All Aboard for New Year’s Eve.

It is a while since I gave you a cruise ship menu, so here is one from New Year’s Eve, 1941. It is from a ship of the Aberdeen and Commonwealth Line, and appears to have been on a voyage to or from Canada.

Crème de Tomato
Sole Blanchaille
Vol au Vente Toulouse
Supreme of Chicken, Stanley
Roast Sirloin of Beef
Carrots Flamande
Puree & Browned Potatoes
Savoury Rice

Cold Buffet;
Roast Pork, Apple Sauce
Salad
Americano Pudding
Scotch Shortbread
Mince Pies

Coffee Cheese Biscuits Tea.


I am greatly intrigued by the Americano Pudding, but have not been able to find a recipe, so it must remain a mystery for the time being. Perhaps it was a special invention of the chef aboard the vessel?

Instead, here is a recipe for Savoury Rice, courtesy of Mrs Harriet Anne de Salis, from her book Savouries à la Mode (1887)

Savoury Rice.
Put into a saucepan six cupfuls of stock or broth into which has been previously dissolved a good allowance of either tomato paste or tomato sauce, add pepper and salt to taste; when it boils, throw in for every cupful of stock half a cupful of rice, well-washed and dried before the fire. Let the whole remain on the fire until the rice has absorbed all the stock, then melt a large piece of butter, and pour it over the rice.

But is it really Mexican?

Today, in case you are living in a space totally void of food column news and didn’t know, is Cinco de Mayo (‘Fifth of May’) – the anniversary of the day in 1862 when a little Mexican army defeated a French army twice its size. And don’t we all love it when the underdog wins?

There is no dearth of food suggestions for the day - the great mass of American food columnists, cooking magazines and foodie Internet sites have been flooding cyberspace for a week with Mexican food ideas. So, not to be left out, I thought I would offer you some insights into historic concepts (from outsiders) of ‘Mexican’ food.

I trolled the historic cookbooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that had pretensions to ‘international’ coverage, and came up with very little. Such recipes that I did find seemed to scream out their lack of authenticity – but who am I to judge? I am hardly an expert on Mexican cuisine, so please dont shoot me.

I cannot resist the following recipe – on the basis of its name alone it must be included. It is from
One Hundred & One Mexican Dishes, by May E. Southworth, (San Francisco,1906) - a book totally lacking in preface or author credentials.

Mañana-Land.
Fry in a tablespoonful of olive-oil a large slice of onion and eight chopped green peppers; to this add a cupful of uncooked rice and stir constantly until the rice is nicely browned; then put in a half-can of tomatoes and fill up the skillet with rich soup stock and cook slowly, without stirring, for an hour.

My second choice, to my totally Mexican-food ignorant mind, smacks of some authenticity on account of its complexity. I eagerly await comments from those of you knowledgeable about such things.

Chicken Tamales.
This recipe will require a “Metata,” which can be purchased at any Spanish store.Boil in water with half cup of lime, two quarts of yellow, dried com. When wellcooked, wash thoroughly, then grind on the “Metata” three times, until very fine. Boiltwo medium-sized chickens until quite tender; cool and cut in small pieces. Mix with corn enough of the water in which the chickens were cooked to make a soft dough, and add two small cups of lard; season with salt and knead well. Then take three red chilli peppers, remove seeds and roast in oven for a few minutes; take out, place in tepid water, then grind on the “Metata” several times, with two cloves of garlic. In a saucepan put tablespoonful of lard; when hot drop in one chopped onion and [one?] tablespoonful of flour; let cook a minute, then add the chili, then cut the chicken, one cupful each of seeded raisins and stoned olives, and salt and pepper to taste; let come to boil, take from stove and cool.
Have some dry com husks, well soaked for several hours in cold water; shake them well and spread a thin layer of the dough on the half of each leaf; then put a spoonful of the stew on the prepared leaf, and cover with the prepared leaves; tie the ends with strings made of the leaves. When the tamales are finished, place them in a large pot with a little boiling water, and boil gently for one hour. Any other meat can be used.
Fifty choice recipes for Spanish and Mexican dishes (1905)

Quotation for the Day.

