Introducing kids to medieval flavors

I've been at two different schools this spring giving presentations about medieval food to local kids. The kids I've talked to find it a bit strange that children in medieval England were likely to drink ale at breakfast and that even in the wealthiest households there were not always enough cups and plates to go around and people shared them at table. They have shown much curiosity in whether some of their favorite foods also showed up on medieval tables, whether they were told correctly that wealthy feasters enjoyed such odd dishes as roast peacock dressed in its feathers and cockentrice, and whether the table knife I bring to medieval-style feasts (that piece of tableware was usually provided by the diners, not by their hosts) is a weapon. For the record, my table knife has only been used on food, the peacock and cockentrice stories are for real (I've seen the original recipes) and pizza and potatoes were unknown to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. 

At the first school demo, I had the opportunity to bring a dish for the students to taste. They impressed me by being more adventurous eaters than I expected. A few even asked for second helpings, which I was happy to provide. I was telling my favorite friendly city bus driver about the school demo and he asked for the recipe, since he hasn't eaten any medieval food either. I hope he likes it as well as the schoolchildren. 

This dish travels well if it is in a sturdy pie plate and it is tasty when cold or warm. Enjoy the mix of sweet and savory flavors, a typical medieval English combination.

Tart in Ember Day

A tart for religious holidays in medieval England when eating meat was forbidden

Pie crust:

Measure all the ingredients by weight with a scale.

8 ounces all-purpose flour

4 ounces whole-wheat flour

8 ounces cold butter

4 ounces ice-cold water

1/8 ounce salt

Mix the flour and salt. Cut the butter into 1/8-inch cubes. Rub into the flour until flour-butter pieces are the size of small peas. Mix in the water and push mixture together with your hands to make a ball of dough in your bowl. You may need to mix in a tablespoon or two more of the water to get a dough to form. Divide your dough ball into two pieces, wrap and refrigerate at least one hour before rolling out for your pie plate.

Tart filling:

4 Tbsp butter

pinch of saffron threads

Melt the butter, cool a little and stir in the saffron. Let this mixture sit while you prepare the rest of the tart filling.

2 medium-sized onions

dash of salt

Boil a couple cups of water in a small pan with the salt. Peel the onions, cut off ends and chop each onion finely. Parboil the onions until tender, drain in a strainer with very small holes. Make the rest of the filling while the onions are drip-drying:

1 ½ pounds cottage cheese

about 1 cup chopped parsley

½ cup zante currants or golden raisins

2 Tbsp sugar

10 eggs

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

½ tsp ginger powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 cloves, ground

½ tsp ground nutmeg

small pinch of ground mace

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs made from fresh bread

Mash the cottage cheese in a large bowl until it is no longer in lumpy curds but is smooth. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Mix the eggs and all the rest of the filling ingredients in with the cottage cheese, including the saffron butter and onions.

Roll out two rounds of pie dough and line two 9-inch pie plates. Pour half the filling into each pie shell. Put the tarts side-by-side on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit about 20 minutes, turn each pie plate (move the outside edges to the center), and bake another 10 to 20 minutes or until center of each tart is just barely set.

Original recipe sources:

“Tart in Ymbre Day” in Ancient Cookery, a collection of 14^th Century English recipes edited by Samuel Pegge

original text: Take and perboile oynouns presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take brede & bray it in a morter, and temper it up with Ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns courauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

“Tart in ymbre day” in Forme of Cury, a 14^th Century English cookbook, edited by C. B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler in their book Curye on Inglish

original text: Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take grene chese & bray it in a morter, & temper it up with ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns corauns, & a litel sugar with powdour douce, & bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

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Two more ways to use a mountain of chili powder

I taught a fermented foods workshop here at our house in July and, in the course of researching recipes and techniques, decided I had to finally try to make kimchi/kimchee (choose your favorite English spelling, it's 김치 in Korean).

The three different batches of white radish kimchi I made before I got one that was edible (sorry about that still-super-salty batch you were subjected to, Mom and Dad) is another story. This story is about the chili powder that goes into kimchi.

There's an Asian grocery here in town that I like to frequent called Shanghai Market. The proprietor always knows which item to recommend. You see a shelf with five different types of soy sauce in several brands from three different countries and don't know which you want? This guy can tell you what the Japanese cooks are using, what the Chinese restaurants prefer and what sweet soy sauce is good for, plus let you know the run-down from least to most expensive. He helps me translate the labels on  pickled vegetables so I know what's in the package and hasn't yet said "I don't have that" to my occasional requests for unusual ingredients.

He can also sell you the right Korean chili powder to make kimchi. The only question you have to be able to answer is, "Would you like five pounds or three pounds?"

Once I took a minute to get over my disbelief that any ground spice would be sold in such massive quantities, I decided on three pounds and immediately started thinking about how to give away at least two pounds. This is the gallon jar I stored it in when I got home. It’s sitting on the table next to a 12-oz glass. 

