[Sca-cooks] Cooking with blood?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach nickiandme at att.net:
>This question was posted on the A&S list - I am reposting to the 
>Calontir Cook's list and the SCA-cook's list for help for her.  I 
>personally haven't done much cooking with blood - I have a strong 
>modern cultural bias against it. Who knew?
>Anyway - searching for help on this one.
>Kateryn de Develyn
>nickiandme at att.net
>
>I am curious as to how to cook with blood. I am researching a Greek 
>dish called melas zomos, black broth also known as blood soup. All I 
>have been able to uncover is the ingredients, pork cooked in it's 
>own blood and seasoned with salt and vinegar. What precautions do I 
>need to take, in what proportions to I mix the ingredients, and is 
>there any ingredients that seem to be missing? Any leads into this 
>mystery will be helpful.
>
>Nakos
>  "kaythiarain" <kaythiarain at yahoo.com>

You might check here: http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Blood-Soup-art.html

The link is to an article in Stefan's Florilegium on the making of a 
Polish [I think] blood soup. It seems more complicated than the 
description of the Greek dish mentioned above, but it needs to be 
borne in mind that this isn't merely Greek food, it's Spartan food. 
"With a name like Fluckers, you know it's got to be really great 
blood soup!"

Also, while the ingredients in the Spartan version appear to be a lot 
simpler, the rules for cooking with blood are more or less universal: 
mixing with some vinegar appears to be extremely common in many blood 
usages (to discourage clotting), and you don't want it to boil hard, 
or it'll curdle into a mess I can only describe as nicely seasoned 
scabs and plasma.

It seems to me what you'd do is cut up and simmer your meat in water 
or possibly wine, until you have a rich broth with meat in it, then 
add your blood-and-vinegar-mixture (seems like a proportion, 
generally, of four parts blood to one part vinegar or thereabouts) 
off the heat, place back on the heat and stir until the mixture 
thickens slightly, but doesn't boil. Basically like thickening with 
egg yolks. Id sneak in a little chopped marjoram and some pepper, 
along with my salt, but then I'm not a Spartan.

HTH,

Adamantius, who likes a good blood sausage but finds soups like this 
a little too rich...


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