[Sca-cooks] "Mushroom" recipe from Eberhard

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 9, 2010, at 6:33 AM, Volker Bach wrote:

> It puzzled me, too, so I translated to the best of my ability and prayed. Never tried it. I think it is supposed to be 'knots'. The idea seems to be to tie large knots (maybe something like Turk's heads?) into a rope and dip them into batter to produce fake mushroom heads that are then filled and deep-fried the way real ones are in season. Even up here in dreary North Germany where most years rain is the Christmas staple, real mushrooms are vanishingly rare in December, so it makes sense as an illusion food. 
> 
> Deep-frying is par for the course in fifteenth-century German cuisine. If it fits into the frier, it goes in, pretty much.

There's a faux stuffed morel/carrot [due to questionable translation] made of chicken in Ein Buoch Von Guter Spise, isn't there? Looks like a precedent to me...

I'm seeing this as something like a small cream puff. You have a double-knobbed form, shaped basically like an 8 on its side, which you batter and fry. The form could be a rope; I think I'd use a cloth, as the recipe doesn't seem to specify (a cloth might be softer than rope, and therefore a bit more flexible, compressible, and therefore easier to remove from the cooked batter?). Cut it in half at the connection point and slip it off the form, giving two cups, which you stuff, then batter again, and fry again. I'm not sure I'm buying into that additional baking. It seems to me that they may be speaking of something else; see all those krapfen recipes which are basically deep-fried and then "baked", but may be just moved to a different part of the fire to cook more slowly...

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls, when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter