SC - Chicken in Milk & Honey CURRY

[Seton1355@aol.com]

At 9:28 AM -0800 3/7/00, Ron and Laurene Wells wrote:
>  >>Take good cowmilk and do it in a pot. Take psel., sage, Hissop,
>  >>savory, and other good herbs. Hew them and do them in the milk and
>  >>seethe them. Take capons half y-roasted and smite them on pieces and
>  >>do thereto pine and honey clarified. Salt it and color it with saffron
>  >>and serve it forth.
>  >
>
>I kinda-sorta redacted this recipe last night.  I didn't look at it close
>enough when I first started out though, because it turned out that I did
>NOT have more than half the spices it called for.

...

>2 lbs. (more or less) boneless chicken breast, cut into 1" pieces
>olive oil
>1 t. rubbed Sage
>1/2 t. Cardamom
>1/2 t. thyme
>1 t. fenugreek
>petals of 1 Calendula flower
>7 juniper berries
>1 qt. of milk (more or less)
>1/2 c. honey
>1 t. salt
>
>Fry the Chicken pieces in olive oil until mostly cooked.  Add enough milk
>to completely cover the chicken (a little more would have been better so
>there is enough sauce for the rice).  Add sage, cardamom, thyme and
>fenugreek.  Bring to a boil, and let it cook until the herbs blend with the
>milk.  About 15 minutes.  Add the calendula petals (a distant substitute
>for saffron, marigolds are a closer substitute. I did not have the real
>thing.) salt, honey and juniper berries.  Cook an additional 10 minutes or
>so, until you feel the juniper berries have offered their seasoning, and
>the petals have colored the dish.   Serve over rice.
>
>This turned out to be a VERY MILD curry, sweet and flavorful without the
>heat. I liked it.  Everyone like it.  But it still wasn't anything near
>what we had at the SCA Revel last month.  I will keep trying.

Quite aside from missing herbs, what you have done is not all that 
close to what the recipe says to do, so it wouldn't be surprising if 
it came out rather different from the origina.l .

1. The recipe says to start with half roasted capons; you fried them 
in olive oil instead.

2. The original first boils the herb in the milk, then (apparently) 
adds the pieces of chicken, pine nuts (my guess for "pine"), and 
honey. I presume it then cooks the chicken some more, since it says 
it has been only half cooked, but the recipe isn't clear on that.

You cover the fried chicken with milk, and only then add the herbs.

3. No fenugreek in the original.

4. No juniper berries in the original. Was that your guess for pine?

Leaving out things you don't have is fine, but adding strongly 
flavored spices to a recipe that doesn't have any--just herbs--is 
going to change it significantly.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/