Tart it up Week: Quince Tarts

To make a quince tart. Take quinces and cook them well and strain it and put sugar, cinnamon and strong wine thereon.  Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553)

Ingredients
* 3 cups quinces, peeled, cored, roughly chopped into large pieces
* 2 tablespoons cooking wine
* 1/2 cup of raw cane sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, freshly ground
* 1 pie shell

Directions
1) Place quince chunks into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring water to boil on high and then reduce heat to low and simmer. Simmer fruit for approximately 30-60 minutes (quince is sometimes difficult) until fruit is easily broken with a fork.

2) Strain fruit through a colander or mash with spoon to puree.

3) Mix quince mash, wine, sugar and cinnamon together.

4) Preheat oven to 350C.

5) Once oven is hot, pour fruit mixture into pie shell and place in oven. Bake for 45 minutes, or until mixture is bubbling and crust is brown. Let tart cool before slicing.

Tart Week: Apple and Orange Peel Tart

To make a tarte of apples and Orange pilles. TAke your orenges, and lay them in water a day and a night, then seeth them in faire water and hony, and let them seeth till they be soft: then let them soak in the sirrop a day and a night: then take them forth and cut them small, and then make your tart and season your Apples with Sugar, Synamon and Ginger, and put in a peece of butter, and lay a course of Apples, and betweene the same course of apples, a course of Orenges, and so course by course, and season your Orenges as you seasoned your Apples, with somewhat more sugar, then lay on the lid and put it in the ouen, and when it is almost baked, take Rosewater and Sugar, and boyle them together till it be somwhat thick, then take out the Tart, and take a feather and spread the rosewater and Sugar on the lid, and set it into the Orenges, Pilles Ouen againe, and let the sugar harden on the lid, and let it not burne.The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1588)

So there is a redaction of this recipe already by Gretchen Miller. I am going in a different direction from where she went. I will put a top and bottom on my tarts and I won’t be using whole oranges.

Although I won’t be following the recipe literally, for example I will peel and core my apples instead of leaving them whole because it doesn’t actually say to cut them up, I think the important aspects–removing the bitterness from the orange peels, and giving the pie a layered look, and seasoning with the spice choices listed above–will be followed.

I am going to use orange peels instead of whole oranges for the title of the recipe is “tart of apples and orange peels” not orange slices. Although there are sweet oranges by 1588 in England but the most common are Seville oranges. These oranges are not very juicy, the ‘meat’ is rather stringy, and they full of seeds.

Soaking peels and simmering them in sugar-water is a way of taking the bitterness out of the peel. I am not sure that whole oranges, although they will soften when simmered, will sweeten cooked this way.

Orange peels can be made into marmalade using this technique (soaking the peels, boiling, rinsing in water, simmering in syrup.) If you really want to cheat prepared marmalade would totally turn this from a 3 day project to a 1 day.

Directions:

Day 1:
Ingredients: peels from 3 Seville oranges
Directions: Slice the peels thin, removing as much of the white pith as you can. Submerge the peels in water. If you leave them on the counter you can change the water as much as you feel like.

Day 2:
Ingredients: 2 cups of honey
Directions: Drain the peels and cover them with honey and an equal amount of water, then stir well. Put saucepan on a high heat until it comes to a low boil, and then reduce to low heat. Simmer for 2 hours. Cover pot and set aside for 1 day.

Day 3 (actual tart day!):
  Ingredients:
* 6 apples, peeled and sliced into thick rounds
* 1/4 cup + 1/2 cup + 4 tbsp raw sugar
* 1 tsp + 1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground
* 1 tsp + 1/2 tsp ginger, ground
* 1/4 cup butter
* pastry for top and bottom of pie
* 2 tsp of rosewater

Directions:

1. Preheat oven at 350F
2. Mix apples, 1/4 cup of sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, and 1 tsp ginger together.
3. Drain orange peels. Mix peels, 1/2 sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp ginger together.
4. In bottom of pie shell drop pieces of butter.
5. Layer the pie with one layer of apple slices, then cover the slices with a portion of the orange peel mixture. Repeat, but make sure to overlap the apple slices with the bottom ones for more coverage. Repeat until you are out of fruit mixes and then cover pie with rest of pastry. Cut a few small slits in lid.
6. Bake pie for 50 minutes.
7. Mix 4 tbsp of sugar with the rosewater. Using a pastry brush brush top of pie with this ‘icing’. Return pie to oven for 10 more minutes or until pie is bubbling and a golden brown.

