Wednesday, March 20, 2013

page 243 recipe#210 thick soup of garlic

To prepare a thick soup of garlic in meat broth with other ingredients
     When cloves of garlic are clean there should be as many cloves as from fifty bulbs. Parboil them, changing the water often so they lose their strength, and finish cooking them in a good meat broth that is not too salty, along with slices of pork jowl and desalted sawbelly. Just before you want to serve iy, throw in a handfull of herbs. If there is no salted meat in it, you can blend in cheese and eggs, nat failing to put the spices in the one and the other. With them you can garnish and cook doves, cockrels and other fowl, serving them with grated cheese and cinnamon over the top.

I tried this at home in a smaller quantity.
1st try
     Cloves from 5 heads of garlic, cleaned
     2c Meat broth (I used lamb for this one)
     2c Water
     2-4 Eggs (i think I used 2)
     3/4 - 1 cup fine grated Parmesan cheese
     Pepper to taste

bring garlic to a boil and drain 3 times!
Put garlic in the broth/water and set aside to simmer
beat eggs in a bowl
add hot broth to eggs slowly to wrm them before pouring them into the pot
add the cheese
cook for 15 min

serve with toast

Changes for ADD:
I used 50 heads of garlic this served the 70 - 80 people exact! they scraped the pot to serve the last one.
20 cups of broth and 20 cups of water
1 kg of parmesan cheese finely grated
30 eggs (I think, I might have used 40 but not 100% sure)
Did all the pre boiling the night before, stored the garlic dry overnight in the cooler.
Next day noon time added the garlic to the water/broth
Broth was made of beef and lamb

This was distinctly more successful!

More Notes:
     Tried this on a small scale as a vegetarian dish. Does not work! or at least I have yet to be happy with the results. There is no richness to it and it just doesn't taste right.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Page 481 recipe# 97 onion gattafura

To prepare a Genovese onion gattafura.
     Grind struccoli or fresh provatura or provaggiole that are sour*; they should be so well ground up that they become like butter; add a little sweet olive oil to them. get parboiled onions that have been well beaten with a knife, and mix the ground cheese and pepper with them. get a baking sheet that is sprinkled with grated bread and has a sheet of dough on it made of fine flour, water and oil. On that pastry put the filling to a height of half a finger and, with a spoon, go on and sprinkle a little oil over it. Distribute the mixture on top with big pinches. Cover it over with another sheet of dough; splash that with plain water and sprinkle some oil on it with a spoon. Bake it by braiding or in an oven. Serve it hot with sugar over top. Instead of oil you can use butter.

*The translator notes: acetose: acidic, although Scappi's word means literally vinegary.

What I did:
3 medium onions (about 2 cups cut into rings and then in 1/2) boiled until "foggy" colored
125 gm ball of mozzarella
1Tbsp olive oil
2-3 tsp vinegar (white balsamic is what I used)
crushed pepper to taste
Oil Pastry (recipe I used follows)

Chop onions well after they have been boiled
Beat mozzarella until buttery (1-2 minutes in my kitchen aid{stand mixer})
drizzle in olive oil, vinegar and crushed pepper.
Mix with the onion.

Oil crust:
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil
3 1/2 Tbsp water

Mix salt into flour, add oil, and water.
At first it will seem like it is too wet but keep stirring it will firm up.
Divide dough in 1/2 ( this should cover larger than 9in by 13in minimum!)
Cover 1/2 with plastic wrap, TIGHT!
Roll the bottom dough between 2 pieces of baking paper. (I baked mine on paper and not bread crumbs)
Top with cheese and onion
Roll out top layer
Cover
Sprinkle with oil and water
Bake 220 with fan 20 - 30 min (on site temp was 180 with fan for 30 min)

Notes:
The mixture will sit fine in a fridge over night. The oil crust should be made 1 batch at a time and immediately wrapped in plastic wrap when not rolling it out. Definitely roll between 2 pieces of baking paper to get it thin! Otherwise it will stick to your rolling pin!

Should serve 8

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Rice fritters

Page 498 rec#142 To prepare rice fritters

     Cook two pounds of rice in a fat meat brothor else in goat's or cow's milk and sugar so that it is quite thick. Take it out of the pot and let it cool. In a mortar grind four ounces of sugar and eight fresh eggs with one pound of creamy cheese. Make balls of that mixtur; dredge them in fine flour, then fry them in rendered fat. When they are done, serve them hot with sugar on them.

