[Sca-cooks] Looking for Crab recipes

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/11/2004 1:27:23 PM Eastern Standard Time, vhsjvs at gis.net 
writes:

<<what is meant by"  Blanch almonds and grind him, and draw him up with
> water. ???>>

Basic medieval recipe directions for making that staple of the fish day and 
Lent diet, almond milk.  (The church decreed various "fish days" and Lent, in 
which meat foods could not be eaten - and that doesn't mean just meat, but meat 
broths or meat-based sauces, butter, eggs, cream, milk, etc in some cases.  
The liquid chosen to substitute most frequently for milk, broths, etc, was 
almond milk.  Some recipes specify drawing it up with broth, for use on a meat 
day, or with wine.)

Blanching almonds is a way of removing the papery brown skin on them, 
involving dunking them quickly in boiling water and then rubbing the papery stuff off 
with a towel.  I usually just buy them already blanched :-).

Grinding them means grinding them to a fairly fine meal; I usually use a 
small electric chopper for this purpose.  They'd have used a mortar and pestle in 
the Middle Ages. 

 Drawing them up with water basically means steeping them in water - the 
process draws the oils out of the almond, and once you strain out the ground 
almonds, you are left with a sort of creamy white liquid, about the consistency of 
milk (which can actually be cooked down to make thicker substances like 
cream).  When I need to make a lot, I dump the almonds and the water in a food 
processor, grind up the almonds, dump the lot into cheesecloth over a bowl, squeeze 
the liquid out, and dump the almonds back in the food processor with more 
water and whirl them around some more, until the liquid coming out starts getting 
kind of thin, then discard the used up almonds and start over with more.

In this particular recipe, you cook the rice in this milk, just as you would 
in water, with some sugar and salt added, and top it with sauteed almonds 
and/or more sugar.

Brangwayna