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Tart it up Week: Peach Tarts

To make all maner of fruit Tarte. You must boyle your fruite, whether it be apple, cherrie, peach, damson, peare, Mulberie, or codling, in faire water, and when they be boyled inough, put them into a bowle, and bruse them with a Ladle, and when they be colde, straine them, and put in red wine or Claret wine, and so season it with suger, sinamon and ginger. The Good Housewife’s Jewell (1596)

 

This ‘tart’ doesn’t actually say to place in a tart shell and bake. If you stop after mixing wine and sugar with the fruit you get a sauce where the sugar doesn’t quite fully dissolve. It tastes delicious, but the pie is the superior product.

Using a large-holed, pasta strainer to puree the peach meat instead of a food processor works really well. It also de-skins the tougher skinned fruit listed above.

Recipe:

Ingredients
* 3 cups peaches, stone removed, roughly chopped into large pieces
* 2 tablespoons dry red cooking wine
* 1/2 cup of raw cane sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, freshly ground
* 1/2 teaspoon ginger, freshly grated
* 1 pie shell

Directions
1) Place peach chunks into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring water to boil and then reduce heat to simmer. Simmer fruit for approximately 10 minutes, until fruit is easily broken with a fork.

2) Strain fruit through a colander. Place colander, with fruit still inside over a mixing bowl. Break-up fruit with ladle then let cool.

3) Once fruit is cold enough to touch, press fruit through colander with wooden spoon, or your fingers. This will break up the fruit, and remove the skin.

4) Mix fruit slurry, wine, sugar and spices together.

5) Preheat oven to 350C.

6) Once oven is hot, pour fruit mixture into pie shell and place in oven. Bake for 45 minutes, or until mixture is bubbling and crust is brown. Let tart cool before slicing.

Tart it up week: Tart of Cherries

To make a tart of cherries, when the stones be out, another waye. Seeth them in white wine or in claret, and drain them thick: when they be sodden: then take two yolks of egges & thicken it withall: then season it with cinnamon, ginger, and sugar, and bake it, and so serve it. The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1588)

Ingredients:
* 2 cups of cherries, pits removed
* 1/2 cup of wine
* 2 egg yolks, room temperature, beaten with fork
* 1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground
* 1/2 tsp ginger, ground
*1/2 cup sugar
* 1 pie shell or ~20 tart shells

Directions
1) Mix cherries and wine in a sauce pan. Simmer on medium-low for 1 hour, fruit should break apart when cooked. Remove from heat.
2) Mash fruit with spoon, or other tool, to break them up.
3) Preheat oven to 350F
4) Pour eggs into large bowl, pour a few tablespoons of the liquid from the cooked cherries into the eggs and stir briskly. Slowly add all the cherry mixture into the eggs, a little at a time until the eggs are fully mixed with the cherries.
5) Add spices and sugar to cherry mixture and mix very well.
6) Pour mixture into pie shell (or 1 tbsp of cherry mixture for each smaller tart) and bake for 50 minutes (40 for tarts) or until crusts are brown.
7) Cool tarts before serving.

 

Lozenges In Lent Or Outside Lent

Lozenges is a rhombus or diamond shape. It is a very common shape in medieval heraldry.

This deep-fried cookie recipe can be adapted for ‘in lent’ or outside of fast days. Lent recipes are a good way of narrowing research when looking for vegetarian recipes. Sometimes eggs and milk products are allowed for a particular fast day, but most often they are not. It depends on the context that the original recipe was created in.

If you choose to substitute the lard in the recipe below I think a nut or seed oil, or even coconut oil, would taste the best. Strongly flavoured olive oil would be used as a last resort.

This recipe makes around 25 cookies, barely enough to share.

