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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Today's high-protein lunch: Tuna and Bean Salad

Quick, flavorful and pairs well with winter storage foods like the side of roasted root vegetables at today's lunch at home. I could see myself eating this on a bed of lettuce or sprouts, or with a side of some fresh pear or apple slices. The Meyer lemons I purchased this time were pretty orange, so the color contrast of parsley and lemon zest was attractive.

Tuna and White Bean Salad with Lemon and Parsley
serves 2 as main dish, 4 as small plate with greens/sprouts

30 oz cooked white beans or 2 15-oz cans cannelini beans, rinsed and drained
1 5-oz can tuna
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
zest and juice of one Meyer lemon
olive oil, salt and pepper to taste
1 very small clove garlic, minced (optional)

Combine beans, tuna and chopped parsley in a bowl. Whisk together the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper (and garlic, if using). Taste for seasoning and adjust if desired, then pour the dressing over the bean mixture and toss.

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Recipes to try again later

I promised to share recipes that were successes and failures when I set up this blog. Spectacular failures often come with a good story, which is probably why I've been hanging onto this group of recipes without posting them. They were not highly impressive dishes (or haven't been tested yet) and they don't come with good stories. Despite that, I'm posting them here today because the blog entry is easier to find (and read) later than a little slip of paper with pencil marks on it. Hopefully in the future there will be revisions with photos and more exciting tales. Perhaps someone out there will try them out with the suggested "note to self" revisions and let me know how it goes.

Choco-cherry Smoothie

1 cup cherries from cherry bounce
1 1/2 cup seltzer water
2 cups homemade kefir
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp cocoa powder

Blend until smooth. 
NOTE TO SELF: try with 1/2 cup seltzer next time, possibly less kefir. Great chocolate and cherry flavor, but beverage ended up too thin to be a good smoothie. The tanginess was nice, but perhaps less kefir and/or a teaspoon more sugar would bring taste into better balance. Booziness of the alcohol-preserved cherries sneaks up on you, so warn people if you serve this to others. 

Lemon-Chicken Pasta

3/4 pound thin spaghetti, cooked in boiling salted water
2 cups shredded leftover roasted chicken with lemon-pepper-garlic seasoning
75 g bunch parsley, chopped
juice and zest of 2 Meyer lemons
5 Tbsp olive oil
grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Whisk together the lemon juice, zest and olive oil. Toss with chicken and pasta and parsley. Sprinkle each serving with grated Parmesan. 

NOTE TO SELF: I'm sure that this dish could be done with plain salt-and-pepper roasted chicken with just the addition of a minced clove of garlic and some pepper to the sauce. Next time, consider using at least 1 Tbsp less oil. This version was a little too oily. 

The Large-Crowd Meatball Experiment

5 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 large onion, minced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
4 oz fresh bread, processed into fine crumbs
3/4 cup vegetable stock or milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 oz (by weight) sour cream
1 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
2 Tbsp dried Greek oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil

Place ground beef in large mixing bowl. Saute minced onion and minced garlic in olive oil. Moisten breadcrumbs with vegetable stock/milk in a small bowl. Add sauteed onion/garlic and moist breadcrumbs to meat along with all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake.
NOTE TO SELF: These would taste great with ground lamb or beef-lamb mix. Salt was not quite overpowering, but could easily be cut to 1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp. Dried basil and oregano amounts (especially oregano) should probably be cut in half. Devote another blog entry to this experiment and its theoretical variations with Korean, sweet-sour, American meatloaf and Middle Eastern flavor profiles. 

Bloody Mary Meatballs

3 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup minced onion
1/4 cup Bloody Mary Mix
1 Tbsp prepared horseradish

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil and mix thoroughly with meat and other ingredients. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake. Serve in a Bloody Mary sauce I haven't written a recipe for yet or make Bloody Marys and eat meatballs as snack with cocktail.
NOTE TO SELF: Mixed parts of three different recipes together to create this one, can't try it out until there is a sharing occasion to make this with a Bloody-Mary-inspired tomato sauce to serve them in.