Of course, I had to start giving it away to everyone I could think of who might be even just a little bit interested in trying some. And for every person who said yes, there was at least 1/3 to ½ cup. And I still have enough to make several batches of kimchi at home. Heck, I’ve made three batches already and still have more than a cup of chili powder left. I figure the original three-pound quantity must be enough to make batches of kimchi for a family of eight to eat every day for an entire year. And have enough powder to make each batch really spicy.

So, clearly this chili powder needs to turn up in some other dishes, too. The first was a savory rice porridge, since I was inspired to try more savory breakfasts after reading Fuschia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice Chinese home-cooking book this summer. 

Breakfast Porridge “Better Luck Next Time”
Serves two, or one VERY hungry person who doesn’t mind the taste

1 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
1 tsp Korean chili powder
2 cups water
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 Tbsp miso paste with dashi included
10 sorrel leaves
2 eggs
toasted sesame oil to taste

Melt butter or vegetable oil in a large pan. Cook Korean chili powder in the oil. Pour in water and rice. As water nears boiling point, stir in miso paste. Drop in sorrel leaves and crack eggs on top. Let eggs poach without stirring them as the rice and sorrel cook. When finished, drizzle with toasted sesame oil.

Sadly, I would not recommend making this one again the same way. I liked the look of the reddish stew with cooked rice and the poached egg on top, but sorrel was the wrong choice of vegetable for the dish. Too sour. I was going for a salty-fishy flavor with the miso that has dashi in it, but this was an odd combination with lemony sorrel. Sorrel is also not good with toasted sesame oil, so clearly a different green is important for the next try.

The next soup was a light dinner inspired by a pork and tofu soup recipe in my Korean cookbook. It uses some of the same ideas from the breakfast recipe, but meshes them with this much better soup recipe’s ingredients and some Malabar spinach from our weekly vegetable box. This attempt turned out to be good enough that Andrew and I each wanted seconds and he asked me to make it again whenever we get the same greens in the CSA box. 

Malabar spinach is not actually spinach, but a different equatorial plant that has a spinach-like flavor. Its texture is a bit slippery like okra when cooked in soup. 

Here are some of the soup ingredients lined up on the cutting board, waiting their turn to go into the soup pot:

Asian-style Rice and Vegetable Soup with Malabar Spinach 
Serves 2 to 4

2 Tbsp canola oil with 1 tsp dark sesame oil
½ cup small-diced onion
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 cups Malabar spinach leaves, measured and then chopped
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 cup leftover cooked rice
1 tsp Korean chili powder
8 oz firm tofu, cubed or cut in strips
2 Tbsp miso with dashi included
3 cups water
soy sauce 

Heat oil, cook onion until tender, add garlic and cook a minute or so. Stir in chili powder. Add mushrooms and cook until tender. Add rice, separate the grains with your spoon, pour in water and add tofu. Bring to a boil. Stir in miso paste and Malabar spinach and cook until spinach wilts. Serve with soy sauce on the side so each diner can season to taste.

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Fresh dill: will I ever use it all?

Occasionally, I will purchase fresh dill at the supermarket for a recipe, which always leaves me with a whole bunch of unassigned fresh dill that taunts me from the refrigerator until it goes bad. The same happens, but in smaller quantities, with the bunches of fresh dill from the Henry's Farm CSA box.

I feel a great sense of relief when I discover something else that I like to make with fresh dill. Admittedly, it is not one of my favorite herbs. That's why it lingers in the fridge and taunts me. "Ha, ha ha ha haa, you only have one dish using me that you'd be willing to eat this week!" Relief this week came in two forms: one, a different dish using dill; and two, other people to share the dish so the dill would finally run out.

Here's my breakfast from Wednesday:

A slice of whole-wheat toast, topped with asparagus and scrambled eggs with fresh dill.
Saute the asparagus in olive oil mixed with a little butter, scramble up the eggs with milk and add those to the pan, and then sprinkle on fresh chopped dill, salt and pepper when the eggs start to set. 

Andrew's parents were visiting this week, and after seeing my breakfast, his mom decided she had to get in on this dill-on-eggs idea, so she added it to her over-easy eggs the next day. I threw a little dill in with the fennel greens on our pasta Thursday, and Andrew and I had the rest of the dill on Saturday's breakfast omelet that also included orange bell pepper and a little cheddar cheese.

The main problem with me and dill is that a little dill goes a long way. Its flavor is a bit intense and distinctive, so I really have to want to taste dill wherever it appears. I don't make pickles or use vinegar much anymore, so there goes one potential use of massive quantities of dill. Having this simple little breakthrough in my dill mental block could open up other ideas about dill. Perhaps my homemade kefir salad dressing could use a bit of dill blended into it next time. I know it's tasty sprinkled on fish, but how about making green garlic sauce for fish with some dill instead of only parsley? Hey, I'm on a roll here, and if any of these ideas happen, I'll tell you about how they worked.

