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

[Rob Downie]

Here's my redaction for the recipe from _To the King's Taste_ I didn't follow
their recipe because it was completely different than the original they
supposedly based it on .  Boiling the meatballs first probably is more of a
"humoral" decision, but it does help set the perfectly round shape before
roasting.  Placing them on a spit also allows for perfect coverage with the
endoring paste

Pommes Dorryle  (Morte Arthure 1400)

_To the King’s Taste_ Translation:
To make golden apples and other things:  Take the flesh of raw pork and grind it
small.  Mix it up with strong powder, saffron, salt and currants.  Roll it into
balls and wet it well in egg white and cook it in boiling water.  Take them out
and put them on a spit.  Roast them well.  Take ground parsely and press it
together with eggs and plenty of flour and let the paste floe from above the
spit.  And if you wish, take saffron instead of parsely and serve it forth.

My Version:
1 lb ground pork
1 tsp poudre fort (my mix, I tasted till I got it the way I liked it)
¼ tsp salt
2 egg whites (reserve yolks for endoring)
½ cup raisins

Poudre Fort (strong powder)
½  tsp ginger
1 tsp galingale
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
½ tsp pepper
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp mace

Roll the mixture into approx 20 1 ½ “ balls  coating with the egg white ( I
mixed the egg white directly with the meat and coated my hands with a thin layer
of oil for rolling).
Boil the meatballs, then set aside to dry and cool.  Roast the meatballs (I
omitted this step for time)
Place 5 meatballs on a metal barbeque skewer, not touching, and lay the skewers
across a 9x12 metal baking pan (simulating roasting spit).  Apply the endoring
paste.  Bake for 10  or 15 minutes, to set the endoring paste, turning once or
twice in the first 3 minutes to prevent drips.

Endoring Paste
beat the reserved egg yolks with an equal amount of water and add enough flour
to make a thick paste
but thin enough to brush onto the meatballs. The paste may be tinted green if
desired.  I didn't have time to mess with coloring, so I used a tiny amount of
green food coloring to avoid a very artificial look (making one side greener and
the other golden also adds to the illusion odf a more real looking apple).I also
found that the egg yolks alone gave me a fairly strong yellow color.
Yield: approx 20 “apples”

The effect can be enhanced by suspending them from  a miniature tree decorated
with parsely leaves.  A small disk of cardboard with two small holes is placed
under the apple for support and a piece of wire or string is threaded  through
the disk and the apple, then attatched to the branch.  I presented this as a
sotlety for the Cooks Brewers and Vintner's showcase at WW this year and people
seemed to like the presentation on the "tree".

Faerisa


Jim and Andi wrote:
<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 think that's all for now... I can post the entire menu if anyone's
> interested. I would greatly appreciate any and all comments or suggestions!!
>
> Thank you,
> Madhavi
>
>