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Today's summery salad

I typically assemble salads according to my whims and what's in the refrigerator/cupboard. The only real planning involved is how to obtain the salad greens: backyard, CSA, friends or shopping?

The basic principles: Using whatever is around, find some textural variety, a mix of sweet and sour and savory, and make a homemade vinaigrette or a creamy dressing based on kefir, yogurt or mayonnaise.

Apples, berries, pears and dried fruits are frequent attenders in the sweet category, as is honey in the vinaigrette dresing. Textural variety is provided by mixed greens, edible flowers, nuts, fruits (fresh or dried), crunchy or fibrous vegetables like cucumber or raw zucchini or bell pepper or carrot, and, occasionally, cheese.

In keeping with the basics of "whatever ya got" and switching up the flavors and textures, today's salad was a greens mix of half lettuce, half sorrel. It was topped with fresh blueberries, pecan pieces and cucumber batons, with a honey-sweetened balsamic vinegar-Dijon vinaigrette spiked with a little lime juice.

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Summer Skillets are back!

The corn, squash and beans "Three Sisters" are ripe and ready to eat this month. We've eaten sweet corn, zucchini and "beans and greens," in addition to plucking the backyard green beans and eating them straight off the bush when they are small and tender. I love summer squashes like zucchini and pattypan and cucumber, and I'm waiting impatiently for the winter squashes to ripen on their long vines stretching out of my garden box toward the house.

All of these "Three Sisters" taste great with another of the summer/fall staples in our area, cooking greens. This year, one Swiss chard plant from some pretty old seeds was successful in the backyard box. It's time to ramp up the enthusiasm for greens because from here on out in the CSA box, I predict there will be a minimum of two greens each week.

The ubiquitous and ever-flexible zucchini teams up with our county's major export product, corn, and a bit of earthy chard in this summertime skillet. The quantity is large enough that the Dutch oven or chicken fryer is a more appropriately-sized cooking vessel. It's quick to prepare, provided you've cut off the corn kernels and kept them from a previous meal of sweet corn this week.

Smoky Summer Vegetable Skillet
2 to 3 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup sliced onion
3 cloves garlic, smashed with flat side of knife
1 foot-long, fat zucchini (scrape out seeds if it has tough, mature seeds in it)
handful of Swiss chard, approximately 8-12 oz weight
the kernels cut off from 6 ears of cooked sweet corn
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep skillet/Dutch oven. Saute onion in oil. While it is cooking, cut zucchini into long strips and dice. Add garlic to the onion and stir one minute. Add diced zucchini and stir occasionally. While zucchini is cooking, clean chard and strip the leaves off the stems. Chop the leaves, save the stems for another dish or compost them.

Put corn into pan with cumin and smoked paprika when zucchini is somewhat translucent. Stir in chard when corn has started to heat through. Stir and cook briefly until chard wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serving suggestions: by itself; on rice, quinoa or couscous; with bread or on top of toast; topped with a fried egg.

This next recipe was today's lunch, created and eaten hastily when I issued a spontaneous lunch invitation to two of Andrew's friends, who were passing through to drop him off on their way back home from Indianapolis. 

Tart, tangy tomatillos are probably cheating on my low-acid diet, but they are so good with rice and beans and I didn't want to waste this treat from the CSA box. I tried to leave most of them in the serving dish and only put a few slices on my plate. Sharing is better than eating them all myself, right?

When paired with a large salad, this dish served four. If it were a one-dish meal, I'd say it is two portions.

Tangy Tomatillo-Bean Skillet

4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 pint tomatillos, washed
1 cup leftover cooked rice
One 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatillos into thick vertical slices, then cut each slice in half to make half-moon shapes. Heat olive oil to medium-high heat in a nonstick skillet. Saute onion until starting to become translucent, add garlic and stir one minute. Add tomatillos and spices and stir frequently until tomatillos are tender. Add rice, stirring and cutting with spoon to separate rice grains. Add black beans and heat through, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.

