[Sca-cooks] Hello! and questions...

[maredudd at caerthe.org]

Quoting Jim and Andi <icbhod at comcast.net>:

<snip>
>
> To The Queen's Taste, To Make Green and Golden Apples- I expected this
> recipe to make pretty round meatballs that I could endore and they would
> make a pretty conceit. I was even planning on getting little apple stems
> with leaves from a friend's apple trees and painting them gold to further
> the effect! But instead the pretty round meatballs I expected were ugly
> cracked misshapen things. And to get the endoring paste yellow enough and
> thick enough to stick sufficiently resulted in an overpowering saffron smell
> that everyone who ate it (I had 6 testers!) found unpleasant, but everyone
> liked the un-endored ones. Has anyone here made endored meatballs
> successfully? Should I try simmering the meatballs instead to prevent
> cracking? Would I be considered a bad apprentice for using yellow food
> coloring in the endoring paste to boost the yellow color with having to use
> so much saffron? Should the meatballs be wrapped in pastry first and then
> endored? Argh, that'd be a lot of work...

I've done endored meatballs (pommes'd'or) a couple of times. I entered them in
a competition - if you're interested, the writeup is on the Stewpot page at
http://home.earthlink.net/~smcclune/stewpot/recipe_pommesd1.html

In brief, I put the meatballs on metal skewers about one inch a part. Suspend
the skewered meatballs over a constant but slow heat source- I used a Rival
tabletop electric grill. Using a feather pastry brush, I painted on a thin
layer of batter all around each meatball. After each layer, cook them until the
endoring is dry, but do not brown. I expect that they'd crack if the heat got
too high.

There was a lot of saffron flavor, but I don't think anyone found it
objectionable. It wasn't that strong. You might make the endoring batter a day
ahead of time to give the saffron time to steep and distribute color.

Eirene (aka Maredudd)