Summer Chickpeas

White and red chickpeas, the latter being the most wholesome, are some of the healthiest vegetables you could find. To cook them take a ladleful of the red chickpeas and boil them with unsalted water with plenty of oil, and when they are cooked squeeze lemon juice over them… If lemon juice is not available, radish juice has more or less the same effect. The length of time chickpeas take to cook depends on the quality of the soil they were grown in. When you have some of the kind which take a long time to cook, leave them to soak all night long in a pot with some hot charcoal tied in a piece of coarse, clean linen. Next morning rinse the chickpeas well in tepid water and put them in a pan or earthenware pot with fresh water and salt… add some sage and rosemary, a moderate amount of oil and, for those who like it, two or three cloves of garlic.
Giacomo Castelvetro. The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy. trans. Gillian Riley. p79.

About the Author and the Source
Giacomo Castelvetro, the son of a wealthy banker, was born in Moderno in 1546. He spent a great deal of his life travelling and teaching, having to flee to live with his uncle in Geneva when he was just seventeen. Giacomo’s uncle Ludovico lived on a simple diet of vegetables and fish, and this is thought to have greatly influenced Giacomo’s attitudes to food.

From 1592 until his death in 1616, Castelvestro lived in England and Scotland, and was apparently appalled at the meat-heavy diet consumed throughout Britain (Castelvetro p43). He began compiling The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy in 1614, in an effort to convince the English to vary their diet. English cookbooks were starting to feature more dishes containing vegetables, but Castelvestro aimed to elevate the humble vegetable far more in the English diet. He dedicated the book to Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford, in the hopes of securing her patronage, but he was unfortunately unsuccessful, and he died soon after finishing the book. Sadly, the book remained obscure for decades, and not until John Evelyn’s Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets, published in 1699 would a cookbook again be devoted to vegetables, and the English diet start to include more vegetables.

******

This is a wonderful dish to serve at summer feasts (such as Lochac Twelfth Night), as chickpeas are easy to prepare and easy to eat. Castelvestro notes the noble ladies of Italy buy them directly from the peasant women who pick them in the summer, and eat them “for fun.” (p79).

I only became aware there were other varieties of chickpeas than yellow when I started to look at Italian cooking. Maestro Martino was particularly fond of the red ones, perhaps because of the health benefits suggested by Castelvestro. I’d never heard of red chickpeas before and I’d never seen them anywhere. Fortunately, I have an excellent Indian grocer nearby, and they had some (and their yellow chickpeas were cheaper and better quality than the ones I could get from the supermarket). If you can get different colours of chickpeas, it makes for a more visually appealing dish. Red chickpeas also have a slightly sweeter taste.

I am not sure of why you need a piece of hot charcoal in the water as the chickpeas soak. Having said that, there are brands of dried chickpeas I avoid because they just don’t cook as well, even if they’re soaked for hours. Perhaps I need to do some more experimentation with chunks of charcoal wrapped in linen! Castelvestro’s instructions also suggest two similar but different methods of cooking the chickpeas. I have chosen the second method, where extra ingredients are added to the cooking water to enhance the final dish; though this may apply only to the chickpeas that need special soaking.

Ingredients

50g dried chickpeas, either red, yellow or a mixture of the two

12 sage leaves

2 long sprigs rosemary

3 cloves garlic, peeled

40mL extra virgin olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

Method

1. The night before, put the chickpeas to soak in at least four times the amount of water. If you are using different colours of chickpeas, you can soak them separately, but this isn’t completely necessary.
2. Rinse the chickpeas well. You will find they have expanded considerably.
3. Crush the garlic cloves, tear the sage leaves and strip the rosemary leaves from the sprigs.
4. Put the chickpeas, garlic, sage leaves, rosemary and olive oil in a pot of cold water, and bring to the boil.
5. When the water is boiling, reduce to a simmer and cook until the chickpeas have softened, stirring regularly. You will probably need to need to top up the water occasionally. The easiest way to check the chickpeas have cooked is to eat one.
6. Drain the chickpeas and allow to cool. Before serving, pour the lemon juice all over the chickpeas and stir them well.

Notes

• It is well worth taking the extra time with dried chickpeas for this recipe (or just about any recipe involving chickpeas). Canned chickpeas taste different and have a slightly mushy texture, while reconstituted chickpeas have a much firmer texture, even after cooking. You can also add extra things to the cooking water (such as the herbs, garlic and oil used in this recipe) to alter the flavour.