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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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This post brought to you by foods that start with the letter G

Food is arriving weekly through Henry's Farm CSA again ("what's a CSA?" check this link), and at the beginning and end of the season, the major vegetable group is GREENS. We eat a lot of salad and stir-fries and search around for other options to keep up our interest in greens. When gnocchi (small Italian potato dumplings) went on sale recently, I bought a couple packages and figured they'd eventually come in handy, so bring on the unfamiliar greens!

Lamb's quarters showed up at the CSA pickup, and I traded some onions to get some more of this stuff in the hopes that we'd like it enough to eat it for two meals.
"Use as you would spinach" was the take-home message about this edible weed on the Brockman Family Farming blog. So Andrew and I did so with this earthy-tasting dish that was a team effort. We discovered that like most of the cooking greens, these are great cooked with garlic. Garlic shows up twice in our recipe: once as minced cloves, once in the pesto.
If you have leftovers, I recommend adding a bit of liquid when reheating to soften up the gnocchi.

Earthy Greens and Gnocchi
serves 4

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
12 oz white button or cremini mushrooms, sliced 
One 17-oz package potato gnocchi
grated parmesan cheese, optional
1 bunch (about 8 oz. by weight) lamb's quarters, spinach, or Swiss chard
1 Tbsp basil pesto
1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Clean all dirt and grit from greens, remove stems and chop greens down to bite-size if needed. Heat water to cook gnocchi according to package directions. Cook other ingredients while waiting for water to heat. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Saute onion until tender, then add garlic and mushrooms and continue cooking. Stir in lamb's quarters, then Italian seasoning. Keep warm on low heat while waiting for gnocchi to cook. When greens are wilted, turn off heat and stir in pesto. Drain gnocchi and add to mixture in skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with grated parmesan if desired.

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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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Curried ravioli: Asian ingredients in a European-style dish

This one's an attempt from work, so no pictures, alas. The bright yellow sauce was very attractive, as was the orange-with-green-bits stuffing for the ravioli. Just try to imagine, eh?

At my last workplace, I learned a trick for making ravioli with wonton wrappers. The process moves along quickly enough that with a bit of practice, I was able to make several dozen in half an hour there. I'm a little rusty now, so the work was a bit slower.

I love how this works, so I wanted to share with you here. Start with your favorite filling, a very small portion scoop (the kind that have a spring handle that you squeeze and then a wire draws across the scoop to empty it out), a stack of wonton wrappers, a bowl of water or thinned-out beaten egg and either your fingers or a pastry brush. Lay out 12 wrappers on a countertop or cutting board, arranged in a pair of lines. Brush half of them (just one line) with water/egg. Plop a scoopful of filling on each of the wet wrappers. Now brush the wrappers in the other line. Flip the wrappers onto the ones with the fillings, match up the edges and corners and be sure to "burp" any air caught around the filling. Seal the edges with a fork or special ravioli tool. Repeat the process until either the filling or the wontons run out. These can now be frozen for later use, or dunked for a few minutes into boiling water until they are cooked through.

Wonton wrappers come in various sizes, so change your scoop size to deliver the amount of filling you can reasonably fit onto your little wonton squares and still seal them properly without having filling leak out the corners/edges. 

The filling for my most recent batch was mostly cooked sweet potato with Indian spices (I hope I'm remembering correctly that I used garam masala, ginger and garlic and possibly some extra ground coriander), some leftover filling from an earlier stuffed vegetable Indian dish, and green peas. I had a frozen batch of maybe about 30 ravioli or so to prepare and I knew I'd want them swimming in sauce because they wouldn't be served until the next day. To start the sauce, I pureed four or five cloves of garlic with a couple of tablespoons of chunks of fresh ginger, cooked the paste in a couple tablespoons of canola oil for just a few minutes, then added the spices that would flavor and color the sauce: ground coriander and cumin, plus Spice House Hot Curry Powder blend. After the spices had a chance to bloom in the oil, I stirred in three 15-oz cans of coconut milk and waited until the sauce came to a boil and thickened slightly. After a bit of seasoning with salt, the sauce was ready for pouring over ravioli.

