SC - Aoife's Tartlettes Recipe

[Librarian]

Greetings! I am ready to post my redaction of the Tartlettes recipe. I hope you enjoy 
it! The last recipe in the challenge will take quite some time to work out, therefore it 
won't be ready until later. Please do not reply to this address, since I won't be here 
till next tuesday. I'll be at home (liontamr at ptd.net). Thanks.

TTFN

Aoife 


Tartlettes. 
>From Curye on Inglysch, Forme of Curye # 51 (middle english characters have been
replaced with (th) for ME thorn character which appears as an askew lower case P,
sounding like the modern -th;  and (y) for the ME letter looking like a cursive lower 
case
Z and sounding like -y or -gh. 

Take pork ysode and grynde it small with safroun; medle it with ayren, and raisouns of
coraunce, and powdour fort and salt, and make a foile of dowh(y) and close the fars
(th)erinne. Cast the tartlettes in a panne with faire water boillyng and salt; take of 
the clene
flesh with oute ayren & boile it in gode broth. Cast (th)er powdour douce and salt, and
messe the tartlettes in disshes & helde the sewe (th)eronne.

Aoife's Translation:

Take pork boilled, and grind it small with saffron; mix it with egg, and currants, and
powder fort (strong spices) and salt, and make a thin foil of dough (ie: noodle dough) 
and
close the stuffing inside. Throw the tartlettes in a pan of boiling water with salt; 
take some
more plain pork without egg (not the stuffing from before) and boil it in good broth.
Throw powder douce (sweet spices and sugar) and salt, and serve the tartlettes in 
dishes,
with the meat and broth on top. 

Aoife's redaction:
Tartlettes     Serves 6 as a main dish or 12 as a side dish, making 32-40 tartlettes.
Time to make: about 1 to 1 1/2 hours

1 lb. pork butt/steak or slightly larger, with small bone
fat
water
"Good Broth" (in my case I used 2  14 oz. cans beef broth and an equal amount of water
with the stewed pork, with no additional seasonings).

Brown the pork butt in the fat until very brown. Cover with water and broth and stew
gently for about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and remove the meat and bone from
the broth. Strain the broth and return to the rinsed pan.

Take the meat from the bone, cut meat into large chunks,  and whirl in a food processor.
set aside 1/3 of the ground meat. to the remaining meat in the processor bowl, add 
4 threads of saffron. soake in 2 tsp hot water, and whirl briefly until finely minced. 
In a medium mixing bowl, add the following to the meat:
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup zante currants, plumped in warm water and well drained
1 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp. salt.
Mix well.

Make a noodle dough:
Make a well in the center of 4 cups of flour. Break in 2 eggs. Add 1 tsp salt and 4 tbsp
cold water. With a fork or the hands mix inside the well until it cannot easily be mixed 
by
hand. Add water, incorporating more and more flour, until the bulk of the flour has been
used. Let rest 10 minutes.

Bring a large pot of clean, salted water to boil.Meantime, add the following to the 
broth
and simmer:
the remaining ground meat
1/4 tsp nutmeg.
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp powdered ginger
1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon

Take the rested dough and divide in half. Cover one half and roll the other half of it 
out
very very thinly on a large well flour-dusted surface, making sure the dough does not
stick. Trim to a uniform shape (you will be folding the dough upon itself lengthwise, so
the sides must roughly match).

One by one, drop 1/2 teaspoons of the filling onto half of the dough, dotting the 
surface in
an even pattern and assuring adequate space (at least 2.5 inches) between the drops for
sealing and cutting the dough. Use a pastry brush to dampen the dough  with water
between the drops. Fold the other half of dough over the filling, and then gently press
down between the humps with the handle of a wooden spoon, taking care not to allow any
air bubbles to remain in the pockets. Using a floured 2 inch round cutter (or simply cut
them into squares with a knife), seperate the tartlettes from the scrap, and allow them 
to
dry a few minutes. Repeat this process with the remaining dough and filling.  

Boil the tartlettes in the salted water. They will float when done. Drain well and 
Remove
to the serving dishes. Cover with the meat and broth mixture, and serve hot.

*Note: Surpirisingly, my 4 year old Siusie really fell for this dish.  It is, however, 
quite
unusual in that the tartlettes are spicy despite the currants, and you would expect the 
broth
to be sweet (your nose tells you so) but it is not. All in all, the dish is "slightly 
spicy", and
very savory and good. The marriage of spices between the dumplings and broth is
wonderful. 
	 After writing this out I begin to understand why old cookbook manuscripts are 
so
concise. Whew! 
	Also, there is a quantity of scrap dough in this method. To avoid this you can
pinch off pieces of dough and form rounds by hand, however the resulting dumplings will
not be as dainty, and the edges will be thick. OTOH, you could use the suggested method
and allow your children to use the scrap to make their own cookie cutter or alphabet 
noodles! Dry them for  later lunchtime soup entertainment.
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