I think the great Mexican cuisine is dying because there are fast foods now competing, because there are supermarkets, and supermarkets can't afford to keep in stock a lot of these very perishable products that are used for fine Mexican cooking. Women are working and real Mexican cooking requires enormous amounts of time.
Alma Guillermoproprieto.

Lost and Found.

There are some regular themes in this blog that are beautifully illustrated in this week’s source (The Art of Cookery and Pastery … by J.Skeat, 1769). Some of them are:

- That there are dishes which were once desirable, popular, and common which are now unfashionable, unpopular, or just plain unavailable.

- Other dishes which seem wonderful and elegant and are still eminently do-able even in our time-poor, economically anxious, and servant-free lives - yet have inexplicably disappeared and should be considered for reinstatement.

- There are many dishes which we think are modern, yet can be found alive and well hundreds of years ago, their only disguise being a different name.

I would like to give you an example from each category, from Mr.Skeat’s book.

No one eats lamb’s ears anymore – at least not in recogniseable form (no doubt they get into sausage meat). The following recipe makes no attempt to disguise the ears, indeed, it flaunts their useful anatomical shape.


Ragou’d Lamb’s Ears.
Take care to have them well cleaned, and kept as whole as possible; fill the hollow part with good forcemeat; wash them over with an egg, and send them to the oven: have ready a rich gravy for the dish against they come from the oven, with stew’d sorrel around it.

The following recipe is a very glorious take on the humble rice pudding. May I suggest individual servings for a very elegant dinner-party dessert?

To force Oranges.
Fill two preserved oranges full of rich whole rice pudding boil’d in cream, eggs, sugar, nutmeg and wine, and stir in a piece of butter and some sugar; then have a set custard, and fill the dish; put the oranges in the middle, and garnish with sweetmeats and flowers.

And finally, the humble meat patty, rissole, or burger in a very superior pre-incarnation. Served with the recommended spinach it becomes Burgers Florentine, does it not?


Savoury Cakes.
Take a pound of the lean of veal, half a pound of beef suet, a quarter of a pound of bacon, and cut them small; then mix well together the yolks of six hard eggs, some crumbs of bread, half a shallot, nutmeg, pepper, and salt; and break up an egg to mix them to a sort of paste; make them up in round cakes, and fry them brown; lay them before the fire whilst the sauce is making, which is stew’s spinnage, melted butter, or a good ragout sauce in the dish; for either way is good.


Quotation for the Day.

"Offal" is used about 67 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language
Webster’s Online Dictionary

Rice for Breakfast.

A final word, for the time being, on the vexed question of what shall we have for breakfast. Over the last two days we considered the breakfast problems posed by the shortage of wheat during WW I (which recurred in WW II). In the East of course, this would never be an issue as the breakfast of choice is rice, especially as rice ‘soup’. This has an almost an infinite number of manifestations, and is generally referred to in the West as congee, but is known by specific names in each country where it is enjoyed, such as jook (China), khao tom (Thailand), and lúgao (Phillipines).

Strangely, rice has never featured at breakfast in the West in spite of its easy availability  - with the exception of the Anglo-Indian dish beloved of the Victorians, called kedgeree, and perhaps the odd bowl of leftover rice pudding. At least one Western cookbook writer of the early twentieth century felt that rice should have more of a place on the table – the author of Rice for breakfast, dinner, supper (Chicago, c1919)


I give you a couple of suggestions from the book that would make fine breakfast dishes – and would be very useful ways of using up leftover rice.

Rice Spoon Bread.
1 cup cooked rice
1 pint sweet milk
2 eggs
½ cup corn meal
½ tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons salt.
To the well-beaten eggs, add the rice, milk, and butter. Sift the dry ingredients together and add them to the first mixture. Pour the batter into a hot, well-greased pan and bake for 45 mintues in a moderate oven. Serve hot.


Soft Rice Bread.
1 cup cooked rice
1 cup milk
¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup corn meal
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 tablespoon fat.
Mix the rice, fat, salt, and well-beaten yolk of egg. Add flour and milk. Mix thoroughly and fold well-beaten white of egg into mixture. Pour batter into greased baking dish and bake ½ hour in moderate oven. Serve hot or cold.

P.S if you have not had enough of the breakfast topic, perhaps you would like to re-visit the idea of Second Breakfast?

