper, ginger and Chinese cinnamon.

1/2 C balsamic vinegar

Redaction:

This is pretty straight forward for a medieval recipe. I made a couple of changes because…I had to. For the first change I had to use beef instead of venison. I no longer have a venison supplier. I am very sad!

So I took half a brisket I had in the freezer. (I was running out of room) and trimmed off most of the huge chunks of fat cutting the meat into slightly larger than bite sized pieces. The meat, being a brisket, is very tough but very tasty. A long slow cook will not only make the meat very tender but also shrink the meat just a little.

I didn’t use quite a full bottle of wine, but you can. You can also go as low as 2 cups. The spices are to my taste and the balsamic vinegar is a very good sweet balsamic. Go for the best you can in spices and vinegar. The better the ingredients the better the taste!

Since I was doing a long slow cook, I decided to add all the ingredients instead of doing the ginger and vinegar at the end while using a slow cooker instead of doing a straight up boil for thirty minutes.

The meat cooked in the wine/spices/vinegar for 4 hours. The meat came out very tasty with just the right amount of spice to wine infusion. So yes, I took a few liberties however I think that in a period situation this dish could have been set over a low fire to cook for many hours if there was farm work to be done.

If this meal was for the lord and a feast, then yes, the meat would need to be cooked very quickly and part of the spices, in lower concentration because ginger is STRONG. I also prefer the taste of wine to vinegar though the slight vinegar bite was night from the long slow cooking. So in conclusion, have fun and experiment!

December 30, 2014 | No comments

Homemade Beef Brisket Bacon

This is for the a recipe that called for lamb belly bacon. Lamb belly is a bit scarce (read I can’t find this anywhere!!!) on the ground here in Ansteorra (aka Texas). I can find a great many things but lamb belly so I had to make a change of bellies. I went with a beef brisket for two reasons. It is very easy to come by and the slices for “larding” means I will have slices larger then slivers if I did have a lamb’s belly for curing.

I have attempted bacon before with pork. My first try was horrible! The one of the salts I used to flavor the first side of pork rendered the pork not only to salty but tasting of dirt. I was mortified. I took a year off from curing till now to retry.

I now share with you a very simple curing recipe for a well-marbled fatty bit of belly.

Ingredients:

1 Cups Kosher salt

1/2-1 Cup Sugar

1 tsp pink salt (enough for 5lb slab of meat)

1 Tbs juniper berries smooooooshed.

Redaction:

Gather your meat and salts/spices together.

Here I used a rough grained Kosher salt, regular table, sugar, juniper berries and pink salt.

I used a beef brisket belly, from which I removed a good section of fat out of, so that I had a “flat” portion of brisket.

The original with fat being removed.

When I originally made this, I erred on the side of too much salt. I did a 2 to 1 of salt to sugar which is the right ratio but too much of the salt when rubbing.

Take your salts, spice and sugars and mix them together very well.

Next rub this over your meat on both sides.

Place in a large container. Flip the meat every day or every other day. The juice is part of the brining.

This is actually a picture of the brisket rinsed of salt after 7 days. It looks a little odd but it’s definitely cured.

On the 7th day, rinse all the salts/sugar/spices off the meat in cool flowing water for 20 minutes. This step is VERY important. If you don’t rinse the salt off very well, the meat will be cooked with the salt on and rendered to salty.

Place on a very low heat smoker/grill.

I used hard wood charcoal.

It really does have a better cooking temperature, longevity and better flavor then the regular briquettes. The grill I used is very nice…I managed to keep the temperature between 140 most of the time. Occasionally it creeped up to 200 and I had to open the dampers up to cool it off.

The meat smoked for 5(ish) hours.

The meat cut nicely…still not store bought then, but I didn’t need thin, I needed tasty.

The final verdict is that the outer skin was a bit salty but very tasty.

December 20, 2014 | No comments

So we start with a very tasty dish in fish. Most people go ewww…ick! Don’t let that stop you. Pick a GOOD piece of fish. Talipia is sort of the last resort if you must. Not a lot of flavor. I went with a good piece of fresh wild salmon. And it was amazing! The dish almost didn’t make it out of the kitchen.