This dish is a mixed success. The flavor and color were amazing, especially with a little sprinkling of chopped cilantro leaves for a garnish to contrast with the bright yellow sauce. The downside is that after an overnight of hanging around in the sauce, the ravioli got so soft that many broke apart when being spooned out of the dish for serving the next day. Although they were swimming in sauce when entering the cooler, they stuck together anyway. Also, the coconut milk sauce dried a bit and had cracks in it after cooling down. Clearly, this dish is best served immediately, with hot sauce poured over freshly-cooked ravioli. I'd also prefer, if making this at home, to let the frozen ravioli thaw before cooking them, or to cook the ravioli without freezing them at all. The filling was still a little cold after I cooked the ravioli straight from the freezer.

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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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Late summer bounty: corn and kale

It's been a tough year for corn harvests here in McLean County, but there have been a few ears in our CSA box a couple of times this summer. When it came along with kale and I needed to put together a fast dinner because we were already hungry before going to get the CSA box, I made this quick and hearty dish:

Quick Corn and Kale with Black Beans
serves 3 or 4 as a main dish
could be stretched by serving over rice or quinoa

3 ears fresh sweet corn
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch kale (about one pound), de-stemmed and chopped
black beans, one 15 oz can, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 tsp cumin
Spanish sweet smoked paprika to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Shuck the ears of corn as soon as possible after picking or purchase and steam 10 minutes in a couple of inches of water in a covered pot. While corn is cooking, prepare the onion, garlic, beans, kale. Cut corn kernels off the ears when they are cool enough to handle. Saute the onion and garlic in enough olive oil to thinly cover the bottom of your pan. When the onion is getting tender, add the kale and stir until it wilts. Add the beans, corn, cumin and smoked paprika, then pour over chicken stock and simmer until the beans are cooked through, the kale has become tender, and some of the stock has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Spanish smoked paprika is also known as pimentón. It tastes like peppers roasted over a flame right in your mouth. It is typically sold in two varieties, sweet and hot. The sweet one isn't actually sweet at all, it's just smoky and not as chili-spicy as the hot variety.

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Roasting, baking and blanching on the fire

This weekend at my local SCA shire's event, we had a potluck lunch. I decided to challenge myself a bit by trying recipes and techniques that could have been used in Italy during the 16th Century. Only one recipe was an original from an Italian cookbook, the other two were more based on known ingredients and techniques from the time period.

I wish I had made some arrangements for photography, because I probably looked delightfully goofy standing over this large open-fire grill outside the event all morning, standing in the smoke, wearing my apron over my coat and with a very-not-appropriate-to-period Polartec fleece hat for warmth. The day was quite windy, so starting the fire was difficult and keeping it at a constant temperature was impossible.

The plan: get to the event site to unload the woodpile and start the fire at about 8 a.m., have three items prepared for lunch by 11 or 11:30. Planned items: spit-roasted leg of lamb, blanched asparagus with dressing and herbs, bread baked in a pot in the coals. And if anyone showed up to watch me cook, I intended to ask that person to roll marzipan stuffing to put inside dates for something to do while we chatted.

Considering the setbacks with the fire and the fact that I've never tried to cook over an open fire on a deadline before, I was pleased that my plan worked. It only did because I had an assistant, who turned up without being asked, who could watch the fire while I did a few last-minute preparations or who could deliver plated items while I continued cooking the last item. She also stuffed the majority of the dates.