Quotation for the Day.
A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
Francis Bacon.

Milanese Soup

Once upon a time I tried to unravel the truth about risotto. The story was specifically about Risotto à la Milanaise, which is the sort of risotto you have when you want risotto in French. I came across an English interpretation of Milanaise risotto recently, and I present it here for the amusement or horror of my lovely friend Marisa, who lives all the way away in Melbourne. I can just see her now, in my kitchen, showing me how real Italians cook risotto, and waving the wooden spoon around to demonstrate that it must be all onde – like waves (did I spell that right, Marisa?). For years, in my head, that word was alonda. I just googled ‘all waves’ to find out the real word.

In a pre-Google life there was a lovely woman called Lady Clark of Tillypronie. She was a prolific collector of recipes, and after her death they were published, finally in 1909. Many of the recipes date much further back than that, and many of them have the name of the ‘donor’ and the date.

“Risotto,” a Milanese Soup (Cataldi)
Blanch the rice in a stewpan in water till it all but boils, then take it off to cool, and strain off all the water. Put it on the fire again with a little stock until it is quite cooked but not become a mere purée.
Stir in some grated Parmesan cheese, also a little fresh butter. Season delicately, and serve in a tureen, very hot.
This is eaten almost solid at Milan, but foreigners have plain clear soup offered to them to eat with their Risotto; the latter is thick as porridge.

Oh! Dear! What can one say? The English do great rice pudding?

Quotation for the Day …

Cuisine is when things taste like themselves...In cooking, as in all the arts, simplicity is the sign of perfection. Maurice Curnonsky (‘The Prince of Gastronomes’)

A Delightful Risotto.

March 7

The Pall Mall Gazette mentioned “a useful description of how to cook risotto, a delightful dish too rarely seen in England” on this day in 1885. Rice had been imported into England and used in a myriad dishes since the fourteenth century, but never in this way. Certainly it was the starchy base that, along with chicken meat, made the the original ‘blanc manger’ (‘white eat’) of medieval times, and later it became the inevitable accompaniment to ‘curry’, but apart from in the rice pudding much beloved of Englishmen, rice was rarely a star in English cuisine.

The first published English recipe for risotto (as far as I can find) had already appeared in Eliza Acton’s classic Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), and we have met it before (along with some other fine old rice recipes): it is for a Risotto Milanese. Were the editors of the Pall Mall Gazette behind the times, or did the popular book fail to popularise the dish?

It is always fascinating to see how a 'foreign' dish is taken up and adapted elsewhere. I wondered how America, with its much larger contingent of Italians, interpreted risotto? This is how one non-Italian, dietitian-cookbook writer did it in her book pertaining to food ‘of the foreign born’:

Risotto
1 cup rice
3 tablespoons butter
2 cups tomatoes
1 cup stock
This may be the means of using up any bits of meat that the housekeeper has on hand, or it may be made with cheese and tomato only. Wash one cup of rice and turn it into a frying pan containing two tablespoons of melted butter. Stir over a moderate heat until it begins to take on a golden tinge, and then add two cups of canned tomatoes, which have been pressed through a sieve, and one cup of strained stock. Cover and cook slowly until the rice is tender and has absorbed nearly all the liquid, which will take about forty minutes. When half done add salt and paprika to taste. If necessary to stir, use a fork, so as not to break the grains. Just before removing from the fire add a tablespoon of butter, cut in bits, and half a cup of grated cheese. Half a cup of any minced meat or poultry can be substituted for the cheese, both ham and sausage being particularly good.
[Foods of the Foreign-Born in Relation to Health. Bertha M.Wood. 1922]

This is how the idea was interpreted by someone who sounds like she is from a real Italian migrant family.