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Bunny Buns

I'm on attempt #3 to make the perfect sweet bun to stuff with marzipan, shape like a bunny and serve up at the local Shire of Baile na Scolairi event at the end of the month.

The concept: make bunny-shaped buns and display a few of them on a platter at lunch with some piles of raisins, making it look like "the rabbit's revenge" on lunch is some rabbit droppings left behind as the bunnies hopped around the plate. The buns have to taste good, though, because those bunnies not on display will be served up as food.

I've finally arrived at a bread recipe I'm happy with, so I'm ready to share that here.

Advantages of this recipe:
1. sweet, but not as sweet as the marzipan, so there is some contrast
2. tastes great (not dry or stale) as day-old bread, which it will be on the day of the event
3. easy to shape
4. variable for multiple purposes -- I may end up using this recipe some other time with other stuffings or with dried fruits or other spices in the dough.
5. one recipe makes more than 12 buns -- good, because I have to make at least 50
6. does not require me to buy milk -- great because we didn't have any at home yesterday

Bunny Buns
makes about 20 small buns

1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 cup lukewarm water
1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
prepared marzipan (preferably a brand with sugar as the only sweetener)

Proof the yeast: pour water into a large bowl, sprinkle on yeast and 1 tsp sugar. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.

Mix in the remaining water, the egg, 1/2 cup sugar, oil, salt, cinnamon. Whisk in 1 cup all-purpose flour, then 1 cup whole-wheat flour. Use spoon to mix in the remaining all-purpose flour. Knead with well-floured hands until well combined. Dough should be soft and pillowy and a little sticky.

Clean out bowl with soap and hot water and coat with vegetable oil. Return dough to bowl, turning to cover dough with grease. Cover with plastic wrap or thin towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size. (see note below)

Punch dough down and knead with floured hands for 1 to 2 minutes. Divide into 20 portions of equal size. Place a small ball of marzipan on each portion, wrap the dough around it, and roll dough between hands into a round ball. Shape the balls into teardrops, leaving the marzipan in the fat end of the teardrop. Place on greased baking sheet or baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Let rise, covered by thin towel, for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and brush dough with egg wash (see note below). Use scissors to cut long rabbit ears near the narrow end of the teardrop of dough. Bake buns for 15 to 20 minutes, until they are golden brown and sound hollow when the bottom is tapped. Be careful not to burn the tips of the ears too much. Cool on a wire rack. 

Note on rising: if the weather is chilly, bread dough does not rise quickly. Try one of these tricks:
1. Place covered bowl of dough in a closed oven with just the light on
2. for winter days only: turn the oven on to the lowest possible temperature for five minutes. Turn off and then let the bread dough rise in the oven with the door closed.
3. Boil water in a pan slightly smaller in diameter than your mixing bowl. Remove the pan from the heat and put the covered bowl on top of the pan.
4. Boil a cup of water in the microwave oven. Remove cup, place covered bowl with dough in it inside the microwave and let the dough rise with the door closed. Don't microwave the dough, it gets too hot and will kill the yeast.

Note on egg wash: egg wash is one egg beaten well with a little water. Use a pastry brush to brush the wash on the dough. It adds a pleasant sheen to the dough.  Egg wash can be used to help seeds stick to the top of breads (e.g. sesame seeds, poppy seeds, etc.). Some recipes will use a wash made only with egg yolks to add yellow color to the dough, or only with egg whites to prevent yellow color. This site has an interesting table of the different properties of different egg wash recipes: http://www.piemaven.com/egg_wash.html

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Another try at breakfast strata

It's been quite a while since I toyed with the breakfast casserole strata in the kitchen. In the last documented attempt, the strata was really subpar.

In the new version, it's still two layers of bread with a filling of sausage and vegetables in between, all held together by an egg mixture and baked till the bread starts to toast.
The differences:
1. no turmeric
2. this time, I had the mustard I wanted
3. different sausage
4. different spices
5. cheese topping

"Let's try this again" leftovers-for-breakfast strata
 serves at least 4
4 large eggs
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 tsp dried sage leaves, crushed (4 to 5 leaves)
1/2 cup chopped parsley (loosely in the measuring cup, not packed)
1 orange bell pepper, chopped finely
2 leftover bratwurst-sized sausages, sliced (I had chicken-apple sausage)
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter
6 to 8 slices dry bread
1 cup shredded cheddar

Oil 8x8 baking pan. Lay 3 to 4 slices of bread down to cover the bottom of the pan. Saute chopped pepper and sausage together in butter. When heated through, add parsley and sage. Spread veg/meat mixture on top of bread in baking pan. Cover with half of shredded cheese and top with 3 to 4 slices of bread to cover evenly. Whisk eggs with milk, mustard and salt. Pour over contents of pan, soak at least 1 hour (can soak overnight if desired to bake at breakfast time). Top with the rest of the shredded cheese and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30 minutes or until eggs are set and top layer of bread is toasted.
This dish is great fresh out of the oven, but do let it sit 10 minutes before cutting into portions. This time, I made the dish the night before I wished to eat it and cut portions to reheat in the microwave for a couple of breakfasts for me and Andrew.