     What I did:
1 c milch reis (this is  ashort grain rice found in Germany specifically for making rice porridge and the like)
3 cups milk 3.8% (whole milk)
3 Tbsp Sugar
pinch of salt

Cook the rice in the milk with the sugar (no not add salt) for 45 min uncovered
add the salt (and yes I mean a pinch you don't want or need too much)
cook 15 more minutes uncovered
Take the pot off the heat and cover it
let it sit for 1/2 hr or over night

If you are making this immediately and not in advance spread the rice out on a cookie sheet or something to cool faster. Otherwise after you put the lid on set it aside to cool.

when it is cooled:
1-2 eggs
4 oz of creamy cheese (I used a Philidelphia type cheese)
1 oz of powdered sugar.

make balls of the "dough:, roll them in flour and fry until a deep golden brown.
Makes about 50 (a little over the size of a hard boiled egg yolk)

NOTES:
     This recipe has been well recieved by everyone I talked to about it. My husband thought they were apple fritters and couldn't stop eating them hot or cold! Eric who was in my kitchen at ADD (omg thank you!!! I love having you there) He ate some with Nutella on them not exactly period but awesomely deliscious none the less. I am happy with this and look forward to maybe trying it with meat broth and different types of rice :)


Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Sauces

I recently experimented with 2 sauces. First a citrus cinnamon and the second a "Pepper sauce" though it tastes like melted liebkuchen to me :)

Page 270 recipe# 270: To prepare a sauce of orange juice and lime juice
     Get  four ounces of lime juice and a pound of bitter or semi-sweet orange juice and set the clearest of it to boil with a pound of fine sugar, a quarter ounce of whole cinnamon and two whole cloves. Give it the cooking set out in the previous recipe for the sauce of pomegranate wine* so that it is reduced by two-thirds.

*that recipe is #264, the cooking instructions are "To boil the mixture over a low coal fire."

I made 2 batches that I ended up mixing together for the final product.

I used 11/2 cups of orange juice
              1/2 cup of lemon juice (to take the sweetness from the orange)
              1/2 cup of lime juice
                1 pound of sugar

Boiled on the stove. Batch 1 with .25 oz of ground cinnamon (as I had missed the instruction for whole until it was too late) and 2 cloves and batch 2 with stick cinnamon and 2 cloves. Both were delightful but the ground cinnamon leaves a gritty texture and heavy taste where the stick leaves a smooth texture and a more subtle and refined taste. For the purposes of the feast I mixed the two together.

Page 264 recipe# 251: To prepare a pepper sauce that can be used like the one above*
     Get a pound of grated bread or of crust less bread toasted on the coals; put it into a pot with eight ounces of must syrup^, a pound of lean meat broth or water, four ounces of vinegar, an ounce of cinnamon and another of ground pepper, cloves, nutmeg and ginger combined. Cook that. When it is done put it through a filter or strainer, adding six ounces of sugar and three ounces of malmsey. Bring it again to a boil in a cooking basin, then take it down and let it cool. As a sauce, serve it with sugar and cinnamon over it, splashed with rosewater. To use it to garnish fowl and game quadrupeds roasted on a spit, keep it thinner with a little broth.

*  Both sauces are served either thick by themselves or thinned with meats
^ Must syrup is a syrup made by juicing grapes and reducing the juice by 2/3 intensifying the flavor

This one posed some problems at first but in the end worked real well as a thinned sauce for the meat.

I used:
1 lb dry bread crumbs
6 cups water
11/2 cup vinegar (red balsamic to intensify flavor)
1 oz ground cinnamon
.25 oz ground black pepper
.25 oz ground cloves
.25 oz ground ginger
.25 oz ground nutmeg
16oz of must syrup ( I am lucky enough to be able to make some each year )
12 oz sugar
1c+2Tbsp sweet white Greek wine

when I reheated it on site I brought 2 cups of grape juice to a boil and added in the mass stirring it up.

When I get a better feel for what the measures of the time were I will re work this (and several other) recipe.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Accademia Della Danza 2013

Greetings post a wonderful event.

This year I found myself a bit behind the 8 ball due to life, so planning took a back seat for a bit then it was a rush job. Despite the rush though things turned out well, for the most part.

The menu:

Salad and Garlic soup with toast
Turkey/ 2 sauces and Genovese Gattafura
Stuffed Kohlrabi and Rice Fritters
Apples in jelly

Most things were fine, the largest problem was tha the jelly didn't set up for the apples, I will have to play with this more. The other "problem" was over cooking the kohlrabi none of this was too terrible but it certainly wasn't ideal.

Well received were the rice fritters, I think that is the dish I heard poeple talk about the most. The sauces too seemed to be a big hit.

The largest trouble seemed to be how allergies and food restrictions were handles at the serving of feast. It seems that not all of everyone got the extra dishes that were made. This will actually be a seperate post in itself that I will make later. I just wanted to note it here.

I will post my full "Post Mortem" later on.