Spit-roasted leg of lamb
recipe inspired by Buon Appetito, Your Holiness: Secrets of the Papal Table by Mariangela Rinaldo and Mariangela Vicini
four-pound leg of lamb, organic and free-range (mine also happened to be certified halal, which becomes irrelevant when you see the next ingredient)
1/2 pound pork fat (I used a very fatty bacon)
1 Tbsp dried rosemary leaves
5 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
2 cups red wine

Mince the pork fat and cut it together with rosemary and garlic that have been minced. Cut lamb into two nearly-equal pieces. One piece will likely have the bone in it. Make deep incisions on the side of each pieces of meat and stuff with the pork-garlic-rosemary mixture. Meat may need to be tied with kitchen twine so the stuffing does not fall apart while loading it onto the rotisserie spit. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast indirectly over hot coals that are still sending up a little bit of flame. Turn occasionally while the lamb roasts at a temperature that is hot enough to cause some sizzling, but not hot enough to quickly burn the lamb. Baste by brushing occasionally with wine.

The leg of lamb was the item that got the most effusive praise from eaters, and it proved to be the most difficult. Lesson one: spit-roasting is to be done with indirect heat, not flames leaping up to the food. On the other hand, having a bit of an overbrowned (okay, blackened) crust did add lots of flavor until I figured out how far away from the flame to place the spit. Lesson two: bring a secondary cooking vessel in case roasted meat needs finishing in a pan or covered pot. So glad I had that cast-iron skillet handy so I could pour in the rest of my wine for basting and just cook off the lamb in pieces in the skillet. The wind was cooling off the lamb leg on the other sides while it cooked on one side over the fire, so the very center never came up to temperature on the spit. If I'd had an extra hour to leave it over the fire, it eventually would have cooked fully, but I didn't have the time to wait. If the fire hadn't been constantly blown around by wind, I think the 2 1/2 hours the lamb roasted on the spit would have been long enough.

I was very excited about the bread for its flavor and texture. It came out of the baking pot with a black bottom, a caramelized-looking top and springy texture. I have learned quite a bit about bread from another shire member, Simon, in the past year or two, plus I have received tips whenever I ask from Laura, who bakes where I work. A bit more practice with baking hasn't hurt me either. Simon got me started with using sourdough starter instead of always relying on packaged yeast. Finding motivation to start sourdough is simple when Simon hands out little packets of dried sourdough starter from his own collection at a class. Sourdough starter is a pre-1600 technique, as is baking in a pot buried in hot coals. To accentuate sour flavor and add a bit of beery yeasty taste that could have come from using ale barm for yeast, I followed the recipe for Almost No-Knead Bread from Cooks Illustrated. That recipe uses beer and vinegar for part of the liquid. Instead of the instant yeast called for in the recipe, I added some of Simon's sourdough starter. The bread dough sits in a bowl at room temperature overnight to develop flavor. The pot I used for baking was not made of the correct materials, being a cast-iron pot instead of the more-likely-for-pre-1600 Italy clay baking pot, but it was the only heavy covered pot I have that I'd be willing to put in a fire. Lesson from this experiment: the bread probably only needs half as much baking time as in the oven at home. I checked it after 45 minutes of the expected hour, but I think I could have gotten away with only 30 minutes of baking time and had less burnt crust to cut off.

The part I know would turn out fine in this experiment even if nothing else did was the asparagus. I found some directions from a Renaissance Italian cook indicating that asparagus should be boiled until just tender, then dressed with oil and vinegar and fresh herbs. Even at my worst with outdoor cooking, I can manage to boil water as long as I have enough fuel. The vegetable was perfectly crisp-tender the way I like it, then I dressed it with a simple red wine vinegar-olive oil vinaigrette (with a dash of sugar), salt, pepper, and chopped fresh parsley. No need for the cold-water shocking after blanching. The air was brisk enough that the asparagus cooled off right quick after I put it on the serving plate. I was pleased to see that the plate of vegetable disappeared just as quickly as my other dishes. I guess the people who like asparagus ate it enthusiastically.

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Easter leftovers idea: orange stew

This stew gets its name not because it has oranges in it, but because it is a bright-orange-colored, warm and nutritious resting place for the last bits of ham left over from Easter dinner. Since our balmy spring weather of March this year turned chilly and wetter as April went on, a new soupy dish was exactly what I needed to stay invigorated.

Orange Stew
2 Tbsp butter
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chunked (about 2 to 2.5 pounds)
4 medium-sized carrots, peeled and chunked
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp ground sage
seasoning salt (such as Lowry's) to taste
black pepper to taste
1/2 pound leftover Easter ham, diced

Melt the butter in a large pot. add the vegetables, stock and seasonings (go easy on the salt, the ham will add more later) and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat, cover and simmer until the vegetables are tender enough to mash. Add additional stock if stew is too thick for your liking. Mash vegetables, add ham and cook over medium-low heat until ham is heated through. Reseason if needed.

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Easter menu: violets and some other food

It's the start of the third year of having a yard without chemicals like fertilizer or pesticide (I don't know what the previous owners did, so I'm starting from when we moved in). To celebrate, this year we're eating edible flowers that appear in the yard.

At the special Easter lunch I made for myself and my husband, violets were the stars. They are the first of the edible flowers to show up in the spring. We went out in the morning to pick a bowl of the teeny purple flowers from our backyard.

In documenting the Easter lunch here, let's start with dessert. I found a recipe for flower pudding with dates and spices in Lorna Sass' To the King's Taste, a collection of recipes from the time of King Richard II of England and Sass' modern interpretations of the recipes. The original recipe called for roses, but Sass indicated violets might be appropriate in early spring, so I tried it out. Into the saucepan go the flowers and some almond milk along with thickeners, spices, and sweeteners.

After chilling and setting and a bit of garnishing with some fresh flowers, here's the end result:

This dish did not meet expectations, but I would not call it a failure. The pudding is delicious despite the drawbacks of its slightly grayish purple color and the fact that the pudding ends up tasting much more like dates than like violets, which have a very light and subtle flavor that may have been destroyed by cooking. I'll try the same recipe again in a few weeks when the first roses bloom and see if the stronger flavor of roses holds up better in the pudding.

Violets turned up again in the first course of lunch, which was spring mix greens and sauteed asparagus with a balsamic vinegar reduction sauce.

Next year, I'm going to have to pick more violets for salads. They are fantastic with greens!

The usual main attraction of Easter dinner, the ham, was hardly an afterthought, it just didn't have the same level of novelty as the edible flowers. I've never made a glazed ham before, and Andrew and I recalled Easter hams of our growing-up years were unglazed. I pulled the basic ham glaze ideas from  Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook of 1950 and dressed it up with balsamic vinegar. It was served with buttered peas with caramelized shallots.

Final verdict from the eaters? Glazed ham is here to stay on our Easter menu, for as long as we don't mind all our ham leftovers being a little sweet. The payoff of taste sensations was definitely worth the extra effort of pulling out the ham in the middle of baking, scoring and glazing. Also, I love how the pink and green food looks so appetizing on my pink-and-white china.

Wine served: a surprisingly apt German Riesling from the Mosel, Ernst Loosen's Dr. L from 2010. Hooray to the liquor store that has everything, including good wine recommendations for ham!

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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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Summer sweet corn revival

Sweet corn is sunny and yellow, storing up in its sugars the energy of the grilling-hot summer sunshine. In the winter, looking at the sweet corn from August that I stored in the freezer is a reminder of when I enjoyed longer hours of daylight, farmer's markets and CSA boxes and seeing green growing things outside.

In Bloomington-Normal, the arrival of the sweet corn harvest is cause for a public celebration. In the photo, I'm at the Sweet Corn Blues Festival in Normal, eating an ear of the crop that covers our county and listening to blues music. I bought a sack of corn at the latest festival to take home. This week, on the day of the first snowstorm of the winter season, I made a soup from some of that corn to bring back a little of summer's warmth.

