[Sca-cooks] College Group foods
Terry Decker
t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net
Sat Dec 15 05:50:13 PST 2007
While they are fun, bread bowls aren't period, save yourself the cost by
using plain bowls.
Here are a few recipes I've used successfully. They've appeared here before
and you can probably find them in the Florilegium.
You might also look up and consider the recipe for a Brodo of Chickpeas in
the Florilegium. A little odd, but tasty.
Bear
Sweet Spinach Tart
A Spinnage Tart. Take a good store of Spinage, and boyl it in
a Pipkin, with White Wine, till it be soft as pap; then take it
and strain it well into a pewter dish, not leaving any part
unstrained; then put to it Rose-water, great store of Sugar and
cinamon, and boyle it till it be thick as Marmalade. Then let it
coole, and after fill your Coffin and adorn it...
Gervase Markham
The English Hous-wife, 1615
1 pound spinach (fresh or frozen) cleaned and chopped
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar (or more)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Boil spinach in wine and 1/2 cup water until very soft.
Press through a colander or run through a food processor to
mince large pieces of spinach.
Combine sugar and 1/2 cup water in a pan and bring to a boil.
Stir in spinach and cinnamon.
Reduce heat to medium and cook until almost dry.
Put spinach into pie shell. Cool.
After cooling the tart can be adorned with fruit, powdered
sugar, crystal sugar, etc. One tester suggested sliced
hardboiled eggs.
Notes: One third cup of sugar sweetens the spinach without
being cloying. A cup of sugar would make a thicker syrup and
make the spinach closer to the marmalade of the original recipe.
One teaspoon of fresh cinnamon provides a nice bite without
being overpowering.
Fresh spinach may require additional water or wine in the first
boil. I used frozen spinach for availability and speed. I used
Malavasia wine, which is fairly strong, and cut it with water for
expedience. The spinach absorbed much of the liquid.
Sweet Potatoes
To butter Potato roots. Take the roots & bole them in water
till they bee verie soft, then peele them and slice them, then
put some rosewater to them & sugar & the pill of an orenge, &
some of the iuice of the orenge, so let them boile a good
while, then put some butter to them, & when the butter is
melted serve them. This way you may bake them, but put
them unboiled into the paste.
Elynor Fettiplace
The Receipt Book of Ladie Elynor Fettiplace, 1647
Note: Elynor Fettiplace was an Elizabethan lady who began
compiling her recipes in 1604 after many years in the kitchen.
The book was passed to her niece in 1647.
2 lbs sweet potatoes
1/2 cup water
juice of 1 orange (4-5 Tablespoons)
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon ground orange peel
1/2 cup butter
In a pan, cover the sweet potatoes with water and boil
them until very soft, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Remove the sweet potatoes from the pan. Cool slightly.
Peel and slice.
Mix the water, orange juice, sugar and orange peel in a pan
and heat stirring.
After the sugar dissolves, add the sweet potato to the
syrup, seperating the slices.
Stir the mixture gently to prevent burning, turning the
sweet potato to coat the slices with the syrup. Add water
if necessary.
When the syrup has cooked down, remove the pan from
the heat and add the butter. Stir gently until the butter is
melted and blended into the sweet potatoes.
Put the sweet potatoes into a serving dish and present to
the table.
Note: Two pounds of sweet potato will fill an 8" or 9" pie
pan.
Roast Beef
The best bastings for meats. Then to know the best
bastings for meat, which is sweet butter, sweet oil,
barrelled butter, or fine rendered up seam, with cinnamon,
cloves and mace. There be some that will baste only with
water, and salt, and with nothing else; yet it is but opinion,
and that must be the world's master always.
To know when meat is enough. Lastly to know when meat
is roasted enough; for as too much rareness is
unwholesome, so too much dryness is not nourishing.
Therefore to know when it is the perfect height, and is
neither too moist nor too dry, you shall observe these
signs first in your large joints of meat; when the steam or
smoke of the meat ascendeth, either upright or else goeth
from the fire, when it beginneth a little to shrink from the
spit, or when the gravy which drppeth from it is clear
without bloodiness, then is the meat enough . . .
Gervase Markham
The English Hous-wife, 1615
Take a beef roast.
Baste with melted butter. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and
crushed rosemary.
Place in a roasting pan fat-side up. Roast 30-35 minutes
per pound at 325 degree F. Baste every half hour with
melted butter.
Roasted Onion Salad
Of onion salad. Take onions; cook them in the embers, then peel them and cut
them across into longish, thin
slices; add a little vinegar, salt, oil, and spices, and serve.
Libro della cucina del secolo XIV
2 lbs of sweet onions
olive oil
wine vinegar
salt
pepper
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1/8 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
For ease of preparation and clean up, wrap the onions individually in
aluminum foil.