Risotto With Lobster
(Risotto con gamberi)
For this risotto either lobster or crab meat can be used: the former is, however, considered more tasty. The lobster or crab meat ought to be about half the weight of the rice employed. A little more than a pound of rice and half this weight of crab meat ought to be enough for six persons.
Chop fine a sprig of parsley, a stalk of celery, one carrot, half an onion a clove of garlic and brown the whole in good olive oil. When browned, add the crab meat and season with salt and pepper. During the cooking process stir and turn over the crabs, and when they have become red, pour over as much hot water as is necessary to cook the rice.
After the water boils for a while, remove the lobster (or crab, or craw-fish) leaving the saucepan on the fire. Put half of the crabs aside, and grind the rest. Rub the ground meat through the sieve and put it back on the fire. In another saucepan melt some butter and put into it little by little the rice that has been washed and dried. Stir and add the broth from the first saucepan. When the rice is almost cooked add the craw-fish that you have put aside, or rather its meat extracted from the shells, take from the fire and pour over it the fish mixture, adding some grated cheese.
[The Italian Cook Book …Maria Gentile. 1919c.]

Monday’s Story …

Mathematician’s Alert:
Next week we will have a week of Pies, because it is Pi week.

Quotation for the Day …

(On the Italians) They eat the dainty food of gamous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach." Luigi Barzini, founder of Il Globo, in The Italians, 1964

Kedgeree, otherwayes.

November 26 ...

Kedgeree is a peculiarly Anglo-Indian concoction. It apparently began with khitchr – a dish based on a mixture of rice and pulses from the Indian subcontinent. In the hands of returning colonials it became a capital breakfast dish of rice, eggs and leftover fish.

Here is the wonderful Eliza Acton’s take on it (1845).

Kedgeree Or Kidgeree, An Indian Breakfast Dish.
Boil four ounees of rice tender and dry as for currie, and when it has cooled down put it into a saueepan with nearly an equal quantity of cold fish taken clear of skin and bone, and divided into very small flakes or scallops. Cut up an ounce or two of fresh butter and add it, with a full seasoning of cayenne, and as mueh salt as may be required. Stir the kedgeree constantly over a clear fire until it is very hot: then mingle quickly with it two slightly beaten eggs. Do not let it boil after these are stirred in; but serve the dish when they are just set. A Mauritian chutney may be sent to table with it.
The butter may be omitted, and its place supplied by an additional egg or more.
Cold turbot, brill, salmon, soles, John Dory, and shrimps, may all be served in this form.

The following early nineteenth century version from Domestic Economy, and cookery, for rich and poor, by a lady.(1827) is closer to its roots as a pulse and rice dish.

Indian Cutcheree.
Steep a pint of split peas, and add a large tea-cupful of rice, with an onion, ginger, pepper, mace, and salt; boil till the peas and rice are swelled and tender, but not
clammy ; stir them with a fork till the water is wasted. Serve it up in a dish garnished with hard eggs and whole boiled onions. The stirring it with a fork is to prevent the grains being broken.

But from the same book is this “American” variation, with an intriguing sub-variation which takes it about as far as it is possible to go from its essentially vegetarian origins.

American Cutcheree Soup.
Prepare and pulp some of the nicest dry green peas; put them into any nice seasoned white soup with coriander mint, or any determined sweet herb; to 1 lb. of peas, add 2 ounces of rice, and finish it with egg and cream, or keep out the egg, and add curry-powder, or make it of brown soup, with fried onions, all-spice, and sage, and thicken it with blood.

Tomorrow’s Story …

More Foreign Food.

Quotation for the Day ..

Eat what is cooked; listen to what is said. Russian Proverb

Food from the Fens.

Today, August 31^st …

Today I am in Norfolk, renewing my acquaintance with my cousin and her family. I guess that is as good an excuse as any to discuss the specialties of this flat waterworld on the bumpy bit of the East coast of England.

We have, come to think of it, often dined here in the second half of the nineteenth century with the delightful Parson James Woodforde, who lived in Norfolk for over forty years. His diary is a delightful record of the time and the place and his dinner table. Perhaps we should get more specific today. I understand that a trip to the Colman mustard shop is on the agenda prepared by my cousin Jo. The Colman family have been making mustard in Norfolk since 1814, so I expect the shop to be fun - I’ll report back on that after my visit.

Norfolk has a long coastline and a lot of waterways (‘The Norfolk Broads’) and some of its fish and shellfish are famous: where would history be without Yarmouth herrings? Oysters from Colchester oysters were so beloved of the Roman invaders that they sent them them back to Rome using teams of runners who took only four days to deliver their cargo – a feat that gives a whole new meaning to the concept of “food miles”. And where would chefs around the world be without Maldon sea-salt?