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
(add to end of Book Depository link – ?a_aid=leobalecelade)
Castelvetro, Giacomo. The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy.

Italian Cheese Fritters

FRITTERS MADE WITH EGG WHITES, SIFTED FLOUR AND FRESH CHEESE
Follow the directions and method described in the preceding recipe [Elderflower Fritters], but add neither milk nor elderflowers to these fritters.

ELDERFLOWER FRITTERS
Take some good fresh cheese and a little aged cheese, and crush well, adding a bit of sifted flour to them and the necessary amount of egg whites; likewise, a little milk and some sugar; and grind all these things well together, remove from the mortar, and add a sufficient amount of elderflowers at your own discretion; they should not be crushed or crumbled, so as not to make the mixture too clear, that is, too liquid, so that you can form the round fritters using your hands, or in whatever shape you like, and then fry them in good rendered lard or butter, or in good oil; and serve very hot.
Maestro Martino of Como, The Art of Cooking, trans. Jeremy Parzen, 92.

Fritters such as these are a staple of medieval cookbooks and feasts. They are generally easily prepared morsels that could be served at any stage during a feast. Maestro Martino recommends serving these hot, but they can also be eaten cold. You can make them ahead of time and reheat them in an oven.

Ingredients

375g ricotta

70g parmesan

2 egg whites

100g flour

50g fine sugar

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Butter

Method

1. Drain excess liquid from the ricotta by placing in a fine mesh sieve and pressing. Finely grate the parmesan. Sift the flour. Whisk the egg whites until they are combined.
2. Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well to combine. This is best done with the hands. The mixture will be quite stiff, but will hold together.
3. Shape the mix into round, flat fritters prior to cooking.
4. Heat the oil and butter in a skillet or on a hot plate, and fry the fritters on each side until they are golden and crisp.
5. Serve the fritters hot for preference.

Notes

• Fresh cheese is any cheese made from the curds, with no aging and little pressing. I have suggested ricotta, but you could also use feta or chevre, or any fresh cheese you like.
• Even in the medieval period, Parmesan cheese was a coveted luxury. It was probably first exported from Italy in C14, and was prized throughout Europe. The relative dryness and higher salt content of a good parmesan cheese makes it easy to transport long distances without spoiling (Kindstedt, 2012, 155-157).
• Egg whites freeze well and defrost without losing any integrity. If you have a recipe that specifies egg yolks buy no immediate uses for the whites, freeze the whites for occasions like this.

Cheese and Egg White Fritters

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Kindstedt, Paul (2012). Cheese and Culture.
Martino, Maestro of Como (2005). The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, trans. Jeremy Parzen.

White Garlic Sauce

White Garlic Sauce
Take some almonds that have been carefully peeled and crush; when they are half-crushed, add however much garlic you like, and crush together adding some cool water so that they do not purge their oil. Then take some bread white and soak it in lean meat broth, or fish broth if on a fast day; and you can serve this garlic sauce to suit all seasons, fat and lean, as you wish.
Maestro Martino of Como, The Art of Cooking, trans. Jeremy Parzen, 79

Sauces were a critical part of any feast, especially when served with meat. Not only did they enhance the tastes experienced, sauces were important in a healthy diet as they helped to balance the humors of the food eaten. All creation was believed to be made up of four elements – earth, water, air and fire, which were combined to be cold, hot, wet and dry. To consume too much of one element was to fall prey to illness. In this case, the cold, wet nature of meat or fish would be balanced by the hot, dry nature of the garlic in particular.

Maestro Martino particularly recommends serving this sauce with boiled or roasted boar’s head (p 29) and a number of fish (p 99-102).

Ingredients

60g raw almonds (removed from shell but still with skins)

70g bread crumbs

4+ cloves garlic, skinned

100mL cold water

100mL beef stock

Salt to taste

Method

1. To remove the skins from the almonds, soak them overnight in cold water. The skins will pop off easily the next morning, either by pushing the almonds from the skin, peeling them or rubbing vigorously in a towel.
2. Before you start to peel the almonds, put the bread crumbs and beef stock in a bowl to soak together. Give them a good stir every so often.
3. Pulverise the almonds and peeled garlic cloves with the cold water. You can do this the period way, with a mortar and pestle, or the modern way, with a blender or stab mixer.
4. Combine the almond and garlic paste, and bread crumb/beef stock mix together and stir well. Add more water or beef stock to thin as required.
5. Give one final stir before serving, and season with salt to taste. Serve at room temperature.