I'm getting more daring with the use of eggs and cheese as my sometimes-touchy guts will allow. I'll have to admit that this time, I still didn't get things quite right and the strata was once again not a Heather-friendly dish. I suspect there was something about the chicken-apple sausage that I wasn't digesting well because not only the leftovers affected me, but also the serving of sausage with lunch on an earlier day. Maybe I could have skipped the cheese topping, too.

Well, this dish was fun until it suddenly wasn't fun anymore. The flavor was much improved over the last strata, and I was glad to have a way to use up leftovers of chicken sausage and parsley.

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Mmm, breakfast dishes

A co-worker of mine declared yesterday that the only meal he cooks with any consistency is breakfast, "because it's easy."

Yup, he's so right. Breakfast foods are so easy, they are all I have left in me. I have spent a bit more than a month not feeling like cooking anything at home because I've been slowly getting over some major back, hip and leg pain due to a bulging spinal disc. I can make it through work okay now (just constant discomfort, not real serious pain any more), but all the way through this healing process, the last thing I want to do after exhausting myself cooking at work is to come home and stand up for another hour to cook. Thankful every day for having a husband who is a capable cook, so we are still getting consistent hot meals with fresh foods.

But I'm still making breakfast for myself on my day off. Or breakfasts for guests we've had over on several weekends in October and November. French toast, fried eggs on toast, a bit of oatmeal, whatever goes well with coffee or tea and people's moods.

Today's breakfast, eggs over-easy on English muffins and a lettuce salad. Last weekend, Scottish oats cooked into a nice, thick cereal and served with butter and honey.

However, since I have not made any new amazing discoveries in the realm of breakfast, I've been on hiatus from this blog for a long while. Today, I'm back to offer my take on French toast, a long-time breakfast specialty of mine.

French toast
serves two people at least two slices

2 eggs
about 1/3 cup almond milk
4 to 5 slices of day-old bread 
one dash of whichever you are in the mood for today: powdered ginger, cinnamon powder, ground nutmeg, ground cardamom, perhaps a combination of two of these
canola oil (add one tablespoon of butter if desired)
maple syrup

Note on breads: ordinary American sliced bread in packages often has a better texture if it is lightly toasted first before frying. The most awesome French toast is with French bread that has gotten too hard to eat by itself. But I don't insist on only the best bread. I'm not picky about whether the bread is white or whole wheat or has raisins or seeds in it.

Coat the bottom of a nonstick pan with canola oil and put on medium heat. Add one tablespoon of butter to pan if desired. Whisk together eggs, milk and spices. Add more milk if the mixture is too thick to soak into bread.  Dip pieces of bread into the mixture to fully coat. Fry until golden brown, flip and fry the other side, and serve hot with maple syrup.

If you've been using pancake syrup (which is usually corn syrup with maple flavoring) and have the chance to purchase real maple syrup from maple tree sap, make the switch! Maple syrups from different parts of North America have slight differences in flavor, which is part of the fun. All are less mellow, more maple-y and often thinner than pancake syrup.

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Scrambling veggies and eggs

The ingredients in today's lunch:
1 small zucchini, sliced thinly
3 Tbsp butter
2 eggs, scrambled with a little milk (I chose unsweetened almond milk, you may choose differently)
salt and pepper strewn over all to taste
1 heaping tbsp each of ajvar and light sour cream, mixed together in a separate bowl

The cooking method: butter melted in pan, zucchini browned on both sides in butter, heat turned down and eggs cooked in pan w/zucchini, seasoned the whole mess and place on a plate, smeared with ajvar/sour cream and served with multigrain bread. This dish is very green and orange, and it's delicious!

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Deviled eggs in 25 minutes or less

Once again, preparing my dish at the last minute before a potluck lunch. I had boiled the eggs yesterday, but left it till this morning to peel and fill them. Today's trick: make something that is truly slopped together look like you cared for it.

Step 1: hard-cook a dozen old eggs, then procrastinate about finishing the dish till tomorrow.
My favorite method for hard-cooking: place eggs in a pot, preferably in one layer on the bottom, cover with cold water, put the lid on the pot, bring to full boil on high heat, then immediately turn off the heat and allow the covered pot to sit for 15 minutes.  Pour off the hot water and replace with ice water. Peel eggs when cool.

