SC - Possible corned-beef substitutes

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Bonne of Traquair wrote:

> Corning it myself from a recipe for "Spiced Beef" from "Cooking at
> Ballymaloe House" (ISBN 1-55670-158-6) [see below, I'm no spoon tease]
> 
> > With three weeks to go before serving the meat, if you've
> >committed to corned beef in any irrevocable way, I suggest you go ahead
> >and use it.
> 
> I've been awfully sick, and am way behind on my shopping, so nothing
> irrevocable has been done.

All right. It sounds as if changing your plans at this stage, though,
may involve work you can't spare the energy to do. 

> This was pretty much my plan--boiled beef, and root vegetables in the
> first course.

Sounds more or less like  a pot au feu...one of my favorites, but, FWIW,
not really heavily documented in period, as far as I know. This is
probably one of those things they ate, but didn't record, but my point
is only that they seem not to have recorded it, if they did eat it. Ah,
well. As far as periodicity goes, you could probably sort of split the
difference and do something like rapes in pottage with the broth (a.k.a.
gode broth of beefe) and serve the meat as a separate dish, either cold
with mustard, or hot with cameline or some such. From the recipe you
quote it doesn't sound like this will have too much of the "preserved"
character of corned, or even many recipes for spiced, beef. This is more
like a gentle marination for the flavor.

> The cookbook recommended pressing it under a weight overnight and
> serving it chilled and sliced, though I was going for the meat and
> vegetables in broth plan.

The weight is to make slicing easier, especially because of the "grainy"
cuts of beef the recipe recommends. The shape of brisket and flank cuts
seems suited for the short marination time, but they also tend to be
expensive (around here they both run anywhere from about $2.39/lb for
brisket on sale to as much as $4.99/lb for flank not on sale). Brisket
is an excellent boiling cut, while I think boiling a flank steak, unless
maybe it is stuffed and rolled up, as for matambre or some such, is a
crime. You might investigate something like boneless chuck roasts, maybe
bottom rounds or even eye rounds. Don't boil anything too lean or it
will be very unpleasant and dry, with the possible exception of a beef
tenderloin, which can be boiled to the rare stage and will be fine. I
assume the latter is out. ;  ) 
 
> Perhaps I'll stick with the original plan afterall.  it's only three
> weekends and lord knows I'm so tired from this awful virus that isn't
> the flu, replanning at this stage seems overwhelming.  It doesn't so
> much have a corned beef taste, but the texture is different from just
> boiling the meat.

Uh huh...and the spicing is _reasonably_ complimentary with any typical
medieval Euopean-style spices you'd be likely to include in a pottage or
sauce. Juniper and allspice aren't really what generally would have been
used (one is New World and the other just doesn't seem to have been used
much in recorded court cookery) , but if you did vegetables in broth, or
a sauce for the beef, or a pottage of some kind, they wouldn't be bad in
combination with some of the other, more likely, spices like cinnamon,
cloves, etc. Alternately, you might give some thought to simply
simmering fresh beef without the spicing, or adding the spices to the
cooking liquid, and forego the marination. It certainly would save work,
time, and refrigerator space. You then would still have the option of
serving the beef either in your vegetable pottage, period-style or
otherwise, or on the side with a suitable sauce. I myself have never
known anyone at an SCA event to say, "Oh, it's just a big hunk of boiled
beef. Ho hum..."  

I seem to recall AM Rousseau having recently done a spiced beef for,
what, was it a Yule revel in Madrone? If you're out there, AM, how did
you serve this? 
 
> Bonne  who has not been "bonne" lately at all.

Yes, but Sick-as-a-dog braw lass just doesn't cut it as a descriptive
term, no matter how accurate it may  be...;  )

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

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