Notes

• It may seem easier to use blanched (skinned) almonds, or even crushed almonds or almond meal. However, the almond flavour is much stronger if you remove the skins just before using. If making in bulk, such as for a large feast, you could use a mix of blanched and raw almonds
• It is far better to make your own breadcrumbs rather than use most store bought breadcrumbs. In general, they are far too powdery and unpleasantly dry to be used in cooking like this. You can easily make your own breadcrumbs in a food processor – simply throw several slices into the processor and whiz. You will get a much lighter coloured sauce if you remove the crumbs, though it isn’t really necessary.
• Garlic was regarded as peasant food, and would generally be considered too coarse for a noble stomach to properly digest (Montanari, 2018, 25). However, being paired with the almonds, an expensive, luxury ingredient, ennobled the garlic so it could be safely digested by noble diners (Montanari, 2013, 21).

White Garlic Sauce, served with roast beef

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Montanari, Massimo (2013). Italian Identity in the Kitchen.
Montanari, Massimo (2018). Medieval Tastes.
Martino, Maestro of Como (2005). The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, trans. Jeremy Parzen.

Frytour of erbes

FRYTOUR OF ERBES
Take gode erbys; grynde hem and medle hem with flour and water, & a lytel ȝest, and salt, and frye hem in oyle. And ete hem with clere honey.
The Forme of Cury 156.

Take good herbs, grind then and mix them with flour and water and a little yeast, and salt, and fry them in oil. And eat them with clear honey.

The text of the original recipe comes from Curye on Inglysch, edited by Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler.

Fritters are a common feature in medieval cooking manuscripts. Butler and Hieatt (p 189) describe them as fried cakes. Like modern fritters, medieval fritters might be a fried, batter covered morsel (apple is common) or, like this, a fried dollop of batter with extra flavourings mixed in. Unlike the typical modern fritter, they were more likely shallow fried than deep fried; the recipe specifies oil, which would be olive oil. Deep frying with olive oil is not recommended unless you want your food to taste awful and possibly give you cancer, as olive oil has a very low smoke point (that is, the point at which it starts smoking, indicating it has broken down).

One major problem I’ve seen with other redactions is the word “ȝest.” This is often translated as “zest,” probably because the ȝ is considered to be a Z. It’s not – this letter is called yogh, and is similar to a modern Y in pronunciation and usage. Modern batters often contain a raising agent such as baking powder or soda, to lighten the mix and make it fluffier. Yeast does the same thing.

Fritters could be served in any course during a feast.

Ingredients

400g flour

approx. 400g cold water

2 cups finely chopped fresh herbs

7g active dried yeast

2 tsp salt

Extra virgin olive oil (for frying)

250g honey

Method

1. Mix everything together except the oil. The batter should hold together, but drop off a spoon in a solid mass. I prefer a thicker fritter, but if you want something closer to a pancake consistency, add a little more water. However, you don’t want it too runny.
2. Cover the bowl with a cloth or clingfilm, and leave in a warm place for a while. The mix is ready when there are bubbles in the surface of the batter.
3. Heat the oil in a fry pan, then drop spoonfuls of the mix into the fry pan. Flip the fritters when there are bubbles on the top of the fritter.
4. The fritter is finished cooking when the base is a deep gold colour.
5. Allow to cool slightly before serving with honey. You can make them up to two days ahead and store in an air tight container, but they won’t be as nice.

Notes

• The recipe does not specify particular herbs – you can use any combination you like. Bear in mind medieval cooks considered things such as lettuce and spinach to be herbs. Let your imagination run as wild as you like!
• The most likely form of yeast would be alebarm, the froth that forms on top of ale or beer going through its first ferment. I’ve never used this, but if you know some brewers, give it a try! It won’t give the fritters an alcoholic taste, or even make them alcoholic, because the alcohol has not yet formed in the brew.
• One of the most common mistakes used in yeast cooking is having water that’s too hot, which kills the yeast. You don’t need to use warm water when cooking with yeast – you can even use water straight from the fridge.
• The amount of water needed will vary according to the weather. Start with around an equal weight of water to flour. A very cold or wet day will need less water than a hot, dry day.
• Bear in mind the honey we use today is extracted using methods that separate almost all of the wax from the honey. Medieval honey had a lot more wax in it before it was used. You heat the honey to boiling, then cool it and skim off the surface to get clear honey.

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
 
Hieatt, Constance and Butler, Sharon (1985). Curye on Inglysch.