Step 2: peel the eggs.
This should have been done yesterday while the eggs were wet and freshly shocked in the ice water. Because I put the unpeeled eggs in the refrigerator for a day, peeling today was accompanied by considerably higher amounts of frustration with peels/shells sticking to egg white and a few swear words. Some of the whites were a little pocked because parts of the egg white came off with the shell.
During this step, don't forget to worry about whether you'll be done on time because each egg is taking twice as long to peel as you estimated.

Step 3: cut the eggs in half lengthwise and scoop out the yolk into a bowl. Set the whites on a plate.
Don't forget to look worriedly at the clock a few more times.

Step 4: season the egg yolks and moisten with mayonnaise.
Today's easy-peasy 15-second seasoning: grab a quick pinch of parsley leaves from the bag in the refrigerator, slap down on a cutting board and take out your frustration on them by mincing and remincing with a chef's knife, spin the lid off the seasoning salt so quickly it nearly flies off onto the floor and throw a few dashes of salt with the parsley onto the egg yolks. Groan when you realize you have to take a few more seconds to rip open a new jar of mayo when you use up your last tablespoon in the old jar but still need more mayo. Yank open the silverware drawer, grab the first fork you see and quickly mash the yolks together with the mayo, seasoning and parsley.

Step 5: spoon the yolk mixture into the little well in each egg white and arrange on a plate or in a portable food storage container. 
Check the clock and continue worrying. Scoop up a couple teaspoons or so of filling and smear it quickly into those egg whites. Try not to be too wistful about missing your chance to try out using a Ziplock baggie as a piping tool. No time for love, Dr. Jones! Eat the egg white that is covered on all sides in messy egg yolk after you drop it onto another filled egg.


Step 6: garnish with powdered paprika.
Wrench the lid off your paprika, rejoice that there is a sprinkle section on the inside lid, and sprinkle away till the paprika starts to distract attention from the lopsided egg yolk fillings. Smack the lid on that portable food storage box and carefully run out the door. Don't let the box tip from side to side! You'll ruin the fillings!

Step 7: proudly deliver the finished dish at the potluck table.
Silently hope no one notices the stray bits of egg yolk mixture on the outsides of the egg whites because the box shifted and tipped while you were getting out of the car with it. Smile when your friend says, "ooh! Deviled eggs! Yum!"

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Spanish Tortilla

This one's not a flat, floppy bread. Tortilla in Spain is a thick, eggy dish fried in a skillet, filled with potatoes and possibly other vegetables and meat. It is reminiscent of an omelette in that it's eggs filled with whatever you think would taste good, but it isn't an egg wrapped around the filling. It is reminiscent of quiche in that it's solid and served in wedges, but it does not have a crust and isn't baked. Tortilla has commonalities with other dishes, but it isn't really exactly like anything else.

To treat my friend Laura yesterday for lunch, I improvised a tortilla, made in the spirit of one that I've made before at work. Not having a photo of the whole thing, I'll describe it in words. My tortilla was a thick, seasoned "cake" of eggs holding together a lot of potatoes and parsley, browned on all sides by the frying pan. Here's how the recipe works:

Spanish Tortilla
serves 6 as main dish, 8 to 12 as tapas dish

7 large eggs
4 medium-sized potatoes, diced
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tsp smoked paprika (Spanish pimentón)
seasoned salt to taste (the kind with garlic and spices mixed w/the salt)
fresh-ground pepper to taste
4 Tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a nonstick 10-inch skillet with sloping sides. Fill the bottom of the pan with diced potatoes and fry until golden brown on most sides. While potatoes are cooking, crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until yolks are fully incorporated. When potatoes are browned, sprinkle with paprika and stir until oil is red. Season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley, then pour over the eggs. Cook over medium heat. When eggs start to set, use a heatproof spatula to pull up edges and lean the pan so egg mixture that is still liquid gets to the edge of the pan. When eggs are fully set and starting to get a bit of a crispy skin on the bottom, put a large plate over the skillet. Flip the pan upside down, depositing the tortilla on the plate. Slide it back into the pan to cook the other side. When the second side also gets a crispy skin, cut the tortilla into 6 wedges and serve hot.

Serve in smaller wedges if you are making the tortilla as a tapa (appetizer to go with drinks). I served the tortilla with a salad for a light lunch. More fillings to go with the potatoes might include chickpeas, Spanish chorizo sausage, greens, cooked mushrooms, cooked garden vegetables, anything that tastes good with eggs and isn't going to give off a bunch of liquid to make the tortilla lose its texture.

I'm told that the tortilla tastes good cold as leftovers, but I'm more excited about eating it hot.

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Iron Chef: Battle Cornucopia

As mentioned in a previous post, my co-worker Ware's discussion with me and our co-workers Kelly and Seth about combining his favorite flavors of fall: pumpkin, pork, apple and chai spices (cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, clove and black pepper) in a "paleo-diet" fashion without grains or lots of sweets quickly turned from idle musing into a plan for a contest.

