Sunday, July 5, 2020
Marzipan
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Pease Pies
To make a close Tarte of green Pease
Ingredients
Method
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
You say kartoffel I say tartoufle...
Apparently there is some argument about the three recipes in the Ouveture de Cuisine (1604) for tartoufle. One translated version of the recipe book has this as potato.. but is it?
The word "truffle" comes from the Vulgar Latin "tufera", itself derived from the Latin tuber.Within period the truffle was known as "tartufi" and "tartufoli" and the potato as "tartuffo" and "tartuffolo". You can see why there might be some cause for confusion eh?
Apparently the word "taratoufli" was inscribed on the pot in which a potato was planted by Clusius in 1588. The word "tartufflo" as the word for a potato was then converted by Olivier de Serres in 1600 into "Cartoufle", which leads nicely into the German "kartoffel" that we see today, and its many variations in other countries. *
Seems pretty straight forward. But...
Cotgrave's 1611 French English dictionary has a little to say on this too... it doesn't contain any reference to the potato that I have been able to find so far, but does have:
Truffe: a gibe, mocke, flowt, jeast, gullerie; also a saligo, or water nut; also, a most daintie kind of round and russet root, or rootie excresence, which grows in forests, or dry and sandie grounds, and within the ground, but without any stalk, leafe or fiber annexed unto it.
To complicate things, in France to this day, in a geographical area from Burgundy to Provence, truffles are called "tartoufle". An indeed, conversely, apparently in other regions of France, up to Belgium, potatoes may be called "trufle", "truffe", "trefe", "trife", "trufa" or "trufo" or even more!
I am still on the hunt for more information on this... I hope to have more information soon. In the meantime, feel free to tell me what you think....
*History and social influence of the potato by Redcliffe N Salaman and William Glynn Burton
Monday, September 14, 2015
Rosee - Chicken and rose pate
Let me start by giving my thanks to Constance B Hieatt and Sharon Butler for bringing so many 14th century recipes to the public eye! So here are three versions:
- An Ordinance of Pottage: "Florey. Take flourys of rosys; wesch hem & grynd hen with almond mylke. Take brawn of capons grounden & do thereto. Loke hit be stondyng. Cast theryn sugure, & cast theron the leves of floure of the rose, & serve hit forth."
- Utilis Coquinario - book 3 of MS Cosin 14th C. Menus: " 32. To make a rosye. Tak braun of capounces or of hennes & hew it smal, & bray it in a morter & do perto grounde bred & tempre it vp with almounde melk, & and do into a pot & lye it with amodne & colour it with safroun. & do perto white gres & stere it weel, & tak roses & hewe hem smale & do into pe pot, & seth it all togedrere& ley it with eyre, & do perto sugre & salt, & dresch it, & strewe peron rede rose leaues & serue it forth."
- Diuersa Servicia - book 2 of MS Cosin 14th C. Menus: "For to make rosee, tak the flowrys of rosys and wasch hem wel in water, and after bray hem wel in a morter; & than tak almondys and temper hem, & seth hem, & after tak flesch of capons or of hennys and hac yt smale, & than bray hem wel in a morter, & than do yt in the rose so that the flesch acorde wyth the mylk, & so that the mete be charchaunt: & after do yt to the fyre to boyle, & do therto sugur & safroun that yt be wel ycolowrd & rosy of leuys of the for seyde flowrys,& serue yt forth."
"Take brawn of capons grounden and do thereto". Brawn nowadays is often known as head cheese and is made by boiling meat along with the bones to get gelatin. But as a medieval term, the word is middle English and comes from the old French word "Braon", which means the fleshy part of the leg. So we know what bit of the capon we are to use, yay!
Sadly as I have no probably mourned in previous posts, capons aren't available here, and I had to make do with chicken thighs. On a side note, apparently the Australian ban on capons was based on them being chemically castrated in the 60s and so if you can find someone to manually castrate the roosters and grow them, you could theoretically get capons here. Anyone? Anyone? Pretty please with sugar on top? Anyway, I have wandered off...
So, here comes for me, one of the big questions of the recipe. Is the meat cooked before grinding? In the second and third versions of the recipe, the ground meat is cooked (whether for a second time or not is unclear). Does it make a difference either way?