(sort of) Capon Torte (Chicken Pie)

Veal, Kid, or young Capon Torte
Take whichever of the meats listed above that you wish, boiling them first, and making sure that the meat is lean and fatty; and once you have removed every nerve, finely chop with a knife; then crush slightly in a mortar; and take some fresh cheese, and little bit of good aged cheese; likewise a little parsley and marjoram, finely chopping the one and the other, and ten or fifteen eggs with a pork belly or veal udder that has been well boiled and very finely chopped, adding a bit of pepper, some ginger, some cinnamon, some saffron, and cook the same way you would a white torte.

White Torte
… Then make the dough or rather crust in a pan, suitably thin, and cook very slowly, applying heat from below and above; and be sure that it is browned on top by the heat; and when it seems to be done, remove from the pan … Maestro Martino of Como, The

This was a recipe I made up while developing a recipe for Maestro Martino’s Capon Torte. I was hampered by the use of “torte” (in modern terms a sweet, layered cake) for a recipe that was clearly a tart or pie. I also thought the Maestro specifying 15 eggs was a bit ridiculous. In this version I made the Maestro’s recipe into a chicken pie; after doing some further research I came to the conclusion it was a tart rather than a pie (that is no pastry lid), and furthermore the 15 eggs are not ridiculous; but this recipe was so tasty I’ve kept it anyway.

If you’re interested, the final recipe for the Capon Torte can be found here.

Ingredients

1 quantity shortcrust pastry	100g pork belly or speck	1/2 tsp pepper
350g skinned chicken meat	3 large eggs	1/2 tsp ginger
100g ricotta cheese	2 tbs chopped parsley	1/4 tsp cinnamon
25g grated parmesan cheese	2 tsp chopped marjoram	1/4 tsp saffron

Method

1. Put the chicken into a pot of cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook until the chicken has turned white and is fairly firm to the touch – it should still have some give.
2. Allow the chicken to cool slightly and chop into fine pieces.
3. If the skin is still on the pork belly, remove it, and finely slice the pork belly, including the fat.
4. Put the pork belly pieces into a pot of cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook until the pork meat has changed colour and the fat has started to dissolve. Drain and allow to cool slightly.
5. Put all the filling ingredients in a bowl, and mix. It’s easiest to do this with your hands – just get them in there and smoosh.
6. Divide the pastry into two pieces, one larger than the other (you want the larger piece to be approximately 2/3 of the pastry). Roll out the larger piece of pastry to approx. 3mm thickness and line a greased 20cm pie plate with it.
7. Dock the bottom of the pastry and pour in the filling.
8. Roll out the smaller piece of pastry to form the lid. Brush the edges of the pie with beaten egg or milk, and then lay the lid on top. Press the edges firmly to seal, then cut a cross into the lid of the pie to allow steam to escape. If desired, brush the lid of the pie with beaten egg or milk.
9. Put into a preheated 200°C oven and bake for around 345 minutes, or until the pastry has gone golden and started to pull away from the pie plate.
10. Serve the pie hot or cold.

Notes

• Even in the medieval period, Parmesan cheese was a coveted luxury. It was probably first exported from Italy in C14, and was prized throughout Europe. The relative dryness and higher salt content of a good parmesan cheese makes it easy to transport long distances without spoiling (Kindstedt, 2012, 155-157). If you are uncertain about using Parmesan in this recipe, you could substitute a milder cheese, such as Gouda or Edam.
• There are no recipes for pastry in Maestro Martino’s book. The recipe I used is adapted from an English recipe that’s roughly contemporary to Maestro Martino (click on the link for more information).
• Part cooking the meat ensures the filling will be cooked when the pastry is done. It may seem weird to not just chop the chicken and the pork together; however chicken is easier to cut when it’s wholly or partially cooked rather than raw, and pork belly, because of the fat, is much easier to cut raw.

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Bach, Volker (2016). The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany.
Kindstedt, Paul (2012). Cheese and Culture.
Martino, Maestro of Como (2005). The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, trans. Jeremy Parzen.
Scappi, Bartolomeo (2008). The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), trans. Terence Scully.

Capon Torte (Chicken Pie)

Veal, Kid, or young Capon Torte
Take whichever of the meats listed above that you wish, boiling them first, and making sure that the meat is lean and fatty; and once you have removed every nerve, finely chop with a knife; then crush slightly in a mortar; and take some fresh cheese, and little bit of good aged cheese; likewise a little parsley and marjoram, finely chopping the one and the other, and ten or fifteen eggs with a pork belly or veal udder that has been well boiled and very finely chopped, adding a bit of pepper, some ginger, some cinnamon, some saffron, and cook the same way you would a white torte.

White Torte
… Then make the dough or rather crust in a pan, suitably thin, and cook very slowly, applying heat from below and above; and be sure that it is browned on top by the heat; and when it seems to be done, remove from the pan … Maestro Martino of Como, The

It took a number of attempts to get a working recipe for this dish. At first I was hampered by a misunderstanding of what Maestro Martino meant by “torte.” In a modern setting, a torte is a layered, sweet cake, whereas most of the Maestro’s recipes for tortes are savoury and involve pastry. The first attempt I made was an actual pie, with a pastry lid, and used far fewer eggs (I thought 10-15 eggs was a bit excessive). This recipe resulted in a delicious Chicken Pie.

However, further research led me to discover a torte as described by Maestro Martino is “a layered pie akin to the modern quiche.” (Parzen, 2005, 49). Furthermore there are recipes for pies where the method clearly specifies covering the contents, whether the crust would be thrown away (for example Deer or Roebuck Pie, p52), or eaten (Quince Pie, p89).

More experimentation was needed. For my second attempt I made the recipe up as a quiche, with the ingredients mixed into the egg. This was where I discovered Maestro Martino wasn’t kidding about the eggs – depending on the size you actually need that many to make the filling appropriately moist. However, making the torte this way was problematic. The filling was not well distributed in the torte case, and the egg was overcooked at the outside.

I went back to the idea of a torte being in layers – what if the meat, cheese and herbs were in a base layer, with the egg poured over the top? I tried this and was definitely on to something. However again, the egg was overcooked at the outside edge, but not cooked at all in the middle.

I went back to the recipe and noted Maestro Martino’s instructions to heat slowly from above and below. My oven has a grill function – would the grill give me a properly cooked egg top? Result! It worked! Further experimentation showed if the recipe was made into individual pies rather than a large pie, the grill wasn’t needed to cook the egg through.

Ingredients

1 quantity shortcrust pastry	100g pork belly or speck	1/2 tsp pepper
350g skinned chicken meat	10 large eggs	1/2 tsp ginger
100g ricotta cheese	2 tbs chopped parsley	1/4 tsp cinnamon
25g grated parmesan cheese	2 tsp chopped marjoram	1/4 tsp saffron

Method

1. Put the chicken into a pot of cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook until the chicken has turned white and is fairly firm to the touch – it should still have some give.
2. Allow the chicken to cool slightly and chop into fine pieces.
3. If the skin is still on the pork belly, remove it, and finely slice the pork belly, including the fat.
4. Put the pork belly pieces into a pot of cold water and bring to a simmer. Cook until the pork meat has changed colour and the fat has started to dissolve. Drain and allow to cool slightly.
5. Put all the filling ingredients in a bowl, and mix. It’s easiest to do this with your hands – just get them in there and smoosh.
6. Beat the eggs until the whites and yolks have been incorporated
7. This recipe will make 2 20cm pies or 12 individual muffin sized pies. Roll out your pastry to around 3mm thickness. Grease your moulds, then line with the pastry.
8. Dock the bottom of the pastry with a fork.
9. Spoon the meat and cheese mixture into the pastry and gently press until smooth. It should fill around three quarters of the pastry.
10. Put your tortes on the oven shelf, but don’t yet start cooking. Pour the beaten egg into a jug with a fairly narrow spout, and then carefully pour the egg into the tortes, over the meat mixture. You may need to do this in stages, depending on the size of your jug.
11. Carefully push your tortes into the oven and cook at 180°C until the edges of the tortes have started to come away from the moulds, around 25-30 minutes for larger tortes, or 15-20 minutes for individual tortes.
12. To check whether the torte filling is cooked through, insert a skewer into the middle of the filling. If it comes out clean, your tortes are cooked. If not, move the tortes under a grill on a low heat, and cook for a further 5 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean. If you can’t control the heat on the grill, place the tortes as far away from the grill as possible so they don’t heat too quickly and burn.
13. You may find the egg topping on the tortes has risen when you get them out of the oven. This is fine – air gets trapped in the egg white strandsand expands. The topping will lower as the tortes cool.

