Food for Journeys, Part 1.

For the next few days I will be on the move, travelling from Norfolk to London to Singapore to Brisbane (including a tedious seven hours in the limbo-land of Singapore airport), so my mind will once again be pre-occupied with the pre-eminent travel question of “what shall I get to eat?” (I no longer travel in terror of running out of reading material, thanks to my wonderful e-reader).

To ensure that you still get your daily stories, they will be pre-posted to pop up at the usual time. Naturally, in view of my pre-occupation this week, they will be about travel food - as seen through the eyes of travellers and cookbook writers across the centuries and around the globe.

To start with, I take you back to the thirteenth century, to Andalusia. The recipe is from an anonymous cookbook translated by Charles Perry, and made freely available to us all (grateful thanks!) here. It is for a pasty, which “is very good on journeys”. I can only hope to get something as delicious over the next few days.


Recipe for Barmakiyya
It is made with a hen, pigeons, doves, small birds or lamb. Take what you have of them, after cleaning, and cut up and put in a pot with salt, an onion, pepper, coriander and lavender or cinnamon, some murri naqî', and oil. Put it on a gentle fire until it is nearly done and the sauce is dried. Take it out and fry it in fresh oil without overdoing it, and leave it aside. Then take fine flour and semolina, make a well-made dough with leaven, and if it has some oil it will be more flavorful. Then roll out from it a flatbread and put inside it the fried and cooked meat of these birds, cover it with another flatbread and stick the ends together. Put it in the oven, and when the bread is done, take it out. It is very good on journeys. You might make it with fish and that can be used for journeying too.


Quotation for the Day.

Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?
Peter Matthiessen

Dishing up an Insult, Part 2.

My lovely friend Marisa sent me an email in response to the idea of giving a name to a dish that is also an ethnic slur (or comment). She is an expert in Sicilian food and is writing her own book on it, and tells me that there is a Sicilian dessert called Testa di Turco (Turk's head) which is made of pastry and “in most parts of Sicily it is fried , and layered/topped with custard - cream.” Methinks it sounds good enough to move to Sicily for.

Ever since the crusades the Europeans have enjoyed eating Turks’ or Saracens’ heads in one form or another. There is a wonderfully apocryphal story about Richard I keeping a supply of Saracen’s handy, in case of a hunger attack. He had them apocryphally served

“soden full hastily
With powder and with spysory,
And with saffron of good colour.”

Ridiculous story of course, proving the inverse law of fakelore - the popularity of a story is inversely proportional to the amount of true fact in it.

Medieval folk who could not lay their hands on a real Turk made due with symbolic ones, and often they were glorified pies. Here are two examples from the thirteenth century (from Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections, edited by Constance Hieatt), one for fast days and one for meat days.

Turk's head.
How to make the dish called Turk's head from a fish day or in Lent. Take choice rice and wash it and dry it; then grind it thoroughly, mix with thickened almond milk, and put in spices and saffron, as directed below, and sugar. Make a pastry case; then scald eels and remove the excrement; then cut them up; and take parsley, sage, and some broth, and grind it in a mortar, and put in saffron and mixed ground spice; then cover [with a pastry lid] and put it in the oven.

Turks head. [2]
A sheet of pastry well filled with rabbits and poultry, dates, peeled and sweetened in honey, new cheese, cloves and cubeb; sugar on top, then a generous layer of ground pistachio nuts; the color of the ground nuts, red, yellow, and green.The head (of hair) should be black, arranged to resemble the hair of a woman, in a black bowl, with the face of a man set on top.

There are other Turks’ Heads too. A large variety of pumpkin, and a metal turban-shaped mould for desserts or ices very popular in the nineteenth century.

There are other Cannibal ideas too. (Warning: Shameless Plug Alert) If you are interested in cannibalism (the theoretical aspects of course), you may be interested in Human Cuisine, or part of Gary Allen’s Master-Work in Progress on How to Serve Man.

Quotation for the Day …

Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus. Peter Ustinov.

Mock Food No. 2

April 15 ...

The feedback yesterday convinced me that the rationale behind the mock chicken pie made from pork and potatoes was indeed because chicken was a luxury meat ‘back then’ – compared to ordinary every-day pork. The second part of the conundrum remains however – was it intended to fool the family (or guests)? If they were fooled, did the cook have the last laugh silently, or did she reveal the trick after receiving the praise?

Today’s choices cause no such dilemma. They are foods intended purely for fun, and as they come from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they demonstrate for just how long we have been playing with our food.

The first one is from The Form of Cury, the first known English cookery manuscript which was compiled by the Master Cooks of King Richard II right at the end of the fourteenth century. It is for ‘Golden Apples’ – meat balls made with a ‘farsur’ or ‘farce’ of ground meat, which are then ‘gilded’ with egg and saffron (or parsley if you want Green Apples). See if you can make out the instructions, now that you have some clues. I will post a ‘translation’ at the end of the week.

