[Sca-cooks] Food from the red and white ball

[Robyn.Hodgkin at affa.gov.au]

>Oh Kiriel!  Thank you for posting pictures!!  You all know how
>much I love
>them.  And they explain so much and open up so many more
>questions.  Like,
>what were the red bits with the jumbals?  More jumbals?  What
>flaky crust
>did you use for the apple puffs (and the whole recipe, they
>looked great!)?
>Was that molded cheese or butter on the chessboard?  It was
>all very cute.
>Nice display.
>Olwen

My pleasure; I love seeing other people's work, and thought it only fair to return the favour!

The red bits on the platters with the jumbals and date&prune shapes were sugared almonds; I was lucky to find a supplier that did bright red, rather than the usual pastel colours.

I used classic puff pastry for the apple puffs. I used commercial pastry rather than making puff myself.  The apple puffs were from Delightes for Ladies (1609) which has the recipe for puffe-paste,(1) the contents were from Good Housewive's Jewell(2) with the amendment of chopping the fruit up and cooking in a pan a la Sabrina Welserin(3). So basically they were apples chopped up and cooked with butter, cinnamon, ginger and sugar. I took the puffe-paste recipe literally and simply put a teaspoon or so of apple between two pieces of puff pastry, closed them up, stamped the top and baked.

The chessboard was made out of gingerbread, from Delightes for Ladies (4) but I did a second batch (which Drake kindly stirred and stirred and stirred) using white wine instead of claret, which meant I had two colours of gingerbread to play with.  The chess pieces themselves were cut out of sheets of puff pastry and baked.

Kiriel

(1)Delightes for Ladies (1609):
"You may convey any preetty forced dish, as Florentin, Cherry-tart, Rise, or Pippins, &c, between two sheets of that paste. "

(2) Good Housewive's Jewell (1596)
"To bake Quinces, Peares and Wardens.
Take and pare and coare them, then make your paste with faire water and butter, and the yolke of an egge, then set your Oringes into the paste, and then bake it well, fill your paste almost full with Sinamon, Ginger and Suger. Also Apples must be taken after the same sorte, saving that whereas the core should be cut out they must be filled with Butter every one, the hardest Apples are best, and likewise are Peares and Wardens, and none of them all but the wardens may be perboyled, and the Oven must be of a temperate heat, two houres to stand is enough. "

(3)Sabrina Welserin (1553)
"An Apple tart
Peel the apples and take the cores cleanly out and chop them small, put two or three egg yolks with them and let butter melt in a pan and pour it on the apples and put cinnamon, sugar and ginger thereon and let it bake. Roast them first in butter before you chop them."

(4)(Delightes for Ladies 1609)
"To make Ginger-bread
Take three stale Manchets, and grate them: dry them, and sift them thorow a fine sieve: then adde unto them one ounce of Ginger being beaten, and as much Cinamon, one ounce of Liquorice and Anniseeds beeing beaten together, and searced, halfe a pound of sugar; then boil all these together in a posnet, with a quart of claret wine, till they come to a stiff paste with often stirring of it; and when it is stiffe, mould it on a table, and so drive it thin, and put it in your moulds: dust your moulds with Cinamon, Ginger, and Liquorice, being mixed together in fine powder. This is your Ginger-bread used at the Court, and in all Gentlemens houses at festival times. It is otherwise called dry Leach."
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>>I thought I should post up my photos of the food from the Red
>and White
>>Ball that I catered on the weekend.
>>
>>http://www.clubphoto.com/reward.php?id=964254&mid=members12_ki
>riel629968&pwd=
>>
>