    

14. Serve hot or cold.

Notes

• Even in the medieval period, Parmesan cheese was a coveted luxury. It was probably first exported from Italy in C14, and was prized throughout Europe. The relative dryness and higher salt content of a good parmesan cheese makes it easy to transport long distances without spoiling (Kindstedt, 2012, 155-157). If you are uncertain about using Parmesan in this recipe, you could substitute a milder cheese, such as Gouda or Edam.
• There are no recipes for pastry in Maestro Martino’s book. The recipe I used is adapted from an English recipe that’s roughly contemporary to Maestro Martino (click on the link for more information).
• Part cooking the meat ensures the filling will be cooked when the pastry is done. It may seem weird to not just chop the chicken and the pork together; however chicken is easier to cut when it’s wholly or partially cooked rather than raw, and pork belly, because of the fat, is much easier to cut raw.
• Using a jug to fill pie or tart cases with a particularly liquid mix (such as beaten egg) was a method used in period. It is much easier to put the mix into the pastry when the case is already on the oven shelf, than to fill the pastry case then carry it to the oven.

Capon Torte


Individual Tortes

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Bach, Volker (2016). The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany.
Kindstedt, Paul (2012). Cheese and Culture.
Martino, Maestro of Como (2005). The Art of Cooking: The First Modern Cookery Book, trans. Jeremy Parzen.
Scappi, Bartolomeo (2008). The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), trans. Terence Scully.

Bratwurst

25 Weltt jr gútt prattwirst machen
So nempt 4 pfúnd schweinis vnnd 4 pfúnd rinderis, das last klainhacken, nempt darnach 2 pfúnd speck darúnder vnnd hackts anainander vnnd vngeferlich 3 seidlen wasser giest daran, thiet aúch saltz, pfeffer daran, wie jrs geren est, oder wan jr geren kreúter darin megt haben/ múgt jr nemen ain wenig ain salua vnnd ain wenig maseron, so habt jr gút brattwirst. Das Kuchbuch der Sabina Welserin

25 If you would make good bratwurst
Take four pounds of pork and four pounds of beef and chop it finely. After that mix with it two pounds of bacon and chop it together and pour approximately one quart of water on it. Also add salt and pepper thereto, however you like to eat it, or if you would like to have some good herbs , you could take some sage and some marjoram, then you have good bratwurst.

The text of the original recipe can be found here.

The translation is by Valoise Armstrong, and can be found here.

Bratwurst translates as “best meat.” They had become an important gourmet food by the sixteenth century

These bratwurst were made using an electric mincer with attached sausage stuffing tubes. In period, the meat was probably minced with a cleaver, as demonstrated in this YouTube video. The sausages could have been stuffed by spooning the mixture into the casing; however, you can also use a cowhorn with the tip removed. This creates a stiff tube onto which the sausage casing can be pushed, and makes the stuffing easier to stuff into the casing. This idea came from An Early Meal (pp 96-97).

Demonstration of cow horn to stuff sausages. The ideal length is 2/3 the length of your index finger.

The recipe below has been quartered.

Ingredients

450g pork (see notes)	500mL water	2 tbs marjoram
450g beef (see notes)	20g salt	1 tbs sage
225g streaky bacon	1.5 tsp pepper	Sausage casing (see notes)

Method

1. Using either an electric mincer, hand mincer or cleaver, mince the meat very finely. If using a mincer, you may find passing the meat through the mincer twice will get the desired texture.
2. Finely mince the herbs, then add the herbs, water, salt and pepper to the minced meat. Then mash it all together. You can really only do this step with your hands, unless you have commercial sausage making equipment (and hands are more fun). You can’t overmix here – in fact the aim is to make the meat texture as fine as possible. You will find the water helps greatly with this; it will be absorbed into the meat and keep it moist while the bratwurst are cooking.
3. Keep mix-mashing the meat until you can lift a large chunk of mixture from the bowl, and it takes a while to fall from your open hand.

   

4. Stuff the meat into the sausage skin. It can help to have a bowl underneath to put the sausage into. If using an electric machine, it can help to have two people involved – one to feed the meat into the hopper of the mincer, and one to pull the sausage away. Both people should try to work to a smooth rhythm.

   

5. When you have used all your meat, cut away any unused sausage skin, leaving around 5cm at the end. Measure off the length of your desired sausage, then twist the long sausage at this point around 3 times to form the individual sausages. Measure off the desired length again, and repeat the twist. Hold the sausage below the point where you are twisting to stop the previous sausages from untwisting (it may take you a few goes to get the action right).
6. To cook the sausages, bring a pot of lightly salted water to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and add the sausages. Cook until they have completely changed colour. If you have access to a smoker, you can also smoke your sausages.
7. To serve, slice the sausages thinly, and serve with condiments such as mustard and ricotta cheese. Blackberry jam is also a weird but tasty serving option.

Notes

• For a good sausage mix, you need around 20% fat. Much of this will come from the bacon. For the pork, I like to use shoulder, which has a good covering of fat and reasonably lean meat. For the beef, I like to use rump for the same reason. You might also be able to get extra fat from a butcher from their trimmings.
• You can use synthetic casings or natural; the pictures in this recipe all use natural casings, which are the cleaned intestines of (usually) pigs. They can be obtained quite easily (and cheaply) from butchers.

Smoked Bratwurst

Simmered Bratwurst

Further Reading

Click on the links below to buy direct from The Book Depository.
Bach, Volker (2016). The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany.

Serra, Daniel and Tunberg, Hanna. An Early Meal. Chronocopia Publishing (2013).

Black Barida (Chicken in Raisin Sauce)

Pound black raisins very well. Stir and mash it with a small amount of vinegar. Strain the liquid and add a small amount of cassia, galangal as needed, and a little ginger. Pour over it some olive oil and add a small amount of chopped rue. Pour sauce over [roasted] pullets.
Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, Kitab al’Tabikh Chapter XXXI (The Book of Dishes, trans. Nawal Nasrallah)

Baridas are cold dishes served at the start of the feast, after fresh fruit was served (Zouali, 2007, 56). They are generally composed of light foods – fish, chicken or vegetables, though there is an occasional recipe for red meat (Zouali, 2007, 63). It was believed the stomach took a while to “warm up,” and putting heavy food into an unwarmed stomach would cause indigestion (Zouali, 2007, 64).

Ingredients

1 roasted chicken, or 1.5kg roasted chicken pieces
375g raisins	2 tsp powdered ginger
80mL wine vinegar	3 tbs olive oil
1 tsp cassia or cinnamon	2 tbs finely chopped feverfew
½ tsp powdered galangal	1 tsp salt (optional)

Method

1. To make the sauce, grind the raisins and vinegar to a pulp in a mortar and pestle, or pulverise in a food processor.
2. If the sauce is too dry, add more vinegar.
3. Pass the mix through a sieve, add the rest of the ingredients and stir well.
4. Combine the sauce and the chicken and serve cold.

Notes

• I have followed Nasrallah’s lead in using roast chicken with this dish (Nasrallah, 2009, 167) – most chicken barida recipes in the same book specify roast chicken. However, it also works well with sliced poached chicken breast.
• When using roast chicken in feasts, I like to use chicken wings chopped in half and roasted. They don’t take long to cook, and are very easy to portion (and they’re cheap!).
• Cassia and cinnamon are spices obtained from the bark of related trees, and are often both identified simply as cinnamon. When powdered, cassia has a stronger smell, and is reddish in colour. You will probably need to go to a specialised spice store to find them differentiated (Hemphill, 2006, 156-163).
• If using ginger, try to track down whole dried ginger which has to be grated before use. This is the way ginger would have been purchased in the medieval period, and it has a far more powerful flavour and scent.
• I have replaced the rue with feverfew.  It has a regrettable tendency to cause allergic reactions (and miscarriages), plus is very bitter.  If you can’t find feverfew, you could also use rocket (arugula), in greater quantities. Both feverfew and rocket are also bitter, without the severe allergen problems.
• I recommend using powdered galangal rather than fresh – fresh galangal can be tough, so it’s difficult to peel and cut.

Further Reading

Click on the links below to order books directly from the Book Depository.
Hemphill, Ian (2006) Spice Notes and Recipes
Nasrallah, Nawal (2009) Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens
Zaouali, Lilia (2007). Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World.

Nuhud al-Adra – Virgin’s Breasts (Revisited)

Knead sugar, almonds, samid and clarified butter, equal parts, and make them like breasts, and arrange them on a brass tray. Put it in the bread oven until done, and take it out. It comes out excellently.
Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada Chapter XI (The Description of Familiar Foods, trans. Charles Perry)
Features in Medieival Arab Cookery, ed. Maxime Rodinson.

If I had to nominate a signature dish, this would probably be it. I have cooked this dish multiple times, and handed out the recipe many times as well (you can find the original recipe, along with the story of its development, here). It’s an easy recipe, the biscuits are delicious, and there is room for as much innuendo as you please.