The Norfolk food joke is the ‘Norfolk Dumpling’ – which has somehow taken connotations of an ethnic slur – I am not sure why that is, as it is essentially no different from dumplings or suet puddings or any other carbohydrate and fat heavy ‘filler’ enjoyed by hungry peasants and farm workers for centuries. Perhaps a Norfolk historian can suggest an explanation?

The aristocracy have to eat too, of course. Here is an elegant take on rice pudding (or is it rice pie? Rice custard pie?). Please don’t stint on the quantity of brandy and Madeira, I am sure the Duke would be upset.

Duke of Norfolk’s Pudding.
Take six eggs, separate the yolks from the whites, beat up the yolks with a glassful of brandy, and flavour well with nutmeg and sugar. Boil a large cupful of the best Carolina rice in a pint of Madeira for half an hour; add one dozen ratafia cakes and the egg mixture, and beat all together. Have ready a dish lined with puff paste, and bake slowly for three-quarters of an hour.
[Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, 1870’s]

Monday’s Story …

Magna Carta Cake.

Quotation for the Day …

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

Rice Pudding Again.

Today, July 2^nd

The Editor in Chief of the Food & Wine section of the New Yorker was one of the judges at the first (was it the last?) Great Rice Pudding Tasting sponsored by (who else?) the Rice Council of America held in 1984. His name was William Rice, which presumably gave him another qualification to judge the pud. His comment on this day was :

“I haven't had the rice pudding of my life today. But I guess I lost that opportunity with the end of my childhood”

The rice pudding of my own childhood with was made from plain, pre-boiled rice, which always made it feel like a meal of leftovers from the outset. When I combined this thought with the realisation that I have already featured several variations on a rice pudding theme on this blog (HERE, HERE, and HERE), I became a little embarrassed. Such a large emphasis on something that is hardly the world’s favourite pudding, nor the world’s favourite way of using rice seemed like over-kill. A horrific thought then popped unbidden into my mind – if rice pudding is made from leftover rice, what does one do with leftover rice pudding?

A neat little book published in 1861 came to my rescue. The best thing about this book is that it gives the use of leftovers an image make-over. This is Secondary Cookery. Its full title is The family save-all, a system of secondary cookery, and its mission is to provide ‘Receipts for preparing good and tempting Dishes from COLD Meats, Vegetables, and Sweets, which may be RE-SERVED, with all the warmth and nicely of appearance of original Cookery’ because ‘perhaps there are none but the houses of the wealthier classes in which joints and other eatables are not, as a general rule, sent to the table twice, or even thrice.’ A noble mission indeed.

You can enjoy thrice cooked rice with the help of this little book. As the author’s recipe for rice pudding requires the rice to be boiled in water first, I see no reason why leftover rice (perhaps from your curry dinner) would not be quite appropriate for making pudding. If the boys and girls do happened to leave some of this favourite pudding (and a jolly pink pudding it is too), please refer to Hint number 372 for its third appearance.

To send Boiled Rice to the Table in the Finest Condition.
Hint 363. Soak it for seven hours in cold water, to which a little salt has been added. Have a stewpan ready, containing boiling water, into which put the soaked rice, and boil it very briskly for ten minutes, then pour it into a colander, set it by the fire to drain, and serve it up. The grains will be separate, and very large.
Hint 364. Rice should be prepared for Puddings in this way.

A very nice and cheap Dish – quite a favourite with the Boys and Girls.
Hint 353. Boil one pound of good Rice (after being well washed) in plenty of water; when nicely soft, add one ounce of butter, and stir in, then add one tablespoonful of sugar. The rice should not be boiled in more water than it will absorb. Peel and slice six apples, take out the core and pips; put them in a stew-pan with six slices of beet-root, and a pint of water; stew until it is tender and mash them together, with a little butter and sugar. The beet-root is to give a rich pink colour to the apples, and improve the flavour. When done, place the rice on a dish; form a hole in the midst of it, in which place the mashed apple; have ready a little cream, butter, and sugar; pour it over the rice, and serve.

To Serve Cold Rice Pudding.
Hint 372. Remove the baked coating of the pudding, and spread the remainder nicely upon a dish. Over the pudding pour a custard, add a few lumps of jelly or preserved fruit.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Miserly Onions.

