Friday 6 March

 

Within itself, bread is not a meal but it was a vital part of the Medieval and Renaissance diet.  The Medievalists already did an excellent run down on bread in the middle ages so I won't bore you here with repeating what they've already done.

For my bread, I used mostly what I had around the house.  The all-purpose baking flour would have been for the rich in the Renaissance but it is something that was used.  I also used olive oil, honey, salt, and a cheater starter.  Honey I've previous documented as being used specifically during lent.  The cheater starter is just half flour, half water, and a teaspoon or so of yeast left for 24 hours before I made the bread.  

This isn't too out there for what they did in the medieval period.  Ale-barm has been used since the Romans, really.  All ale-barm is is the yeasty foam on top of ale.  Bakers would collect this and use it in breads and cakes.  This still happens today though the practice mostly lessened in the 18th and 19th centuries.  While the English Housewife is from the early 17th century (the link says 1660, but it also says it's the seventh printing.  The original is from 1615.), it at least shows multiple uses for barm as a leavening agent.  

The cheater starter also happened to smell like ale after 24 hours.  :-)  

To Make a Cheater Starter

1/2 cup of flour 

1/2 cup of warm water

1 teaspoon of yeast ( I used Fleischmann's Active Dry Yeast)

Mix it all together in a jar.  I used a cleaned out jalapeños jar.  Leave with only a cloth or a napkin covering it somewhere out of the way but warmish.  It will smell fermented after 24 hours.  

To Make Bread

3~ cups of flour

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon of olive oil (any oil or fat will do)

3 tablespoons of the charter starter

1/4 cup of honey (sugar is also fine here)

1 cup of water

I added half a cup of water to start to the above mix.  KEEP THE FLOUR ON HAND!  You'll want to add more to the mix as you are blending and kneading it.  Once you've mixed everything to a dough consistancy, add some more flour and just mix it in with your hands.  Keep kneading it until the dough no longer feels sticky.  You'll have to play with the water versus flour levels as you are mixing it and kneading it.  If it's all clumpy and not forming one bit clump, add more water.  If it's not doughy enough and too wet, add more flour.  

Once it feels not sticky, put it in a pan.  Let it rise for a few hours and then punch it down.  Put some olive oil over the top of the dough and let it rise overnight.   

Bake at 375F/190C for 35 minutes.   

The bread is honestly really good.  I had some this morning with just a bit of my butter flavored olive oil (Yes, it's a thing) and salt.  I'll have more later but it's good it's a fasting day or I'd eat the whole thing!

Wednesday 4 March meal

 

Rice with Raisins

This is one of those meals that we'd probably be more likely to eat for breakfast today than just anytime of day during the Renaissance.  Overall, it's very simple:  Rice cooked in almond milk with a bit of sugar, saffron, and raisins.   That's pretty much it.  

This very basic recipe shows up in a few different places.  Sometimes it's rice flour and sometimes it's just rice.  However, rice with almond milk and saffron seems to be pretty common.  

Taken from Medieval Cookery

Taken from Medieval Cookery

"Take good almond milk and let it boil.  And do there in almond with flour of rice and color it with saffron.  And after, dress it with grains of pomegranates or otherwise with raisons, if you don't have the other.  And take sugar and do therein, and serve it forth."

Taken from Medieval Cookery

  "To make rice of Genoa.  Take rice and parboil them in fair water and steep them well.  And then take them off and cast them in a fair vessel and pick them clean and set them on the fire.  And then do to it a broth of fresh beef or of good bone broth and let them boil well and add ground saffron and salt.  And if it be a fasting day, make it with almond milk and serve forth."

Rice wasn't always cleaned of it's husk in the middle ages so boiling the rice to clean it and then boiling it again to cook it makes sense. 

Really, I took the middle recipe and just used rice grains rather than rice flour.  I also added some poudre dulce.   I'll probably have the rest for breakfast in the morning.  

27 Feb Friday's Dish

 

Taken from Medieval Cookery

This one was a successful failure.  What I mean by that is that the mixture failed to retain ball shape when I fried them up but the hash that I did fry up was pretty darn good.  It is a recipe I'll try again with a few changes.  

One, make sure I blend everything separately and thoroughly.  I chucked the golden raisins (sultanas), the blanched almond slivers, and pieces of cod in the blender together.  I should have had each done up separately and then combined them to make the fish balls.

Two, use a bit more fish and a few less raisins.  I used equal amounts, more or less, of each of the three ingredients.  

I did add some Poudre Forte to the recipe which really made it taste amazing.  The ground up raisins should act as a binding agent for the almonds and the fish - I used cod- but nothing got completely ground up so this was the result.  I fried them up in olive oil.  

 

The result!  Yes, I know it doesn't photograph well.  At all.  As you can see, the almonds weren't ground up properly but I got tired of fighting with the blender and just made up what I had.  And yes, I used a blender rather than a mortar and pestle.  

Wednesday Medieval dish

 

Taken from Medieval Cookery

This is honestly one of my comfort foods when I've done medieval Lent in the past.  It's a good, hardy recipe that I've even made for others.  I simply serve it over a bed of saffron rice.

