bunnyjadwiga

We had these extra pears and apples that we had lost track of in the fridge, which needed to be used. And we have this baby who should have fruit to eat that isn't already pureed.

So:
4-5 pears peeled, cored, and chopped
4-5 apples peeled, cored and chopped (or any combination of apples & pears, with the bad bits cut out)
Prune juice-- and pear juice, if you happen to have any the baby won't drink-- to half cover.
2-3 large dates, pitted and chopped small
Ginger, Cassia Cinnamon, Powder Douce if you have it
large spoonful of mincemeat mixture

Cook in the crockpot on low for six hours or longer, until you get bored and want to package it up.

From Markham's English Housewife, reformatted for my own convenience:

Of boiled meats ordinary

It resteth now that we speak of boiled meats and broths, which, forasmuch as our housewife is intended to be general, one that can as well feed the poor as the rich, we will begin with those ordinary wholesome boiled meats, which are of use in every goodman's house: therefore to make the the best ordinary pottage; you sahll take a rack of mutton cut into pieces or a leg of mutton cut into pieces; for this meat and these joints are the best, although any other joint, or any fresh beef will likewise make good pottage:
and, having washed your meat well,
put it into a clean pot with fair water, set it on the fire;
then take

• violet leaves
  
• endive
  
• succory
  
• strawberry leaves
  
• spinach
  
• langdebeef
  
• marigold [calendula] flowers
  
• scallions
  
• and a little parsley

and chop them very small together;
then take half so much oatmeal well beaten as there is herbs, and mix it with the herbs
and chop all very well together:
then when the pot is ready to boil, scum it very well,
and then put your herbs,
and so let it boil with a quick fire, stirring the meat oft in the pot,
till the meat be boiled enough, and that the herbs and water are mixed together without any separation,
which will be after the consumption of more than a third part:
then season them with salt and serve them up with the meat either with sippets or without.

Michael Best translation, page 74.

So, we take our mutton or beef, cut up,
wash it,
put it in a pot with fair water, on the fire (possibly a new ceramic pot)
chop up our herbs
take half as much oatmeal as we have herbs
chop herbs and oatmeal together.
When the pot boils, skim off the scum
and then add the herb/oatmeal mixture
and boil until it is reduced by one-third and the herb/oatmeal mixture is porridgey.
Salt to taste.
Serve with sippets (toast triangle-like objects) or without, the pottage along with the meat.

Just a note to remind myself and anyone else who cares what we served for Sunday morning breakfast at the Tournament of St. Joseph.

This is one of those things where I try to get something as close to what is 'traditionally' served there and also as close to period as I can.

French Toast (pain perdu-- bread dipped in  egg yolk mixture, fried in butter, and topped with sugar)
Rice pudding with almond milk
Oatmeal (oop- rolled oats not grits)
Mushrooms (funges: mushrooms boiled then fried, with a little onion and some pepper, nutmeg and coriander)
Onions (based on the Roast Onion salad recipe, but with some changes: onions were cut into strips and baked with olive oil, then spiced with salt and pepper)
Bread and Butter
Strawberries, Peaches, Plums, Grapes
 Sausage gravy and biscuits (OOP)
Orange, apple, and concord grape juices (OOP)
Roasted ham (spiral sliced) (I meant to provide bitter orange juice and cinnamon with this, to make it into carbonadoes, but I got distracted).

We meant to make Chersye -- cherry pudding- but ran out of time. Last time I did this, I served a plum mousse which is redacted in Redon's <I>Medieval Kitchen</I>.

I'm thinking of putting together a list of "easy to make medieval dishes" and I thought I'd start where I started, with Armored Turnips. For those who aren't familiar with them, they are a sort of turnip au gratin, or as some people have put it, turnips as cheese substrate.

Platina book 8
Cut up turnips that have been either boiled or cooked under the ashes.
Likewise do the same with rich cheese, not too ripe. These should be
smaller morsels than the turnips, though. In a pan greased with butter
or liquamen, make a layer of cheese first, then a layer of turnips,
and so on, all the while pouring in spice and some butter, from
time to time. This dish is quickly cooked and should be eaten quickly, too.

