[Sca-cooks] Seasonal Produce

[Sharon Gordon]

I found fresh Dates and fresh white currants. I thought both of these things
were very interesting and was wondering if anyone had period recipies that
called for either or both.

***Currants
First, I should probably say I am assuming these are the gooseberry cousin
and not the grape kind of currants that is often turned into tiny raisins.
1) Eat fresh.
2) Make jam.
3)There is supposed to be a recipe for white currants in
Good Huswive’s Treasure (1588) and for red currants as well.
4) A modern british recipe for a summer pudding
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/recipes_to_have/message/3620?source=1S
5) Halloween Illusion food
http://www.shavkin.com/newshallo1.html
6) And you could use recipes for black or red currants as long as you took
the color into account
7) Modern recipes for sauce, cake, chicken
http://www.thecookietin.com/produce/currant.asp
8) If you use the SEARCH function at the top of
http://www.florilegium.org
you can turn up more references to currants in recipes

***Dates
1) If you do the search in the Florilegium for "fresh dates" you can come up
with lots of wonderful things as well.
2) You can dry them for a few days to  two weeks or so and then use the
dried date recipes which will taste much better with the still creamy, yet
sweeter, freshly dried date.
3) Split them, remove seed, and stuff with a cream cheese like cheese.


Sharon
gordonse at one.net