Lozenges in Lent or outside. Take flour, honey and milk. Mix it and roll it out flat like a sheet for a tart. Then cut it any way you want. Cook it in oil when in Lent, and outside of Lent cook it in fat. Let them cool. Then have wine and honey and boil them in a pan with sugar and with some wine. Eat them hot. Wel ende edelike spijse, 15th century

Ingredients:
Cookie:
* 1 cup of flour (plus some to dust rolling pin and counter)
* 2 tsp honey
* 1/3 cup of milk (plus a little more if required)
* 1 445g block of lard

Glaze:
* 1/2 cup wine
* 2 tsp honey
* 2 tsp sugar

Directions:

1. Mix flour, 2 tsp honey, and 1/3 cup of milk and make a cohesive dough. If dough is crumble add more milk, 1 tsp at a time, until it all sticks together. Let dough rest for 5 minutes.
2. Dust counter top with more flour (or put down parchment paper) and roll out your dough flat, approximately 1/2 cm, so dough is easier to handle. Using a knife cut lozengy or other shapes from the dough.
3. Mix wine, 2 tsp of honey, and 2tsp of sugar in a saucepan. Place pan onto a medium-low heat and simmer to thicken and dissolve the sugar.
4. Heat your lard in a pot suitable for deep frying on medium. Drop one tiny piece of dough into oil to test heat level. Once test piece is brown and floating remove it.
5. Slowly and carefully drop pieces of dough into the hot lard, knock the pieces apart with a slotted spoon if they look like they are sticking together. Take cookies out of lard once they turn brown and float. Put the cookies on a cooking rack. Repeat until dough is gone.
6. Remove glaze from heat. Brush the wine mixture on the warm cookies using a pastry brush.
7. Serve as soon as they are cool enough to touch.

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Grated Apple and Cheese Tart

I am deviating from English cooking for the following 16th Century, German recipe:

To make an apple tart. Take apples, peel them and grate them with a grater, afterwards fry them in fat. Then put in it as much grated cheese as apples, some ground cloves, a little ginger and cinnamon, two eggs. Stir it together well. Then prepare the dough as for a flat cake, put a small piece of fat into it so that it does not rise, and from above and below, weak heat. Let it bake slowly. Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin

I found the recipe by throwing “apple” and “cheese” into the Medieval Cookery search engine because I had too many cooking apples and cheese wass on sale. Sometimes that’s just all the inspiration you need.

I confess, I hand grated the quartered apple slices and the peels came right off, I didn’t need to peel them. It’s very similar to how straining poached fruit through a colander also removes skins. I discovered it because I was rushing and didn’t pay attention. How will I ever learn if I get results like this?

My house smells like Christmas.

If I was taking my time with this I would look up recipes for ‘flat cake’ and do the crust properly.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 apples, peeled and grated
• 1 large tablespoon butter
• 1/4 tsp cloves, ground
• 1 tsp cinnamon, ground
• 1 tsp ginger, ground
• 7 oz cheese, grated
• 2 eggs, lighting beaten with a fork
• a pie shell

Directions

1. Heat skillet on medium-high and melt butter. Add grated apple and saute until most of the moisture is absorbed.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Weight cooked apples and measure out an equal amount of cheese, or just add all the cheese and combine.
4. Add spices and egg to apple mixture and mix well.
5. Pour apple mixture into pie shell and bake for 50 minutes, until crust and top of pie have browned.
6. Serve when cooled if you can wait.

Cabbage with Beef Marrow now for less than $66!

So I heard on cbc radio that Neiman Marcus was selling frozen collard greens for $66. Well if brassica is the new trendy food I could totally blog about that! Send me the royalty cheques!

It turns out I already have blogged about wortes before so I can’t nerd about about those collard green recipes again, bringing down the Neiman Marcus coolness factor like only a history nerd can.

However I have a head of cabbage so I move forward. The following recipe is a lovely, calorically dense, winter cabbage stew.

It is flavoured with marrow which is cooked to release it from the bones in the broth. Beef marrow is very creamy and has a deep, earthy flavour rather than the sharp, salty notes of bacon fat, or butter. You can get beef bones from your local artisanal butcher or in the frozen meat section of a low end grocery store and lots of places in between.

This recipe calls for parboiling the cabbage and draining it really well before cooking it in the broth. This would mean that the strong cabbage flavour won’t overwhelm the dish. It also shrinks the leaves before trying to fit other things into a full pot.