Samak al-Sikbaj

Fish made like Sikbaj

Translation:

You will need a fresh fish, vinegar, honey, atraf tib, black pepper, onion, saffron, sesame oil, and flour. Wash the fish. Cut up and fry in the sesame oil after having dredged in flour. When it has cooked, removed it. Mince the onions and fry in the sesame oil until they brown. Pound the black pepper and add the atraf tib. Dissolve the saffron in the vinegar and honey and add (to the onions). When they are cooked put the fish into it. (Kanz al-Fawa’id fi Tanwi al-Mawa’id/Salloum, pp. 123)

Ingredients:

1/2 lb deboned fish

1/3 C vinegar

1/4 C honey

Pinch saffron

1 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1/2 chopped onion

Enough oil to fry

Enough flour to dredge the fish

Translation:

I gathered everything up

and started the oil in the pan prior to anything else. The oil needs to be sizzling before putting the dredged fish in it, otherwise the fish will stick to the pan.

Next I dredged the fish on both sides then waited till the oil was sizzling.

Once the oil started to sizzle I placed the fish into the pan, covering it, and fried for 5 minutes on both sides. If you have a slightly smaller fish or less thick, use your best judgement on fry time. Thinner pieces of fish probably shouldn’t fry more then 2-3 minutes on each side.

Once cooked I pulled the fish from the pan and put aside.

Looks gorgeous, doesn’t it. But wait! We aren’t done yet. It gets even better.

The chopped onions and a little more sesame oil went back into the pan.

These browned up very quickly so don’t walk away at this stage. I did have enough time to combine the vinegar honey and saffron into a small bowl.

I stirred everything together and added to the onion and pepper once the onions were nicely browned.

A slight sizzle got going and on top of that went the fish. Just enough to coat on each side.

The fish was plated once more. I poured the remaining onion/honey-vinegar sauce on top.

This is amazingly good! Quick, elegant and daaamn tasty!

November 26, 2014 | 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

The Sweets of Araby

book cover

This book took a little to warm up to. It’s not that the recipes aren’t good (or period) but the presentation is far more modern then I am use to. The original translations with documentation is on the side in a very cute keyhole panel and the stories that accompany them are cute. This book was made for a modern day cook.

If you want a book on medieval Middle Eastern sweets this is a very good book. Multiple recipes from multiple sources with original recipes and redactions for those who need. The stories are also helpful but unknown if truly historic or… A for period recipes and a B+ only because it’s cutsy. Yes I get to call a book cutsy! It’s in the rules…some where.

August 23, 2014 | No comments

Scheherazade’s Feast:

Scheherazade's Feasts: Foods of the Medieval Arab World

I’ve had this book for a little bit and I really like the feel and flow of the recipes. The book has great original translated recipes and there are are also redactions for those who want/need a little extra help. The book is not as extensive in recipes as other books nor as inclusive on historical facts as I would like. Hence an A for cooking but a C+ for historical facts. This is a great starting book or an additional supplement for new recipes.

August 23, 2014 | No comments

There have been a few hurdles over the past few months that I have had to address and recover from. However I have a new recipe to add to my list of favorite dishes. Meat plus fire, always an excellent combination!

Sikh

(Skewered Meat)

Translation:

…for the method for skewered meat: mix meat with salt onions and turmeric and boil it with whole potherbs. Cut it into very small pieces and strain it. Then fasten one segment of meat and one piece of onion on the skewer and rub ghee, caraway, lime juice, white ambergris, rosewater and salt on it. Bake it well and when it is tender, wrap it in thin bread and serve it. (Mandu, pp. 26)

Ingredients:

2 lb cubed meat

Salt (to taste)

1 onion (finely chopped)

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp ea. thyme, cilantro and basil

Second stage

1 onion cut into quarters

Ghee

2 tsp Caraway

1 tsp lime juice

¼ tsp rosewater

Salt to taste

Redaction:

I am going to change this slightly. Here instead of boiling the meat, I am placing the meat to marinade overnight in the first set of ingredients.

So first, take a good piece of meat with a bit of marbled fat for excellent flavor and cut it into cubes.

Then mix the marinade together.

After the meat has marinated for 24 hours (or slightly longer),

I skewer all the meat.

I alternate one cube with one slice of onion, until the skewer is filled. The onion chunks actually help with the cooking. I did several skewers with onions and several without. Those without onions cooked slower and the meat was still very red in between the chunks while the outside was done and slightly charred.

Once the skewers are ready to grill, I brush each one with the ghee, caraway, lime juice, rose water and salt mixture, every 5 minutes until the meat is done.

This is the raw meat grilling on a small clay pot grill.

The meat is smelling heavenly at this point but still a bit raw.

The meat is done and ready to be devoured.

The meat actually never made it into the flat bread. We ate the cubes hot off the skewers. It was delicious. I regret nothing!

August 4, 2014 | No comments

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