With a poster I created (including hand-drawn pictures of pumpkin, pig, apple and cup of chai), the challenge was issued to all cooks at our cafe (not just those of us who are paid to cook there) to put forth our best efforts on Oct. 24 in what was being billed as Iron Chef: Battle Cornucopia.

Many co-workers had great ideas, but for various reasons (forgot, broke foot, best effort failed the taste test, no time to prepare) failed to produce the goods on Monday. Two of us (Seth and I) competed against Ware for having our dishes declared the best of fall. We decided, after finding out the week before that Kelly couldn't come to work or participate in the contest because she had broken her foot, to make the contest a benefit for Kelly. Food left after the tasting was immediately taken to Kelly at home for her dinner.

The dishes, when we finished preparing and plating, became a three-course tasting:
1. Seth's pumpkin soup with bacon, onions fried in bacon grease, rosemary and thyme, chicken broth, and sliced Granny Smith apple garnish sprinkled with ground cinnamon and cardamom.
2. Ware's pork chop, which was a) stuffed with onions and apples cooked with fennel and cardamom, b) topped with gingered beet cubes and cinnamony pumpkin cubes and c) drizzled with a frothy sauce of sour cream mixed with chai-infused apple cider vinegar.
3. my creamy pumpkin custard flavored with fresh ginger and ground chai spices with bits of prosciutto, served atop organic Cortland apple slices that had been dipped in acidulated water with apple cider vinegar.

Photos of samples of our three dishes will be posted at Ware's blog, www.primitiverenaissance.wordpress.com
Tasting them all together was exciting, especially because the same four ingredients were used in such divergent ways by the three cooks.
My favorite elements: 1) Seth's soup was a bit rustic with the coarsely chopped onion and bacon and it tasted like meat all over because of the infusion of everything with bacon flavor; 2) Ware's tangy foam really set off the root-vegetable topping and his plating presentation was the most beautiful of all three; 3) I was shocked at how good salty prosciutto tastes in a mildly sweet custard. The original plan was to use the prosciutto as tart cups, but it shrank too much in the blind baking, so I decided to finely chop it and put it in the bottom of each custard cup. Turned out it was a great idea to spread the saltiness out with the sweet instead of having it be the first layer to hit the tongue.

Tasters included our boss, her husband, and about five other co-workers who were available at the time. Scoring was done by awarding points to each dish according to how each taster ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Each 1st place vote was 3 points, each 2nd place was 2 points and each 3rd place vote was 1 point. Splitting up most of the votes for 1st and 2nd places evenly between us, Seth and I tied for the title of Iron Chef.

Here's the recipe for the custard:

Pumpkin-Chai Custard with Prosciutto Surprise
about 8 servings

6 very thin slices prosciutto
1 cup canned pumpkin
8 oz carton heavy cream
2 eggs and 1 egg yolk
2 Tbsp sugar, optional
1/4 tsp fresh grated ginger
2 black peppercorns
1 clove
2 green cardamom pods
1/4 to 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Bake the prosciutto on a rimmed baking sheet at 335 degrees Fahrenheit until crisped, but not very brown. Keep the oven at this temperature for the custard. Use the grease left by the prosciutto to grease a muffin tin or small ramekins. Chop the prosciutto finely and sprinkle about a teaspoonful into the bottom of each muffin cup or ramekin.
With mortar and pestle, finely grind the peppercorns, clove and the black seeds from the cardamom pods. In a saucepan, whisk together the pumpkin, cream, sugar, ginger and all the ground spices. Cook over low heat until warmed, but not boiling. While the cream heats, whisk together the eggs and egg yolk in a bowl. Pour some of the heated cream into the egg mixture while stirring with the whisk, then whisk the contents of the bowl into the saucepan.
Pour the custard over the prosciutto in the muffin cups/ramekins and bake until set (when a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean), approximately 20 minutes.
Can be slipped out of the muffin cups and plated with the help of a flexible spatula when cooled, or just served in the ramekins.

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Late-spring soup the Finnish way

Inspired by the recipe for Kesakeitto (Finnish summer vegetable soup) in Scandinavian Cooking by Sonia Maxwell, I made a new recipe with the ingredients available in my CSA box and my refrigerator stash. Most of the veggies that are considered summer vegetables in Finland are already available garden-fresh in the springtime in Illinois.

For those who are able to tolerate dairy products, I'd recommend using real dairy cream or milk for an even better flavor.