Well, guess I better find out eh? So I try a few ways. Method 1. Grind the almonds with water and rose petals and half a teaspoon of rosewater. Add ground chicken thighs and cook the mixture until it is thoroughly cooked. Season with sugar. Result - ok, but a bit on the bland side of things. Texturally, the almonds were a bit grainy - I should have ground them more finely. I was also concerned with cooking the raw ground chicken in the almond milk, that it would either burn around the edges (trying to cook a thick soupy liquid) or that the chicken itself would not be properly cooked through, which was a worry from a food safety point of view.
Method 2. Cook the chicken thighs in stock. Use a bit of the stock to grind the almonds and rose petals and rosewater. Grind up the cooked thighs and mix in with the almond milk. Result? Tasty tasty. The flavour and salt from the chicken stock was a big help to the blandness and the texture was more pleasing.
250g chicken thighs
8 dried rosebuds
1/2 teaspoon rosewater
1/3 cup blanched almonds
2 cups of chicken stock
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Little Sugar Pies
(Maestre Robert "Libre del Coch" 1520, translation from "Original Mediterranean Cooking" B Santich) - redaction is my own.
Take a pound of almonds and blanch them. And grind them without adding either water or stock, so that they become very oily, and the oilier they are, the better. And take one and half pounds of white sugar, well pounded, and mix it with the almonds. And when these are mixed, if it is still a bit stiff, add a little rosewater. And season it with a little ginger, to your taste. Then take pastry made with flour and eggs and sweet oil, and fill the pastry with the sugar and the almonds. Then take oil and put it on the fire in a frying pan. And when it boils, put in the little pies, and cook them until they take on the colour of gold. And when you take them from the fire, pour over melted honey. And then sprinkle them with sugar and powdered cinnamon.
You will see that I put less sugar in than the original recipe
350g ground almonds 350g icing sugar 1 tsp rosewater 2 tsp ginger ½ cup wine ½ cup oil 1 egg flour; about 2 and ½ cups Caster sugar Cinnamon |
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While the original recipe for once does in fact give ingredients for the pastry, I played a little with it, and used a little wine in the pastry, as this gives it a wonderfully crisp texture. Mix the oil, wine and eggs, and gradually add the flour, to make a soft sticky dough. Sprinkle a board with flour, and lightly flour a rolling pin. Roll out the dough and cut out rounds. Place a little of the marzipan mixture on a round, fold in half and pinch closed (you may find that wetting the edges lightly with water will help them stick together) or run a fork around the edge.
Deep fry at 170 degrees until golden. Immediately after removing them from the oil, put them on a plate and drizzle honey over the top.
Move to drain on a draining rack (over a tray of some sort!) and then sprinkle with cinnamon and caster sugar.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Duke's powder, powder douce, powder forte - medieval spice mixtures
I thought I should type up some of the notes I have taken on this matter, rather than keeping them on a rather scrappy piece of paper. This is simply a list of the spice blends from a number of medieval cookbooks, and will hopefully grow. The first one from Le Menagier is one of my favourites.
Le Menagier de Paris
14 oz cinnamon
1 oz ginger
1 oz grains of paradise
1/6 oz nutmeg
1/6 oz galingale
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1 oz and 1 drachma (1/8th of an oz) white ginger
1/4 oz cinnamon
1/8 oz grains of paradise
1/8 oz cloves
1/4 oz sugar
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Duke's powder
To make powdered hippocras,
take a quarter of very fine cinnamon selected by tasting it, and half a
quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an ounce of selected string ginger,
fine and white, and an ounce of grain of Paradise, a sixth of nutmegs
and galingale together, and bray them all together. And when you would
make your hippocras, take a good half ounce of this powder and two
quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart of wine, by Paris measure.
And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together is the Duke's
powder.
Frati 15th century Italy
1/4 cloves
1 oz ginger
1 oz cinnamon
same quantity bay leaf
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Libro de Guisados:
Spices for common sauce
3 parts cinnamon
2 parts cloves
1 part ginnger
1 part sugar?? (I can't read my own notes there... must check)
and a little ground coriander and a little saffron
Spices for Clarea
3 parts cinnamon
2 parts cloves
1 part ginger
Dukes Powder
1/2 oz cinnamon
1/8 cloves
1 pound sugar
a little ginger
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Powder Blanche (Haven of Health)
2 oz sugar
1/4 oz ginger
1/8 oz cinnamon