SC - Passage East III - Part 1

[KallipygosRed@aol.com]

This is where I took a period dish and made it peri-oid.  The stew
itself is period and rice was served in period.  But, I can't say that
they served a stew over rice in period {at least, I haven't seen any
recipes for such}.  However, I chose to take this liberty for several
reasons.  First, we were importing all our serving dishes onto the site
and trying to avoid having to wash dishes between courses, so it was
more expedient to co-mingle the 2.  Second, while my redaction worked
fine when I worked it out for a table of 8, I was concerned that when
scaling it up x17 I would wind up with too much broth and it would be
more like lamb soup than stew.  This, in fact, did happen, and the rice
helped bulk it up.  Even though I drastically scaled back on the broth
proportionally, the stew never got as thick as the trial batch, but with
the rice added to it, you got food in every spoonful.  Third, while I
wanted the rice as an additional starch, people around here see enough
plain white rice in a bowl at events that it would mostly have gone
uneaten.  This way they got something familiar in a less familiar form
which was still edible {just like I used fresh locally baked wheat
breads rather than the $1.79 for 2 loaves of quasi-French bread from
Sam's that tends to make its way onto tables around here}.  I had
additional rice available for vegetarians who obviously didn't want
theirs with meat juice all over it.

V.	CARNERO CUM BRODETTO ET RISO
	{Mutton with Thick Broth and Rice}

CN 46

Get kid or mutton and cut it into small pieces, and put it in a pot with
salt pork, then get sage, mint, and onion, and cook everything together;
then get good spices and saffron, distemper them with the meat's broth
and let everything boil together until the meat falls apart; then lift
the meat out into a dish with the thick broth.

Per Table			17 Tables

2 lbs lamb			34 lbs lamb
1 tbs oil for frying		1 cup oil {Too Much, See Below}
1 cup vegetable broth		approx 24 cups {Too Much, See Above}
1/2 onion, sliced		8 onions
1/2 tsp sage			1/2 cup sage
1/2 tsp mint			1/2 cup mint
1/4 tsp salt			2 tbs salt {Scaled Down Amount}
1/2 tsp rosemary		1/2 cup rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme			1/2 cup thyme
pinch pepper			2 tbs pepper

Cube lamb, rub with mint, sage and salt.  Fry lamb in oil, add onion and
fry until translucent.  Start broth boiling, adding the rosemary, thyme,
and pepper.  Add meat and onions to broth, simmer to thicken as much as
possible.  

COMMENTS:  Mutton not being a common commodity in South Carolina, I used
lamb.  I omitted the salt pork and added salt to the sage/mint mixture
instead; the method we used to prepare the dish didn't lend itself to
using the salt pork.  We had more success with the grill for the lamb
than we did with the chickens.  We had boneless hunks of lamb, about 4
lbs each.  We cut them into approx. 1 inch thick steaks, rubbed them
with the sage, mint and salt, and put them back into the walk-in for
several hours.  We then put them on the grill while we started frying
the onions and got the broth boiling.  We didn't need nearly the amount
of oil allocated, since we were only frying the onions; about 1/3 cup
was sufficient.  We seared the meat on both sides, then pulled it off
and cubed it before throwing it in the pot.  If my memory is correct, we
simmered it for around 45 minutes.

We cooked 10 lbs of rice, which would have been too much, but I let a
pan slightly scorch, so we would up with about 8 lbs usuable.  We
dolloped the rice into serving bowls, then ladled the stew on top.  The
only negative comments I received were from a couple of people who liked
the stew but didn't like having to pick out the pieces of rosemary in it
{and I had someone else tell me how much he enjoyed having the rosemary
to gnaw on}.  I guess I could have stapled the rosemary in a tea bag or
something and pulled it out before serving, but the taste/texture has
never bothered me.

John