Finnish-style Vegetable Soup
4 to 6 servings

6 small radishes with greens
3 carrots
1 handful spinach leaves
1 small head broccoli
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond/soy milk (the traditional Finnish soup uses dairy cream)
2 Tbsp fresh herbs to garnish: dill, parsley or chives (or a mix of two or three of these)

Halve or quarter the radishes. Chop the radish and spinach leaves finely, discarding any tough stems. Cut the carrots into small dice. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets. Place radishes, carrots, broccoli into a small pot and cover with water. Cover pot and bring to a boil. Cook very briefly, about 3 minutes. Add radish and spinach leaves and cook 2 minutes. Strain and reserve the cooking water. Set aside cooking water and vegetables. Melt butter in a large pot. Whisk in flour, then slowly whisk in the cooking water from the vegetables and 1 cup of milk/cream and heat just short of boiling. Whisk egg yolk in a bowl with 1/2 cup milk/cream, then add 2/3 cup of the hot soup and whisk. Pour the egg yolk mixture into the soup pot and whisk together. Put the reserved vegetables in the soup pot and reheat. It is important not to heat the soup all the way to a boil, which will curdle the egg yolk. Season with salt and pepper, ladle into serving bowls and garnish with herbs.

Optional vegetable alternatives: new potatoes, peas, small bits of fish or shellfish

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Tartes de Chare: Playing with 15th-Century pork pie

Another recipe for the previously-mentioned SCA event lunch. I combined parts of two 15th-Century English recipes that appear in the same text, starting with the simpler of two filling preparations and adding a little fruit for color and flavor.

The part that may be a bit of a stretch from the original recipe is using roasted ham as the meat filling. In the interests of making this a very economical lunch so we can charge each diner only $5 for a full meal including beverages and sweets, I'm using a meat that we all know will be on sale right around Easter time, which is near the date of the event. Meats were preserved by salting and curing before 1600, but I have not done sufficient research on the topic to be able to claim with confidence that 21st-Century America's familiar Easter ham was also known to medieval Europeans.

The original recipes were taken from A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke, a collection of English recipes compiled and left largely unaltered by John L. Anderson. The first Tartes de Chare recipe calls for a filling of ground fresh pork, raw eggs, fried pine nuts and currants, pepper, ginger powder, cinnamon, sugar, saffron, salt, dates, prunes, and small birds browned in grease. These are put into a large "cofynne," a double-crust pie dough that stands by itself around the filling without a pie pan, and baked. The second recipe, "Tartes de Chare Another Manere," also available on the website Gode Cookery, is also baked in a "cofynne" and has a filling of broiled pork that is ground and mixed with egg yolk, pepper, ginger and honey. Neither recipe gives any indication of amounts of any ingredient or baking time or the ingredients for the pie crusts.

I had a little help with the "cofynne" recipe from A Temperance of Cooks, a website that gives modern measurements for early recipes. The one I chose is called "Good White Crust," which was adapted by ATOC from Gervase Markham's 1615 book The English Housewife. I divided the dough into two portions, one of about 2/3 to 3/4 of the dough for the bottom crust, the other 1/3 to 1/4 for the top crust.

Here is my recipe for the filling:

1 1/2 pounds roasted bone-in ham (not honey ham or precooked canned ham), minced (I don't have a meat grinder, so I minced and minced and minced)
3 eggs
3 oz prunes, chopped
2 oz raisins or currants
1/4 tsp ginger powder
2 Tbsp honey
freshly ground black pepper

Mix ham thoroughly with eggs. Sprinkle liberally with black pepper, add fruit and ginger and honey and mix. Roll out bottom crust and lay on baking sheet. Pile filling inside, press into shape and raise the crust up around the filling with straight sides. Lay on the top crust and crimp to seal. Cut an X in the top crust to let out steam. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until center of pie bubbles and crust browns, about 1 hour 10 minutes (I also gave it an additional 10 minutes with the oven off, which may not have been necessary). Cool on rack, wrap in dishtowel and refrigerate.

The pie is best served cold a day or two later because the pie slices so neatly and the fruit flavor is not overpowered by the ham. I served it with a sauce made from dry mustard, red wine vinegar and honey, which tasted great, but really cleared out the sinuses like horseradish. On leftovers, I tried a milder mixture of dijon mustard and honey, which I liked better. Mustard sauce, my tasters told me, is really essential to making the crust less dry and more appetizing.

If I ever baked a ham for Easter, I'd definitely bring out this recipe to take care of the leftovers. Most of the other ingredients are usually hanging around our house. For a dish with this many eggs and this much meat, I was pleasantly surprised that eating a piece for lunch the day after the tasting dinner didn't give my guts fits.

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Dyeing eggs with natural colors

I realize it's a little early for Easter, but I experimented with natural dyes for eggs this weekend because I'd like to serve them as part of a medieval lunch for an Society for Creative Anachronism (www.sca.org) event next month.

I’m very excited about the eggs because the dyes actually worked, contrary to the experiences of many online contributors I've read.



The lighter pink circles are where the egg (being too fresh) was sticking out of the water, and the marks that look like scratches on the yellow and blue eggs come from bits of cabbage or from the spoon I scooped them out of the dye with. The colors in the photo are very true to how they look in real life.