Caboges. Take fayre caboges, an cutte hem, an pike hem clene and clene washe hem, an parboyle hem in fayre water, an thanne presse hem on a fayre bord; an than choppe hem, and caste hem in a faire pot with goode freysshe broth, an wyth mery-bonys, and let it boyle: thanne grate fayre brede and caste ther-to, an caste ther-to Safron an salt; or ellys take gode grwel y-mad of freys flesshe, y-draw thorw a straynour, and caste ther-to. An whan thou seruyst yt inne, knocke owt the marw of the bonys, an ley the marwe .ij. gobettys or .iij. in a dysshe, as the semyth best, and serue forth. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (1430)

Ingredients

• Head of cabbage, cored and sliced into large pieces
• 8 cups of broth (any kind)
• 4 beef bones with marrow intact
• 2 cups dry bread crumbs, or leftover oatmeal made with beef broth
• pinch of saffron
• salt to taste

Directions

1. Place cabbage pieces into a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil on a high heat. Remove pot from heat and strain cabbage. Rinse with cold water and then press the water out of the leaves by hand. Chop cabbage into bite sized pieces and return to pot.
2. Cover cabbage pieces with broth, then add bones. Cover pot and bring to boil on a high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer until marrow is soft, and almost falling out of the bone, approximately 1 hour.
3. Remove bones from pot and slide out the marrow using a butter knife. Set marrow aside.
4. Add saffron, salt and breadcrumbs to cabbage mixture. While stirring gently, let mixture simmer for 5 to 10 minutes on medium-low heat, until thickened.
5. Serve cabbage stew hot, with a garnish of marrow, dividing the marrow among the servings.

 

Applesauce for a sick person, Bradley

When I wasn’t feeling well I started looking up medieval recipes meant to serve to a sick person and this recipe stuck in my brain:

Again, emplumeus of apples: to give understanding to him who will make it, take good barberine apples according to the quantity of it which one wants to make and then pare them well and properly and cut them into fair gold or silver dishes; and let him have a fair, good, and clean earthen pot, and let him put in fair clean water and put to boil over fair and clear coals and put his apples to boil therein. And let him arrange that he has a great quantity of good sweet almonds according to the quantity of apples which he has put to cook, and let him blanch, clean, and wash them very well and put them to be brayed in a mortar which does not smell at all of garlic, and let him bray them very well and moisten them with the broth in which the said apples are cooking; and when the said apples are cooked enough draw them out onto fair and clean boards, and let him strain the almonds with this water and make milk which is good and thick, and put it back to boil on clear and clean coals without smoke, and a very little salt. And while it boils let him chop his said apples very small with a little clean knife and then, being chopped, let him put them into his milk, and put in a great deal of sugar according to the amount that there is of the said emplumeus of apples; and then, when the doctor asks for it, put it in fair bowls or pans of gold or silver. Maistre Chiquart, Du fait de cuisine

I picture Chiquart chiding an apprentice cook, who I have named ‘Bradley’, with the line: which does not smell AT ALL of garlic Bradley! Chiquart mentions the mortar smelling of garlic 7 times in 7 different recipes.  I really think there was an absent-minded apprentice that made a dessert that tasted or smelled like garlic as some point. The constant vigilance against ‘Bradley’ making this mistake again humanises this manuscript. People will be people throughout the ages.

To clean garlic out of your granite mortar and pestle use soap and water, rinse really well, and dry really well. I’ve never had the mortar or pestle absorb soapy flavours, but I don’t use flower scented dish soap, or marble. If you are worried about that use baking soda as a paste instead, and also rinse really well.

Ingredients:

• 6  sour apples, cored, and quartered
• 1 cup blanched almonds
• 3/4 cup raw cane sugar

Directions

1. Put apple pieces in sauce pan with enough water to almost cover. Bring pot to boil and then reduce heat to simmer until soft, approximately 15 minutes.
2. While the apples are simmering, grind up your almonds, a tablespoon at a time, in the mortar using the cooking water of the apples to lubricate your almond mush. Be careful, its hot.  Set almond meal/mush into a bowl.
3. Once apples are softened and breaking apart, strain the apples, adding the cooking liquid to the almond mush.
4. Whisk the almond mixture gently (it’s still hot) for a few minutes to make a frothy cream.
5. Strain almond milk through a wire strainer into the saucepan, and heat on medium low until it comes to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to low.
6. Chop hot apple chunks into smaller apple chunks.
7. Add apple pieces and sugar into saucepan of hot almond milk. Continue to simmer  sauce on low until it thickens, and the sugar is melted, 20-30 minutes. Apples will continue to break apart. (optional: simmer for hours, really breaking the apples down)
8. Serve warm, or cold, in a silver or gold bowl.

I apologize for how messy this recipe is and how hard it is to clean fresh almond milk off of the counter top.