[Poll #1159629]

A couple of years back, I suddenly became wildly interested in cooking grains and dried beans. Ok, I seem to recollect that I became wildly interested in buying grains and dried beans and keeping them in pretty jars, but eventually one does have to eat them. Since then, I I've researched and cooked bulgur (cracked) wheat, barley and barley groats, buckwheat groats (kasha), millet, quinoa, oat groats and amaranth. Most of them are pretty yummy. Most of them make it into our food arrangements on a regular basis. We've also added couscous to our repetoire (who can't like a starch that cooks in five minutes if you dump it in boiling water, cover it, and take it off the heat?

But what I really need is a proportion chart, where the amount of grain and the amount of water are laid out for boiling and for slow cooking processes.

This is the best chart I've found so far:
http://www.rivercityfoodcoop.org/?section=products&page=cooking_grains
http://www.blueplanetco-op.com/wholegrains.html

There are some good grain cooking cookbooks, and I'll need to raid the Easton library for them (Madison PL, though good on many levels, has little on slow cooking and nothing on grains).

However, here's a few websites:
http://www.hgof.ns.ca/index2.php?function=cooking_tips
http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--1018/boilabsorbsteam-other-grains.asp

So, as of last night, the Bizcochos have claimed TWO different hand mixers. But boy, are they good. Sarah helped me do the last 2 batches of 3, so they are done.

Juergen helped me with the coriander comfits. I think my candy thermometer is out of calibration, as when it read 228 I put the syrup on the comfits, but it definitely wasn't hot enough; we got damp sticky comfits that didn't dry. So, since I couldn't stand the thought of wasting them, I tried the other period method. I took a stainless steel frying pan, heated it up on medium-low flame, and pour the comfits in there. Then I rolled them around for a while. Slowly they dried out, so I started adding sugar. My hands aren't tough enough to stand hot sugar, so I switched to our massive silicone spatula to stir them. I did have to turn the heat up a bit, but the sugar melted and re-hardened on the coriander. A couple more coats got better coverage, but not complete coverage, and then I chickened out and stopped, lest I lose the coverage I'd gotten. But... I DID IT! I did the coating-in-the-pan trick! Yay me!

The orange peels and lemon peels are peeled (revelation: a good sharp veggie peeler DOES do a good job on citrus; obviously the one I used before wasn't configured right; 2nd revelation: I NEED a NEW paring knife; the house is full of knives but no non-serrated paring knives that work worth a damn to be found) and soaking in water; they've already had one change. This is a speed round; they should soak for 10 days but I hope if I change the water several times a day it will make up for shorting on the time.

Ok, here's another recipe from de Nola. Christopher, bless his heart, redacted this one for me first, but I did it again to taste it myself (he did it for Iron Bog Cooks Guild).

85. Another Modern Pottage: OTRO POTAJE MODERNO

Take the fleshy leaves of the bledas (61) which is chard, and clean them very well; and give them a brief boil with water and salt, so that they come out half-cooked. And then remove it from the fire, and remove more than half of the broth; and return it to cook on the fire with a little good sweet oil; and when they are cooked, taste them for salt; and then prepare dishes and cast good grated cheese upon them, and also cast some of this cheese beneath them; and they are good for Lent, if you have a dispensation. (62)

My plan is to serve the pottage with grated parmesan on the side, so those who want it, may have it.

So I cut the ribs out of enough chard to make 2 good handsful of chard.
Then I put them in a pot with enough water to cover them, and 3 pinches of salt.
Boiled them until they were bright green.
Poured out about one-half to 2/3 of the water.
Added about 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and cooked until they were fully cooked and starting to turn dark.
Served with the cheese.
As Sarah said, what could be wrong? I think cooking down the water is important, though. And enough oil.

This is making it into the feast.

So, I had promised to bring yummy treats in order to bribe my co-workers into coming to Groupwise training this afternoon. (Yes, our library runs on food.)
Fortunately, Juergen kindly put in the air conditioner so it was doable.

Last night I made a batch of Anise Bizcochos, from Brighid ni Chairain's redaction, just to make sure I still know how to do it. http://members.tripod.com/~breadbaker/sweets.html
The answer is yes, but I need not to let the dough sit as long between batches.
Yummy.

And then I made gingerbread, using the recipe from Form of Cury:

Curye on Inglysch p. 154
To make gingerbrede. Take goode honey & clarifie it on + e fere, & take fayre paynemayn or wastel brede & grate it, & caste it into + e boylenge hony, & stere it well togyder faste with a sklyse + at it bren not to + e vessell. & + anne take it doun and put + erin ginger, longe pepper & saundres, & tempere it vp with + in handes; & than put hem to a flatt boyste & strawe + eron suger, & pick + erin clowes rounde aboute by + e egge and in + e mydes, yf it plece you, &c.