Pomme dorryse.
Farsur to make pomme doryse and oþere þynges. Take þe lire of Pork rawe. and grynde it smale. medle it up wiþ powdre fort, safroun, and salt, and do þerto Raisouns of Coraunce, make balles þerof. and wete it wele in white of ayrenn. & do it to seeþ in boillyng water. take hem up and put hem on a spyt. rost hem wel and take parsel ygronde and wryng it up with ayren & a party of flour. and lat erne aboute þe spyt. And if þou wilt, take for parsel safroun, and serue it forth.

The second is another favorite that kept popping up for centuries under various spellings. It is for ‘yrchouns’ or ‘hirchones’ – that is, ‘urchins’ or ‘hedgehogs’ – made with spiced ground pork stuffed into pigs’ maws (stomachs) to form fat sausage shapes which were then stuck all over with ‘spines’ made from blanched almonds cut ‘small and sharp’, or in some recipes from small ‘prikkes’ of pastry. The recipe I give you is from the early fifteenth century Harleian manuscript: another source actually suggests making ‘hirchones’ with the maw (stomach) of ‘one great swine’ and five or six maws of (smaller) ‘pigges’- the idea being, apparently, to have a happy little hedgehog family on the table to delight the guests. If you cant get any pigs’s maws at the butcher this week, make them as you would a meatloaf and they will be fine.

Yrchouns
Take Piggis mawys and skalde them wel; take groundyn Pork and knede it with Spicerye, with pouder Gyngere, and Salt and Sugre; do it on the mawe, but fille it nowt to fulle, then sewe them with a fayre threde and putte them in a Spete and men don piggys. Take blaunchid Almoundys and kerf them long, smal and scharpe, and frye them in grece and sugre. Take a ltytle prycke and pryckke the yrchons. An putte in the holes the Almoundys, every hole half, and lech fro sometimes. Ley them then to the fyre; when they be rostid, dore them, sum with Whete Flowre and mylke of Almoundys, sum grene, sume blake with Blode, and lat them nowt browne to moche; and serve forth.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mock Food No. 3

Quotation for the Day …

A clever cook, can make....good meat of a whetstone.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466?-1536)

The Twelfth Day of Christmas

January 6

“On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Twelve drummers drumming ”

I had to save the best till last, and present my dozen with a fanfare of drums (is that musicalogically correct?). Pies, of course.

I would like to offer you a dozen pies. Some you have met before, but may have forgotten. Some are new, just to delight you. They are all – lets say – a little unusual. Hard to find nowadays. Waiting to be rediscovered and molecular gastronomised.

1. Pie of Bull’s Testicles.

2. Pies with live birds and frogs.

3. Blood Pie.

4. Calf’s Head Pie.

5. Old Maid’s Pie

6. Parrot Pie.

7. Burr Pie.
… the rest [of the carcass after the main joints are removed] are brought to market with the hide, and are there taken out by poor women, who also cut off some bits of flesh that lie by the horns, called burrs, with these are made pyes … (Houghton, John . A collection for the improvement of husbandry and trade, 1727)

8. A Pan-pie made of Carps-roes and Tongues.
The Tongues and Roes of the Carps must be laid in order upon a piece of fine Paste, in the bottom of the Pan; season’d with Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, fine Herbs, Chibbols, Morilles, common Mushrooms, Truffles and sweet Butter. Then, all being cover’d with a Lid of the same Paste, let the Pie be bak’d with a gently Fire, and serv’d up with Lemmon-juice.
[Massialot. Court and Country Cook. 1702]

9. Amblongus Pie.

Sadly, amblongusses don’t actually exist. They have not been eaten to extinction, they have never existed - apart from in the imagination of Edward Lear. Should they one day be made flesh, here is his recipe for them.

Take 4 pounds (say 4 ½ pounds) of fresh Amblongusses, and put them in a small pipkin.
Cover them with water and boil them for 8 hours incessantly, after which add 2 pints of new milk, and proceed to boil for 4 hours more.
When you have ascertained that the Amblongusses are quite soft, take them out and place them in a wide pan, taking care to shake them well previously.
Grate some nutmeg over the surface, and cover them carefully with powdered gingerbread, curry-powder, and a sufficient quantity of Cayenne pepper.
Remove the pan into the next room, and place it on the floor. Bring it back again, and let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Shake the pan violently till all the Amblongusses have become a pale purple colour.
Then, having prepared a paste, insert the whole carefully, adding at the same time a small pigeon, 2 slices of beef, 4 cauliflowers, and any number of oysters.
Watch patiently till the crust begins to rise, and add a pinch of salt from time to time.
Serve up in a clean dish, and throw the whole out of the window as fast as possible.

