longish-Re: [Sca-cooks] pasta with meat

[Catherine Hartley]

The original recipe facsimile can be found in "The Medieval Kitchen..." by
Odile  Redon et al, as "Ravioli in tempo di carne" from Maestro Martino's
Libro de arte Coquinaria.

The trasnlation from the book reads,  "Ravioli for meat days: To make ten
platefuls: take half libra of aged cheese and a little of another fat cheese
and a libra of fat hog's tripe or calf's head, and cook in water until very
tender. Then chop it well and take nice herbs, thoroughly chopped and some
pepper, cloves, and ginger; and if you add the chopped breast of a capon, so
much the better. And mix all these things together. Then make the dough very
thin and enclose the mixture in the dough as it should be. And these ravioli
should be no larger than half a chestnut; and cook them ina broth of capon
or good meat, colored yellow by saffron when it boils. And let them boil for
the time {it takes to say} two paternosters. Then serve and put on top
grated cheese and sweet spices mixed together. You can make similar ravioli
with breast of pheasant, partridge, and other birds."

I made this as a test with capon breast with the recipe below. For feast,  I
used wonton wrappings for the "dough" and used bacon for the tripe and
chicken breasts for the meat. I also used chicken stock form soup base but
did not add the saffron. If any wants the recipe used for feast, I will post
separately.

Redaction:

Ingredients: As I did not know what a "libra" was, I based my cheese
proportions on the redaction in the book..

1.5 gallons chicken stock (previously made and frozen)
1 lb capon breasts, cooked (previously roasted -recipe doesn't say cooked or
not, but by context I thought it would have been)
12 oz paremesan (aged cheese) cheese
4 oz of mozzarella  (fatty cheese)
6 oz hog's tripe with small amount (2 oz)of salt pork since the tripe wasn't
fatty  (rinsed)
Herbs (chosen for availability and freshness): 1 tbsp each of  fresh,
chopped Basil, Sage, and Parsley
16 sprigs thyme de-stemmed and chopped
5 peppercorns ground
2 ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground, dried (as it was listed with the hot spices, I did not use
fresh) ginger
salt to taste

Made a pasta dough of  1 cup flour to 1 egg to water enough to moisten based
on other recipes. Heated stock.  Prepared mixture of cheese and tripe by
placing into into stock until soft/cooked. Removed and chopped with capon.
Added spices and mixed well. Placed small spoonsful onto squares of pasta
rolled thinly. ( I used a ravioli cutter to seal and cut).

Added saffron to stock. Brought to rolling boil and added raviolis. Cooked
until floating. Remived and plated with garnish of  mix of  cinnamon,
nutmeg, mace and sugar as well as equal amount parm cheese.

This was raved over by test audience (who did not even notice tripe). Feast
audience loved this as well- none came back!.(even though garnish got
forgotten when actually plating raviolis)

-- Caitlin of Enniskillen