However, the texture was slightly grainy. I put this down to the sugar, because it’s difficult to cream clarified butter and sugar together, and the sugar doesn’t completely dissolve. I have recently been revisiting Middle Eastern cooking with one of my apprentices, and I noticed there are recipes in various sources calling for powdered sugar (which in Australia is known as icing sugar). Knowing powdered sugar dissolves very quickly in any liquid (such as clarified butter), I wondered whether replacing the caster sugar with icing sugar would give a better result. It does. The resulting biscuits have a much smoother texture, and are easier to shape as the mix is moister.

Ingredients

200g clarified butter	200g semolina
200g icing sugar	200g almond meal

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C.
2. Mix the semolina and almond meal in a bowl.
3. If your clarified butter is not melted, melt it, and then combine with the sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is frothy. You can do this step with an electric mixer.
4. Gradually add the combined semolina and almond meal to the butter and sugar – it is better to do this by hand.
5. Take walnut sized balls of dough and press in to “breast” shapes. You can also mould small nipples and press them gently into the top of the “breasts.”
6. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until pale gold.

Notes

• Clarified butter, or ghee, is butter with the milk solids removed. To make it, heat butter over a gentle heat until it is completely melted and bubbling. You will see a white scum on the surface. These are the milk solids. Strain the melted butter through a strainer lined with a double layer of muslin and you will be left with lovely clear clarified butter. Because the solids are the bit that makes butter go rancid, clarified butter does not need to be stored in the fridge. Some lactose intolerant people are fine with clarified butter, as most of the lactose is removed with the solids. You will need about 250g of butter to get 200g of clarified butter, or you can buy ghee from Indian or Middle Eastern grocers.
• There is some debate about what samid is; it’s definitely some sort of wheat product, but it’s not normal wheat flour. Charles Perry believes it’s fine semolina (Perry, 2005, 22), which is made from durum wheat, also used to make pasta. It’s coarser than ordinary wheat flour. However, Nawal Nasrallah believes it’s finer than ordinary flour, in which case it would be similar to wheaten cornflour(Nasrallah, 2009, 573).
  Based on my own experimentation, I get better results from semolina, as wheaten cornflour loses too much structure in cooking, and you wind up with mush rather than dough. However , make sure you get fine semolina rather than coarse, as coarse semolina feels like sand in the mouth.
• The original recipe specifies a “bread oven” temperature, which normally would mean a very hot oven. However, I have found that cooking the breasts at a temperature above 180°C leads to them burning quickly, while the middle is uncooked. And no one likes burned breasts.

Further Reading

Click on the links below to order books directly from the Book Depository.
Nasrallah, Nawal (2009). Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens
Perry, Charles (2005). A Baghdad Cookery Book
Rodinson, Maxime (2006). Medieval Arab Cookery

Krautsuppe (Soup of Greens)

Setz Kraut zu mit einer Krautsuppen es sey geschnitten oder gehackt nimm gantzen Pfeffer und gantze Muschatenblüt darunter laß darmit sieden und wenn du es wilt anrichten so nimm darzu gebeht Schnitten von einem weck oder Ruckenbrot schmältzs mit heisser Butter und besträw es mit Ingwer. Marx Rumpoldt, Ein new Kuchbuch CXLIIr (1581)

Set potherbs to boil with a potherb soup, whether they are cut or chopped, and add whole pepper and mace to it, let it boil with that and when you want to serve it, take toasted slices of white bread or rye bread, enrich it with hot butter and strew ginger on it.

The text and translation of the recipe can be found in Volker Bach’s excellent collection of medieval period recipes that can be cooked in a camp setting, Plain Fare, which is available for download here.

“Pot herbs,” or leafy green vegetables, were staples of the medieval diet for all classes of people. However, green leaf soups for noble households invariably included costly spices, which made them very different to the soups that would have been served in a peasant household.

Ingredients

½ small head cabbage	1.5 L vegetable stock	1 tsp ginger
½ bunch chard	½ tsp pepper	25g butter
Bunch parsley	½ tsp mace	Optional: Toasted bread

Method

1. Finely shred the cabbage, chard and parsley.
2. Bring the vegetable stock to the boil, then add the vegetables, pepper, mace and salt. Cook until the leaves are soft. This will only take around a minute.
3. Mix through the butter, and sprinkle with the ginger, just before serving.
4. If desired, serve with toasted white or rye bread.

Notes

• Do not cook the vegetables for long – otherwise they will go bitter and be unpleasant to eat.
• The leafy vegetables I have used are suggestions only. You could use any other herbs such as chervil or coriander, or spinach in place of the cabbage or chard. You could even use kale, though I honestly don’t know why you’d bother.
• You can find a C14 English recipe for a potherb soup here.