[Sca-cooks] fried cheese and armored turnips

[Stefan li Rous]

Grise replied to me with:
> Perhaps  one big difference between period melting and non-melting
> cheeses  might be the length of aging? Parmesan type cheeses come to
> mind for a  frying cheese, but I'm not sure you would get a soft
> center and a  non-melting outside if fried.
> <
>
> Actually, if you bake grated parmesan on a silicone sheet or the  
> like, you
> get parmesan crisps - they do this on Food Network, that's how I  
> know.   Kind
> of like a cracker.  Dunno about frying...

Oh yes, I remember seeing that. They were making cups of the cheese  
to hold other food items for appetizers and such. You bake the  
parmesan cheese and while it is still soft you put it over a muffin  
pan hole and form it into a cup. When it cools you lift it out and  
fill it with some kind of savory filling.

I think this partially answers my comment about using parmesan cheese  
as a melting or frying cheese. The center wouldn't melt enough, so it  
would be quite different from the effect of the "frying cheeses".

Last night I fried up several slices of the fried cheese I talked  
about yesterday.

1) The directions call for slicing the cheese in 1/4 to 1/2 inch  
slices. Do so. It's much better that way. I ended up cutting my first  
couple of slices about 1/8 inch in thickness and they proceeded to  
melt in the pan. The thicker slices give a chance for the outside to  
crisp and the inside to soften before it starts to want to ooze all  
over the pan.

2) You want to use a large enough skillet that all the cheese slices  
can comfortably fit across the bottom. My skillet was a bit too small  
for the four slices I was frying, so they were slanted up the walls  
of the omelette pan and crowded together in the skillet. I had to  
work to keep the four slices separate and not have them form into one  
large blob.

3) These cheese is rather filling.

> On a related note...  could someone email me the recipe for   
> armored turnips?

In case you missed my posting this last night, check this file in the  
FOOD-VEGETABLES section of the Florilegium. There is a lot of good  
commentary and suggestions in there, as well as the original recipe.  
The commentary especially has some good comments on reducing the  
bitterness of the turnips using various methods as well as buying  
young, small turnips rather than larger, older ones.
turnips-msg       (62K)  1/17/05    Turnips in period. Recipes.

>  I'm curious, now, to try some other recipes on my  family.  See, I  
> made
> spinach pie and expected my family (esp my son)  to hate it, and  
> instead I got
> asked to do it again...
>
> BTW, credit where credit is due - thank you, Lord Stefan, for the  
> spinach
> pie recipe, which I got off the Florilegium.

Thank you. Write my Crown. :-) I'm glad you liked it. However, the  
recipe(s) and most of the commentary is from others. I just try to  
make the best of it easily available.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****