Roast the onions for about 1 hour in coals or a 500 degree F oven. Remove
and cool.
The onion skins should be blackened and carmelized
Trim the top from the onion and pull the outer layer to the root end to
provide a hand grip.
Cut the onion longitudinally from near the root to the top.
Sever the onion strips near the root end and place in a bowl.
Sprinkle with salt, pepper and spices.
Add a small amount of oil and vinegar to taste.
Toss and serve. Serves eight.
For large scale serving, make a vinegarette to taste of the oil, vinegar,
salt, pepper and spices.
Zanzarelli
To make zanzarelli. To make ten platefuls, take eight eggs, half a libra of
grated cheese, and breadcrumbs, and mix these things together. Then take a
pot of meat broth colored yellow with saffron and put it on the fire; and
when it begins to boil put in this mixture and stir with a spoon. And when
it seems to have thickened, then remove the pot from the fire and serve up,
then sprinkle with spices.
Martino, Maestro, Libro de arte coquinaria
20 ounces of broth or stock
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon of grated or shredded romano or parmesan cheese
1 Tablespoon fine breadcrumbs
1/4 teaspoon each of black pepper, cinnamon and ginger, blended
2 threads of saffron (if desired)
Whisk the eggs in a bowl
Add the cheese and the breadcrumbs and whisk until evenly dispersed and the
mixture thickens.
Put the broth in a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Add the saffron, remove from the heat and let stand for a few minutes to
permit the saffron to color the broth.
Return the broth to the heat and bring to a second boil.
Add the egg mixture and whisk until the ingredients are blended into the
broth. Remove from heat.
Add the spice blend 1/4 teaspoon at a time, whisking them into the broth,
until the desired taste is reached.
Makes 3 cups of soup.
Limonia
Limonia. To make limonia, fry chickens with fat and onions. And crush some
skinned almonds moistened with meat broth, and strain. Cook with the
chickens and spices. If you have no almonds, thicken the broth with egg
yolks. When the time to serve nears, add the juice of lemons, limes or
bitter oranges.
Liber de coquina
1 chicken cut into pieces or pieces of chicken for all at the table
1 cup almonds or two egg yolks
2 cups chicken broth
2 small onions sliced thin
3 Tablespoons olive oil or 2 ounces of salt pork
salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon of cloves
1/4 teaspoon of ginger
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
juice of 1 lemon
Crush the almonds to a mealy consistence, adding hot broth to form a thick
liquid.
Strain the almond liquor through a fine cloth (muslin kitchen towel, three
or four layers of fine cheesecloth, etc.
Squeeze out as much of the almond milk as possible.
To thicken with egg yolks, ignore the process for almond milk and whisk the
yolks into the cold broth before heating.
Heat a skillet and render the salt pork or use olive oil.
Remove the rendered fat.
Brown the onions and the chicken together.
Salt to taste and sprinkle with spices.
Add the almond milk and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30
to 40 minutes.
Add the lemon juice.
Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and serve.
Serves four to eight.
Kidney beans
Cook the kidney beans in pure water or good broth, when they are cooked, get
finely sliced onions and fry them in a pan with good oil and put these fried
onions on top along with pepper, cinnamon and saffron; then let this sit a
while on the hot coals; dish it up with good spices on top.
Cuoco Napoletano
10 oz dried blackeyed peas
olive oil
1 small onion thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 or 3 threads of saffron (if desired)
Wash the blackeyed peas thorougly and let soak for several hours or
overnight.
Drain.
Place the beans in a pot and cover with water. Add the salt.
Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours or until tender.
Add the pepper, cinnamon and saffron.
In a skillet brown the onion.
Garnish the top of the blackeyed peas with the onion. Let simmer for 10 to
15 minutes longer.
Spice to taste and serve.
Serves eight.
In the context of a 15th Century Italian recipe, the legume in question is
the black-eyed pea rather than a modern kidney bean.
Baked Cheese Bread
Get bread, remove the crust, slice it thin and toast it on the fire to color
it, then coat the slices with fresh butter and put sugar and cinnamon on
top, then get slices of creamy cheese and put them on the toast with sugar
and cinnamon on top; then put the slices into a torte pan and put this on
the coals with the lid on and coals on top; when the cheese has melted,
serve it quickly.
8 slices of white sandwich bread
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
Whipped butter or margarine
Slices of cheese to cover the bread
Mix cinnamon and sugar in a clean salt or pepper shaker.
Toast the slices of bread and trim the crust.
Butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon mixture.
Place the slices of bread on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan.
Top the buttered bread with the slices of cheese.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture.
Place the pan in a 300 degree F oven until the cheese begins to melt.
Remove and serve.
Serves eight.
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