Stuffed Beef Rolls or ‘To Make Alloes Of Beef’

 

This is the simplest version of Alloes of Beef that I have found. Daniel Myers covers beef rolls with more ingredients, including boiled egg yolks, and a sour sauce, on his web page. Myers lists three additional sources for the reader to play with if they desire.

To make Alloes of beef. Take lene beef and cut hym in thyn pecys and lay hit on A borde then take sewet of motton or of beef and herbys and onyons hackyd small to gether then straw thy leshes of beef with powder of pepur and a lytell salt and strew on thy sewet and the herbys. And rolle them up ther yn put them on a broche and roste them and serue them up hote. Gentyll manly Cokere (MS Pepys 1047) (1500)

Ingredients
* 1/4 cup suet, broken into pieces
* 2 small onions or one large, minced small
* 2 heaping tablespoons dried sage
* 2 heaping tablespoons dried parsley
* 1 kilo (6) thin beef “inside and sandwich” steaks
* pepper to taste
* salt to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix suet, onions, sage, and parsley together. Set aside.
3. Lay a piece of long thin beef out onto a large cutting board. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover the meat with a generous handful of the suet mixture along its length. Roll up a fat beef roll and then skewer to hold in place. Place it in a baking dish lined with parchment paper. Repeat for each steak. Optional: Dump any left over filling onto the nested beef rolls. 
4. Bake beef rolls on 350 for 50 minutes, or  beef filling reaches 165°F, and onions are softened.
5. Serve them up hot.

Modernly you could probably put the filling ingredients through a food processor and brush on more of a flavouring sauce than a stuffing. If you used beef sliced for fondu and the sauce you could have small appetizers on toothpicks instead of a main course.  

Blantant Self Promotion Friday

Getting a referrer link from Jennifer Strobel from Jennstrobel.com reminded me that it was Blantant Self Promotion Friday!

I have an author’s page on amazon.com now. I can track sales, which is very interesting, and a little bit frightening.

My book is for sale all over the place:

1. The Publisher, Fiver River’s Publishing has it in hardcover and ebook:  http://fiveriverspublishing.com/?page_id=3323
2. Amazon.ca has it in hard cover and kindle
3. Amazon.com has it in hard cover and kindle too–also listing used copies which is shocking for a book just arriving to readers.
4. Wordery.com has it in hardcover
5. Google Play has it as an ebook
6. Kobo has it as an ebook
7. And a whole bunch of sites I haven’t heard of.

My friends seem to like the work but I look forward to seeing reviews from strangers after February 1.

The Tale of Two Tarts – Pear tarts three ways

Sometimes you find two recipes that are fairly similar but with small differences. Like the two recipes that are back to back in A  BOOK OF COOKRYE :

To bake small meats.
Take Egges and seethe them hard, then take the yolkes out of them and braye them in the morter, and temper them with Creme, and then straine them, and put to them Pepper, Saffron, Cloves, Maced, small raisins, Almonds blanched and small shred and grated bread.
Take Peares also sodden in Ale, and bray and straine them with the same Licour, and put therto Bastard and Honny, and put it into a pan and stir it on the fire til it be wel sodden, then make little coffins and set them in the Oven til they be hard, and then take them out againe, and put the foresaid licour into them and so serve them forth.

To make small bake meats of Sirup and Peares.
Take Peares and seethe them in Ale, then bray them and straine them and put Sanders to them and Ale, with the spices aforesaide, and the Coffins in likewise ordered, and so put in the sirup. A.W. A  BOOK OF COOKRYE (1591)

The first “to bake small meats” recipe is pretty straight forward, a honey sweetened pear puree tart with a thick cream sauce that uses all the things to thicken the sauce. The second tart is less clear. Instead of simmering the pear mixture its baked, with a ‘sirup’. Its not clear what the ‘sirup’ A.W. is talking about here.

The manuscript has ‘sirip’ listed in four other places:

“…put in some sirup of vergious, and some sugar…”

” …take Claret wine, Vergious, Rosewater, Sinamon, Ginger and Sugar, boyle them togither, laye your Pig flat like a Fawne or a Kidde, and put your sirup unto it…”

“…and make your sirrop half with rosewater and half with that liquor & put double sugar to your Orenges, and when your sirup is halfe sodden…”

“To make sirup of Violets. … and put to them so much rosewater as you think good then let them boyle altogither untill the colour be forth of them, then take them of the fire and straine them through a fine cloth, then put so much Sugar to them as you thing good…”

So the ‘sirup’ in the second recipe can be three things:

1. the cream sauce from the first recipe.
2. sugar + the cooking liquid
3. sugar + rosewater and cooking liquid

It cannot be verjuice + sugar because I said so.

So a mad scientist er a medieval recipe enthusiast googles the recipes to see what other people have done, and as of today I found nothing for either recipe. The other option open to the cook is to try the variations and see which tastes better.

Makes 37 tarts

Recipe 1 Pear Puree (for both tarts):
* 3 cups of chopped pears
* 500 ml (1 can) light-coloured beer

1. Place chopped pears in small sauce pan. Cover with  beer. Simmer for 1 hour on medium.
2. Strain fruit but reserve the cooking liquid, you will need it.
3. Smash batches of fruit with mortar and pestle with a small splash of cooking liquid and then force through colander with potato masher and/or wooden spoon. This will remove most of the skins.
4. Should arrive at 2 cups of pear puree.

Pear Tart #1 (To bake small meats)

Ingredients:
Cream sauce:
* two egg yolks, cooked
* 1/2 cup cream
* 1/4 tsp each, pepper, mace, cloves
* 1 pinch saffron
* 1 tbsp raisins
* 2 tbsp almond meal
* 3 tbsp bread crumbs

tart filling:
* 1 cup of pear puree
* 2 tbsp white wine
* 2 tbsp honey

12 small tart shells

Directions

1. Make cream sauce: Take 2 egg yolks and mast in mortar and pestle, adding cream slowly. Stir the liquid in the mortar, and slowly pour through a colander into another bowl. Add spices, raisins, almond meal and bread crumbs into cream mixture. Stir well and set aside.
2. Pre-heat oven to 350.
3. Place pear puree, wine and honey into sauce pan and brig to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Place 1 tbsp of pear mixture into each tart shell.
5. Bake for 35 minutes, until tarts are brown.
6. Place 1/2 tbsp of the cream mixture on each hot tart, spreading it out with a knife or spoon. Make sure there is at least 1 raisin on each tart.
7. Serve once cooled.

Tart #2 (To make small baked meats of sirup and pears)

Ingredients:
* 1 cup of pear puree
* 1/4 tsp each, pepper, mace, cloves
* 1 tsp saunders
* 1/4 cup + 1/2 cup of cooking liquid
* 1/2 cup raw sugar
* 1 tsp rosewater
* 25 tart shells

 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Mix pear puree, spices, saunders and 1/4 cup cooking liquid.
3. Put 1/2 tbsp of pear mixture into each tart shell.
4. Mix 1/2 cup cooking liquid and raw sugar together in sauce pan, heating gently to dissolve sugar.
5. Put 1/2 tbsp of syrup onto 12 of the filled tart shells.
6. Mix rosewater into rest of syrup. Put 1/2 tbsp of the adulterated syrup onto the rest of the filled tart shells.
7. Baked for 35 minutes until tarts are brown.

Authors notes:

1. The rose water ones taste better than the ones without. Who knew?
2. The option of putting the “cream sauce” on the second kind of tart and baking it was gross. I’m not including a recipe here. 
3. None of the above recipes tasted of pear.