This time I think I got the proportions as I like them and had them written down:
1 cup honey
2.5 cups breadcrumbs
1 rounded tsp ginger
1/2 a medium long pepper
1/3 tsp saunders
Whole Cloves
Sugar to roll in

Heat the honey to a simmer. Stir in the breadcrumbs with a silicone spatula (heavy duty) or wooden spoon. Add the ginger, grate in the long pepper and add the saunders. Mix in. Get yourself set up with pot of gingerbread, bowl of sugar to roll in, container of whole cloves, plate to put gingerbread in. This will allow the mixture to cool off enough to be handled.
Take handfuls of the mixture and knead with your fingers. When it forms a cohesive paste, pull off an amount the size of a superball and roll it into a firm ball. Insert a clove; roll in sugar, and set aside. Repeat. When the mixture is hottest, do one ball at a time; as it cools down, you can do larger quantities and roll them into ropes to pinch off from.
You MUST firmly incorporate the bread crumbs with the honey to get a good flavor and texture. If the balls crack or don't hold together you need to knead the mixture more. You can tell when a ball is ready when you roll it between your hands and it pulls away from your skin slightly as you roll.

The longer these sit, the spicier they are.

Along with the millet, on Saturday I tested this Casserole of Meat from de Nola:

CAZUELA DE CARNE

You must take meat and cut it into pieces the size of a walnut, and gently fry it with the fat of good bacon; and when it is well gently fried, cast in good broth, and cook it in a casserole; and cast in all fine spices, and saffron, and a little orange juice or verjuice, and cook it very well until the meat begins to fall apart and only a little broth remains; and then take three or four eggs beaten with orange juice or verjuice, and cast it into the casserole; and when you wish to eat, give it four or five stirs with a large spoon, and then it will thicken; and when it is thick, remove it from the fire; and prepare dishes, and cast cinnamon upon each one. However, there are those who do not wish to cast in eggs or spice, but only cinnamon and cloves, and cook them with the meat, as said above, and cast vinegar on it so that it may have flavor; and there are others who put all the meat whole and in one piece, full of cinnamon, and whole cloves, and ground spices in the broth, and this must be turned little by little, so that it does not cook more at one end than the other. And so nothing is necessary but cloves and cinnamon, and those moderately.

So, I was pretty sure this could go in a crockpot. Obviously it's meant to be made with lamb, mutton or goat meat but it doesn't say that, and besides, if de Nola uses all that bacon, there's got to be some pig bits around somewhere. So I tried it with pork.

About 2.5 to 3 lb pork loin, cut into 1-1.5" chunks
I fried 5-6 pieces of bacon ends in a pan to make the grease, then browned the pork loin chunks in that.
The pork loin chunks then went into the crockpot with about 2 quarts of beef broth made from beef base.
added:
1 heaping tsp powder forte
7-8 whole cloves
2 sticks cinnamon, broken up
about 1/3 cup bitter orange juice

Then I put it to simmer all day. (The general concensus was that it definitely smelled Catalan.)

When we came home, it looked good, but the liquid hadn't cooked down all that much, so I transferred it back to the frying pan and let it simmer while the millet cooked to reduce it a bit.

The broth was not really thick enough-- next time I would use less broth. But the meat-- oh oh OH! yummmy! and the broth was quite nice on the millet. I'll serve this with rice.

Well, after leaving the millet mixture in the fridge for 48 hours, I got it out last night and prepared to fry it.
First I poured off the liquid on top. Then I tried to slice it.
It was definitely too wet/gooey. Drat!
So, we fried some in butter in globs. Interesting, but it kept falling apart when I went to turn it.
Still, it was fried starch-- what could be bad? Especially with cheese.
Sarah wants to try it again with broth in the cooking water, and I want to use less liquid.

However... there is a problem. There are three dishes I had already planned on for the meal:
Eggplant Morisco
Lombardy Sops
Carrot-Cheese Pie
that all have cheese. That makes a 4th cheese dish. Hm. That may be too much dairy.

Drat drat drat.

Back to the drawing board, I guess: I could do plain rice and barley or bulgur with almond milk...