I followed (more or less) some recipes I found online.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/holidayhowtos/a/eastereggdyes.htm
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Eggs/EasterEggDye.htm

I think the most important bits of the instructions I followed were:
1. wash the eggs first in soapy water to remove any oils from the eggshell.
2. use a lot of dyestuff: I used a little over half a small head of red cabbage for blue eggs, 2 or 3 Tbsp turmeric for yellow eggs and 2 cups of juice from beet pickles for pink eggs (plus a little water to make sure the eggs were covered). I didn’t dye as many eggs as could have fit in the pot, but I figure this would be enough for a pot of a dozen eggs of each color.
3. add white vinegar to the dye bath. I just kind of guessed and probably poured in 2 Tbsp or so in each bath.
4. leave the eggs in the dyestuff overnight in the refrigerator.

I also added the instruction myself of cooking the eggs right in the dye bath, since you’d have to cook the dyes anyway. We'll see at my tasting party Monday whether the eggs taste like the dyestuff. Next time I would make sure to strain out all the cabbage because I think cabbage bits stuck to the eggs and prevented them from dyeing uniformly.

Next step, presentation. I know plastic Easter basket grass didn't exist prior to 1600, and since I want people to eat them, the eggs also won't be served in baskets full of lawn grass. Something easy would be a brightly-colored cloth in a basket or bowl framing a pile of eggs. Less easy but pretty would be gathering up nontoxic flowers and using them as the "grass" in a basket. I have this vision of little origami packages to hold salt and pepper to dip the eggs in, but I don't know what shape to make.

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A casserole for leftovers: strata

My mom makes a brunch “quiche” that follows the same basic strata technique here: lay out slices of bread, top with the filling, top with the rest of the bread slices, pour an eggy mixture over top and let it sit overnight before baking. Hers is topped with crushed corn flakes that have been mixed with melted butter. I love that crunchy topping, but I didn’t have any corn flakes in the house to add to this experiment with leftovers. Also, the point of this experiment was to make a dish kind of like mom’s quiche that was lower in fat and in meat (the original has ham-and-cheese filling), so no buttery topping.

The experimental recipe

Layers:

8 slices bread (I used oat bran bread I had in the freezer)

1 small onion, diced

1 tsp oil or butter

leftover cooked spicy Italian loose sausage, probably was about ½ of the original pound of sausage

3 dried sage leaves, crushed

6 oz frozen broccoli

8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced

½ Tbsp olive oil

½ Tbsp butter

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (forget lactose intolerance for a minute -- the cheese was on sale)

Grease an 8X8 baking dish. Cover the bottom with 4 slices of bread. Saute the onion in 1 tsp oil or butter and spread over the bread. Cover with sausage, sprinkle with sage. Cover with broccoli. Saute mushrooms in ½ Tbsp olive oil and ½ Tbsp butter and spread over broccoli. Cover with cheese and the other 4 slices of bread. Press down if the bread is above the top of the pan.

Egg mixture:

1 cup egg whites

a squirt of mustard (I don’t keep ordinary yellow mustard around – the mustards on hand were spicy brown or deli brown, but my usual choice would have been Dijon)

1 cup unsweetened soy milk (a little nod to the lactose intolerance)

½ tsp turmeric

Whisk all together and pour over the strata, soaking all the bread slices.

Cover the baking dish in aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. If, like me, you are baking the strata straight out of the fridge instead of letting it warm up to room temperature, bake covered 25 minutes and uncovered 20 to 25 minutes until bread is browning and filling is bubbly. Let stand five minutes before serving.

Observations

My first thought on eating my first bite was “Whoa! Too much turmeric!” I wasn’t supposed to be able to pick out the turmeric taste so easily. It was supposed to be just for yellow color. That turmeric amount will have to be closer to 1/8 tsp next time. 

“Should I have added salt and pepper to the egg mixture?” I asked myself as I put the baking pan in the fridge before going to bed. When I ate the strata the next day, I found that the sausage and cheese had added enough salty and spicy flavor. I think I would go for some white pepper in the egg mix if I had an all-vegetable filling.

I don’t usually keep whole eggs in the house because the yolks are one of the many items that are not kind to my over-sensitive stomach and guts. I often use the Ener-G powdered egg substitute or substitute two egg whites for each whole egg in a recipe. In general, this dish was not good for me because of the pork sausage, eggs and cheese. Next time, I’d go for an egg substitute instead of any kind of real egg product, and my filling would not be meaty, so that the only tummy-unfriendly item would be the cheese. After this dish and a few egg-white/Egg Beaters omelettes, I’ve learned the lesson that in a dish that is mostly eggy, I just can’t tolerate the eggs. 

The reheated leftovers of this dish were just as good as the fresh-from-the-oven strata lunch.

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