Quotation for the Day …

Where I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, 30 cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being - much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund. Garrison Keillor.

A dish for the Empress.

Today, January 30th …

The new (and final) Emperor of the new (Second, and final) French Empire, Napoleon III, fairly quickly set about finding himself a suitable bride to provide him with an heir or several. After being rejected by a couple of European royal princesses whose families had no wish to ally themselves with the pretentious upstart, he chose Eugenie de Montijo, a beautiful woman with aristocratic Spanish blood. The marriage took place on this day in 1853, at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.

The culinary connection for us today is that this is the Empress for whom dishes styled ‘a l’Imperatrice’ are named. These dishes classically contain rice, although I have no idea why this is so. Perhaps the Empress had a special liking for it.

The great Escoffier, who was responsible for creating many dishes in the name of famous or royal persons, was born in 1846, so was a child at the time of the wedding of Napoleon and Eugenie. Nevertheless, his version of Riz impératrice is a classic, and the recipe appears below. This is no boarding-school or nursery rice pudding. Compare it with the ‘Empress Pudding’ from the very English Cassells Dictionary of Cookery – and ponder as to whether this is simply another take on the classic dish named for Eugenie, or was it named for the ‘other’ Empress - Victoria, Empress of India?

Riz impératrice.
(Rice with custard cream, kirsch and maraschino.
8 oz rice, 1 ¾ pints boiling milk, pinch salt, ¼ vanilla pod, ½ oz butter, 8 oz castor sugar, kirsh, maraschino, ¼ oz gelatine, ½ pint thick cream, ½ pint English custard cream*, apricot syrup.
Wash the rice, put into plenty of boiling water and boil for 2 minutes. Drain off the water, add the boiling milk, salt, vanilla and butter, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, then add the sugar.
Pour the rice into a bowl, cool a little and flavour with kirsch and maraschino. Add the dissolved gelatine and whipped cream to the custard cream and mix with the rice.
Pour into a mould and leave to set.
Unmould and cover with apricot syrup flavoured with kirsch and maraschino.

*Crème à l’ anglaise.
(Custard Cream)
1 lb sugar, 16 egg yolks, 1 ¾ pints boiled milk, vanilla pod, orange or lemon peel, or 3 tablespoonfuls liqueur.
(if a vanilla pod, orange or lemon peel is used for flavouring, infuse it in the milk while it is heating. If liqueur is used, add to the custard when cold.
Put the sugar and egg yolks together in a pan and beat until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is thick and creamy. Add the milk and cook over gentle heat until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. Avoid letting the custard boil or it will curdle.
If it is required hot, strain into a bain-marie and keep over very low heat, to avoid the eggs being overcooked. If required cold, strain into a bowl and stir while cooling.
Note: 1 level dessertspoon arrowroot, mixed with 2 tablespoons cold milk may be added to the sugar and egg yolks. This will prevent curdling should the custard boil.

Empress Pudding.
Put enough fresh milk in a well-lined saucepan to pulp half a pound of rice. Let the rice soften over a very slow fire, and, when quite done, add two ounces of butter and stir till it is dissolved. Set the rice by to cook: when it has cooled, stir in three well-beaten eggs. Put a layer of rice into a dish lined with puff paste, place a layer of any kind of jam over it, and fill up the dish alternately with rice and jam. This pudding may be eaten cold, in which case it should be served with boiled custard poured over it. Bake in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour. [Cassell’s, 1870's, English]

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Pavlova: the story.

On this Topic.

Two different rice pudding recipes were given in the story entitled Rice Pudding to Complain About.

A Previous Story for this Day …

There was a great, tragic mystery enacted on this day at Mayerling in Austria in 1889, when Crown Prince, Rudolph Habsburg, and his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera died in a murder-suicide. Or was it?

Quotation for the Day …

"I am the emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs." Emperor William II of Germany speaking to Georges-Auguste Escoffier.

Risotto à la Milanaise.