Corn Chowder
recommended vessel: stockpot of at least 8 quarts

4 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 medium onions, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 Tbsp flour (for a thicker soup, use 4 Tbsp)
4 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
8 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried epazote
1 tsp cumin powder
2 pounds sweet corn kernels
2 cups soy milk (unsweetened) or dairy milk (for a thicker soup, use cream)
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat butter with the oil in the stockpot. Cook the carrots a couple of minutes, then add the onions and cook a couple of minutes, then add the bell pepper. When the vegetables start to become tender, sprinkle with flour and stir well. Add stock and scrape the bottom of the pot thoroughly to pull up any flour stuck to the bottom. Add potatoes and spices. Bring to a rapid boil, then turn down the heat and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add corn and milk and heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Possible garnishes: yogurt/sour cream and chopped chives, chopped fresh basil, sliced scallions, drizzle of cumin-infused olive oil

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On the 14th Day of Christmas, my true love sent to me / An updated blog entry

Sorry for the unexpected one-month hiatus, all. This past December was a time of action, not written words. Much baking and cooking took place, but none of it was documented here at the time it was happening.

Some highlights of the Christmas season in my kitchen:
1. Testing out a household favorite, tofu-carrot scramble, on a potluck group. Positive comments from people who liked the gingery taste. The basics of how Andrew and I make this recipe come from the recipe in the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. We just don't measure things anymore and I think I dropped an ingredient or two from the recipe long ago before I taught it to Andrew. I'm still debating on whether I should make this dish at work. Its appearance is not as good as its taste, I'm afraid. It's a bit like chunky yellow-orange vomit on rice. Maybe a nice garnish of chopped cilantro and using julienned carrot instead of grated would make it look more appealing.
2. The 15th-century pie recipe that looked doomed to fail until the moment I put some in my mouth. Another potluck experiment, going from a historical recipe that gave zero amounts or proportions, just a list of what ingredients to add when (and I think even these were out of order, so I adjusted based on the order of instructions in similar recipes from other sources from the same country). This pie was like a savory custard with dried fruit for sweetness. I messed up baking the crust blind (forgot the parchment paper under the pie weights), the crust shrank considerably, the custard took much longer than expected to even start pretending to set, I used far too much beef marrow so the filling looked a bit greasy while baking, I added the spices during the wrong step of the process (no matter, it seems). I couldn't believe how good it tasted after all those mistakes and how ugly it looked. And the crust was the flakiest I've ever made. Gives a whole new understanding of a "foolproof" recipe. However, my version needs some serious revising before putting it out here for others to try.
3. Are krumkaker still good after being frozen? This year's batch of Norwegian Christmas cookies was donated to science. I have also learned that the plural of krumkake is krumkaker. I packed the cookies in a box and gave them to one of the owners of the cafe/kitchen store where I work so she could experiment with how long they are still delicious when wrapped tightly in plastic (she reports the batch from two days before Christmas was still good on New Year's Day) and whether they could maintain crispness after being frozen and thawed. Still waiting on the lab results from the frozen portion of the batch.

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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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Quiet Thanksgiving dinner for two

Thanksgiving Day was not a large celebration this year, just me and my husband. Since we both had the day off work, I slept in and spent the rest of the morning cooking up a special small feast with lots of local items.

Here's our feast table just before we dig in:

The menu

Main dish:
a locally-raised organic chicken, roasted with rosemary sprigs (from my own backyard) stuffed in the cavity

Side dishes:
golden beets from the special Thanksgiving farmer's market, roasted in the pan with the chicken
spaghetti squash from a friend's backyard, roasted and seasoned with salt and pepper, butter and brown sugar
rose heart radishes from the CSA, boiled and then sauced with a roux-based white sauce with chicken bouillon base and lactose-free milk

Dessert:
pumpkin custard in pie form, with prosciutto bits rolled into the crust

To drink:
a California Chardonnay

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