Now, some of you may be wondering, "But wait!  Aren't kidney beans native to the New World?  What are they doing in a 15th C recipe book?!?"  Yes, the red kidney beans we know and love are from Peru.  However, the original Italian calls for "fasoli" beans which just beans beans.  So you can use any beans you want for the dish.  I typically stick with kidney beans of some sort simply because it's what I have on hand.  Not 100% correct but it works well.  

In this case, I used cannellini beans or white kidney beans. 

Ingredients:

 1 can of beans

1 1/2 tablespoons of dried minced onions (you can use half a regular onion if you want, I just was being lazy and didn't want to cut an onion)

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/4 cup of Garden Vegetable broth

Pepper to taste

Salt to taste

A pinch of saffron

I stir fried the beans with the ingredients for maybe seven minutes?   I was waiting on the rice - which is the kind from a bag - to finish.

This is such a good dish simply because it's not super complex, it's stuff we still easily eat today, and who doesn't like rice and beans?

1st Friday of Lent meal

 

Taken from Medieval Cookery

This morning, I tried to make almond milk with my new fangled Christmas gift of a soy milk machine.  It worked -and I had hot chocolate- but I ended up with a lot of ground up almond paste.  I looked up recipes that use almond paste and this was one of the ones that sounded both simple and pretty decent.  Plus, I got to use up the rice from Wednesday!  Woohoo!

The Almond Porridge; yes it looks like milk

Ingredients

1/2 cup of almonds ground into paste

1/2 cup of rice ground into paste

1 tablespoon brown sugar

Raisins for garnish

Really, just heat the pastes together and you have the porridge.  I added too much water to the rice paste and the porridge came out more as a very thick soup.  

I ended up eating it more as a dip for these lovelies:

It was DELICIOUS that way.   I highly recommend it.  I may have also gotten the good dates and eaten those as a side dish...

Ash Wednesday Medieval Meal

 

For Lent this year, I will only be doing the medieval meals on Wednesdays and Fridays.  I found out, the hard way, that too much almond milk can cause you to have kidney stones.  

For Ash Wednesday, I wanted a lunch that was easy to make but fit the medieval lenten rules.  Not only on Wednesdays and Fridays will I not have meat - fish is fine-, but no eggs or dairy.  This means no cheese, butter, or yogurt for the full 40 days of Lent if you do the real medieval Lent.  Sundays are a cheat day.  :-)  However, I'm only giving up meat for the full 40 days with Wednesdays and Fridays being "medieval" days.  

For lunch, I fixed a bowl of chickpeas over rice.  The recipe I ended up making came from a number of different sources but here are the main ones.

Taken from Medieval Cookery

Another preparation during Lent. Take crushed or whole chickpeas, set them to cook with oil, salt and peas that have been split, or beaten and diluted in the mortar; and add spices and saffron, and serve.

Taken from Medieval Cookery

Chyches. XX.III. XII. Take chiches and wry hem in ashes all nyzt, oþer lay hem in hoot aymers, at morrowe, waisshe hem in clene water and do hem ouer the fire with clene water. seeþ hem up and do þerto oyle, garlec, hole safroun. powdour fort and salt, seeþ it and messe it forth.

Translation: Chickepeas.  20. 3. 12.  Take chickpeas and dry them in ashes all night, otherwise lay them in hot embers, and in the morning, wash them in clean water and cook them over the fire with clean water.  Cook them up and add to them oil, garlic, whole saffron, pouder forte, and salt.  Cook it and serve it forth.  

Taken from Medieval Cookery

Another preparation. Take boiled crushed chickpeas, and throw away their cooking water, and add fried onions to the aforementioned things, and preserve them well with oil or lard, as the time or day requires.

I added the last one because, well, I added onions.  Having chickpeas with just spices seemed wrong.  Adding the onions and serving it over rice was pretty good, actually.   Here's the recipe I came up with based on these three together.

Ingredients:

 1 can of chickpeas

1 cup of  rice

1 tablespoon of Poudre Forte

1/2 a yellow onion

Salt to taste

A couple of pinches of saffron - about five strands per a pinch

3 garlic cloves, pressed

Olive oil

Preparation

I used enough oil to coat the bottom of the frying pan and added a pinch of saffron.  While that was heating up, I rinsed the rice, added enough clean water to the pot to cook the rice, and added a pinch of saffron to the rice pot.  I also added some salt and started heating the rice up to cook that.

I then returned to the frying pan and added the chopped onion.   After a few minutes, when the onions were soft, I added the chickpeas and let them fry up for about five minutes.  The rice should be done at this point.  Remove from heat but let it sit until the chickpeas are done.

Add in the poudre forte, garlic, and salt.  Stir that up and cook for another minute.  Serve this over the bed of rice.

Conclusion

  I'll probably play with the spices a bit more.  As is, it's fine.  However, I think a bit more of the poudre forte would be great.  For a fasting day medieval meal, I'll probably make it again.