Today, January 16th …

There is a charming myth that the classical northern Italian dish Risotto à la Milanaise was created in 1574 by the artist responsible for the stained glass windows in the Cathedral of Milan when he added some saffron (supposedly used for colouring his paints) to a dish of rice at his daughters wedding. It is a legend that begs many questions, not the least of which is what was an elite artist doing in the kitchen at that time, paint colourings in hand. The legend goes on to say that the guests pronounced the dish “risus optimus”, or “excellent rice”, which became eventually became “risotto”. The OED does not give this explanation, but does concede that the name is of Italian origin, and then rather prosaically describes the dish as “A stew or broth made with rice, chicken, onions, butter, etc.” The crucial “etcetera” that makes basic risotto into Risotto à la Milanaise, is, of course - saffron.

So, can we get any closer to the real origins of this dish?

What we do know is that a dish of “Sicilian style rice” was served on this day in 1543 at a banquet organised by Cristoforo da Messisbugo, a steward of the Este family in Ferrara. The dish allegedly contained egg yolks, grated cheese, pepper, saffron and sugar. It is certain that Sicily was under Moorish influence for centuries, and saffron originated in the Middle East - probably in ancient Sumeria, and is a feature of Sicilian dishes, so the explanation so far sounds reasonable. We also believe that the Moors also took rice to Europe, and were growing it in Spain in the 8th or 9th century, and that it was being produced in the Lombardy plain by the end of the 15th century, which also fits our story.

Dishes are rarely, if ever “invented” – they evolve and develop over time, and one day might be given a special name, along with which comes the belief that it is newly invented. In reality, rice and saffron were partners at least two centuries before our mid-sixteenth century banquet. It is possible that they were partners in the 8th or 9th century, but no cookbooks (if indeed there were any) survive from that time. I give you recipes for fourteenth and fifteenth century risotto-like dishes containing saffron.

From France, from the manuscript known as the Viander de Taillevent, written in about 1375, and translated by James Prescott:

Decorated rice for a meat day.
Pick over the rice, wash it very well in hot water, dry it near the fire, and cook it in simmering cow's milk. Crush some saffron (for reddening it), steep it in your milk, and add stock from the pot.

From England, from the manuscript known as the Form of Cury, written in about 1395:

Ryse of Flesh.
Take Ryse and waishe hem clene. and do hem in erthen pot with gode broth and lat hem seethe wel. afterward take Almaund mylke and do therto. and colour it with safroun an salt, an messe forth.

From late 15thC Italy, from the cookbook of Maestro Martino, as translated by Jeremy Parzen in The Art of Cooking: the first modern cookery book; edited by Luigi Ballerini.

Martino gives it as a variation of a recipe for Farro (or emmer, an ancient variety of wheat).

Farro with Capon Broth or Other Meat Broth.
To make ten servings: first of all, clean and wash the farro well, and cook in good capon broth or fatty pullet broth, and let it simmer for a long while. When done cooking, add some good spices; and take three egg yolks and a bit of cold farro, and mix together. Then drop into the farro, and make yellow with some saffron.

Rice with Meat Broth.
Prepare as for farro broth. But many do not like eggs with their rice, so you should leave it up to your master’s tastes.

And for a named version of the dish of the day (although not necessarily the first), we jump to the mid-nineteenth century, to Eliza Acton’s version in Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845).

Risotto a la Milanaise
Slice a large onion very thin, and divide it into shreds; then fry it slowly until it is equally but not too deeply browned; take it out and strain the butter, and fry in it about three ounces of rice for every person who is to partake of it. As the grain easily burns, it should be put into the butter when it begins to simmer, and be very gently coloured to a bright yellow tint over a slow fire. Add to it some good boiling broth lightly tinged with saffron, and stew it softly in a copper pan for fifteen or twenty minutes. Stir to it two or three ounces of butter mixed with a small portion of flour, a moderate seasoning of pepper or cayenne, and as much grated Parmesan cheese as will flavour it thoroughly. Boil the whole gently for ten minutes, and serve it very hot, at the commencement of a dinner as a potage.

Obs.- The reader should bear in mind what we have so often repeated in this volume, that rice should always be perfectly cooked, and that it will not become tender with less than three times its bulk of liquid.

Tomorrow’s Story …

The Queen’s Beef.

A Previous Story for this Day …

The ancient Roman festival of Concordia was our story on this day in 2006.

Quotation for the Day …

Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant.Shizuo Tsuji