10. Seal-Fipper Pie.
When it was politically correct to eat baby seal flippers, these pies were a specialty of Newfoundland. Have seal-flipper pie-eaters now been forced underground?
As featured in (and apparently actually eaten by Kevin Spacey) in the movie The Shipping News.

11. Electric-eel pie.
Apparently eaten at a nineteenth century dinner of the London Electrical Society, at which they also drank Whitbread stout in order to “trace the galvanic action produced by the contact of the pewter pot with the moisture of the under lip.”

12. Tortoise or Mullet Pie.
Simmer the tortoises lightly in water with salt, then remove from the water and take a little murri, pepper, cinnamon, a little oil, onion juice, cilantro and a little saffron; beat it all with eggs and arrange the tortoises and the mullets in the pie and throw over it the filling. The pastry for the pie should be kneaded strongly, and kneaded with some pepper and oil, and greased, when it is done, with the eggs and saffron.
[From a 13^th century Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook, translated by Charles Perry]

“On the twelfth day of Christmas
My good friend gave to me
Twelve pies a-baking
Eleven puddings cooking
Ten beers a-brewing,
Nine loaves a-rising,
Eight cheeses ripening,
Seven fish a-swimming,
Six eggs a-poaching,
Five golden fruits,
Four keeping cakes,
Three boiling hens,
Two chocolate tarts,
And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Monday’s Story …

A Special Day for Fanny.

Quotation for the Day …

There are few articles of cookery more generally liked than relishing pies, if properly made. Mrs. Rundell, in her New system of domestic cookery. 1807.

Life with Dates.

Today, June 12^th …

Today is the feast day of Saint Onuphrius, who, like the rest of the Saints I have featured in this blog, is only on my radar on account of a food connection. Saint Onophrius was a hermit, as Saints are wont to be, and lived during the 4^th Century in Egypt. He lived entirely, it is said, on dates. He could have made a worse choice (athough there may not have been too many choices in 4^th C Egypt) – because dates are not only nutritious (high fibre, high carb, almost zero fat, and lots of vitamins and minerals etc etc etc), they are delicious.

The date palm is native to North Africa and the Middle East, and is one of the oldest food plants cultivated by humans. It appears that we have been growing it for at least 7000 years in one of the world’s most challenging environments – the hot dry desert. The plant must have developed some spectacular survival mechanisms to have been so successful, and in a truly amazing example of time-warp gardening, a botanist in Israel has managed to germinate a 2000 year-old seed from a Judean date tree that was thought to be extinct. Perhaps one day we might be able to eat dates with a direct link to biblical times, which would be an amazing example of time-warp eating!

There is an old saying that there are as many ways of using dates as there are days in the year, and I don’t doubt that is true. They were certainly known and enjoyed by Europeans in the 13^th century, no doubt thanks to returning crusaders. They were enjoyed only by the wealthy of course, who must have relished their sweetness in the centuries before sugar became cheap. I have chosen two medieval recipes for you featuring dates, either of which would be perfect for today.

The first is from an Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century, translated Charles Perry, and is for a sort of date and nut paste or cake that would be excellent on a cheese platter.

A Sweet of Dates and Honey.
Take Shaddâkh dates. Clean them of their pits and pound a ratl of them in a mortar. Then dilute with water in a tinjir on a gentle fire. Add the same amount of skimmed honey. Stir it until it binds together and throw in a good amount of peeled almonds and walnuts. Put in some oil so it doesn't burn and to bind firmly. Pour it over a greased salâya (stone work surface). With it you make qursas (round cakes). Cut it with a knife in big or little pieces.

The second is a Lenten tart from the first English cookbook, the Forme of Cury (about 1390). As a Lenten dish it contains no milk or eggs. The instructions are strange to us today, but it seems that a thick ‘custard’ of almond milk and rice flour is made and allowed to set, then cut into pieces and layered with cut up figs and dates in the pastry ‘coffin’, and finally more almond milk is poured in before it is baked.

For To Make Flownys [flans] In Lente.
Tak god Flowr and mak a Past and tak god mylk of Almandys and flowr of rys other amydoun and boyle hem togeder' that they be wel chariaud wan yt is boylid thykke take yt up and ley yt on a feyr' bord so that yt be cold and wan the Cofyns ben makyd tak a party of and do upon the coffyns and kerf hem in Schiveris and do hem in god mylk of Almandys and Figys and Datys and kerf yt in fowr partyis and do yt to bake and serve yt forth.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pleasure and Health.

Quotation for the Day …

The first of all considerations is that our meals shall be fun as well as fuel. Andre Simon.