A virtual cookbook, of recipes gathered in, around, and by, the bloggers of St. Blog's Parish.
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All proceeds benefit the St. Blog's Fund for the Relief of Kairos Guy's incessant need for booze. (But there are no proceeds, so relax.)
This Ain't No Flirtini!
Malc and I went out to eat the other night. The drink menu included an interesting martini called Key Lime Pie: Vanilla-flavored vodka and Stewart's Key Lime Soda. Who's daring enough to try that one?
I tried this recipe this past Christmas for my cookie baskets, and I'm sorry I didn't discover it a long time ago. It's ridiculously easy and looks and tastes just like buttercrunch candy even though it's a cookie because of the saltines.
Crunch Bar
43 saltine crackers (about 1.5 sleeves)
2 sticks butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
12 ounce bag of chocolate chips (semisweet or milk)
1 cup broken pecan meats
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Line a jelly roll pan (10 x 15 x 1/2) with foil. Cover pan with a single layer of saltines (it's OK to break them for the edges).
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. When butter starts to foam, add brown sugar and stir to dissolve. Bring to a boil and set the timer for three (3) minutes, at which point it will be thick and gooey.
Pour hot mixture as evenly as possible over saltines (don't worry about little bare spots).
Place at once in 400 degree oven and bake for seven (7) minutes. The butter-sugar mixture liquefies somewhat in the oven heat so that the crackers become thoroughly coated with the butterscotch mixture but stay crunchy.
Sprinkle with chocolate bits as soon as it's out of the oven. The bits will start to melt immediately, and after a minute or two you should be able to spread the chocolate smoothly over the cracker mixture.
Sprinkle the pecans over the chocolate while it's still melted. Cool for about 30 minutes on the counter and then refrigerate until chocolate is cold and hardened. Break into pieces and store in an airtight plastic container in the refrigerator.
15th Century recipe from Johannes Bockenheim, cook to Pope Martin V, by way of the cookbookThe Medieval Kitchen
Take eggs and break them, with oranges, as many as you like; squeeze their juice and add to it the eggs with sugar; then take olive oil or fat, and heat it in the pan and add the eggs. This was for ruffians and brazen harlots.
Juice the oranges and the lemon. Beat the eggs, add the juice, the sugar, and salt to taste, and cook the omelette in olive oil. Serve warm.
"The sugar and the acidity of the juice prevent the eggs from completely setting, so this is more of a custardy cream that makes an unusual and very pleasant dessert."
1. Combine all ingredients for the centers, except the powdered sugar, in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir often as the caramel slowly melts. When the mixture is smooth, add 3/4 cup of powdered sugar. Stir. Save the remaining 1/2 cup of powdered sugar for later.
2. Use a candy thermometer to bring the mixture to exactly 230 degrees, stirring often, then turn off the heat.
3. When the temperature of the candy begins to drop, add the remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar to the pan, then use a hand mixer on high speed to combine. Keep mixing until the candy cools and thickens and can no longer be mixed. That should take a minute or two.
4. Let the candy cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, or until it can be touched. Don't let it sit too long - you want the candy to still be warm and pliable when you shape it. Take a tablespoon-size portion and roll it between your palms or on a countertop until it forms a roll the width of your index finger, and measuring about 4 1/2-inches long. Repeat with the remaining center candy mixture and place the rolls on wax paper. You should have 8 rolls. Let the center rolls sit out for an hour or two to firm up.
5. Combine the 20 caramels with the 1 1/2 teaspoons of water in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir often until the caramels melt completely, then turn off the heat. If you work fast this caramel will stay warm while you make the candy bars.
6. Pour the peanuts onto a baking sheet or other flat surface. Using a basting brush and working quickly, "paint" a coating of caramel onto one side of a center roll. Quickly turn the center over, caramel side down, onto the peanuts and press gently so that the peanuts stick to the surface of the candy. Paint more caramel onto the other side of the roll and press it down onto the peanuts. The candy should have a solid layer of peanuts covering all sides. If needed, brush additional caramel onto the roll, then turn it onto the peanuts to coat the roll completely. Place the candy bar onto wax paper, and repeat with the remaining ingredients. Place these bars into your refrigerator for an hour or two so that they firm up.
7. Pour the milk chocolate chips into a glass or ceramic bowl and zap it in the microwave for 2 minutes on 50 percent power. Gently stir the chips, then heat for an additional 30 seconds at 50 percent power. Repeat if necessary, stirring gently after each 30 seconds. Don't overcook the chips or the chocolate will burn and seize up on you.
8. Drop a candy bar center into the melted milk chocolate. Cover the candy bar with chocolate using two forks, one in each hand. When the candy is covered with chocolate, balance the bar on both of the forks, one at each end of the candy bar, and tap the forks on the top edge of the bowl so that much of the chocolate drops off. Carefully place the candy bar onto wax paper and remove the two forks. Repeat with the remaining ingredients, and then chill the candy bars until firm. Makes 8 candy bars.
From Steven Riddell of Flos Carmeli, here are some things taken from another site: recipes of historical interest
Chef Gordon Ramsay is very sceptical about historical recipes – he just doesn’t believe they actually work!
Ever wondered sends him to find out more at a 15th century farmstead, a part of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum near Chichester…
Richard Fitch is a professional freelance food historian, currently involved in the Victorian cookery projects for the National Trust and Tudor cookery for the Weald and Downland Museum
Gordon: Richard – do these recipes work?
Richard Fitch: They certainly do, and there’s plenty to be learned from medieval and Tudor recipes, even for a modern chef such as yourself. The first dish we’re going to make is beef pottage.
BEEF POTTAGE WITH WHOLE HERBS
2 lb joint of beef
4 oz each of the whole leaves of spinach, endive and white cabbage or cauliflower
1-2 tsp salt
4 tbsp wine vinegar
2 oz fine or medium oatmeal
3 English onions, sliced
Small squares or triangles of white bread
Half fill a large cooking pot with water, bring it to the boil, plunge in the meat, and remove the scum as it rises. Then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer.
Mix the oatmeal with 1/2 pint of cold water, and stir it into the pot.
Add the vegetables, and continue simmering for 1 ½ hours, until the meat is tender. Then add the salt and
wine vinegar. Lift the meat out on to a dish, lift out the vegetables with a skimmer, lay them on top, and decorate the edges with the pieces of bread. Then keep them warm until the remaining stock has been served first as a pottage.
Richard Fitch: There’s no stated cooking time – the beef is basically poached until it’s done. The dish that comes out is boiled beef. Served sliced and accompanied by a thickened vegetable stew like a broth, but a little bit thinner. In modern terms it's two courses in one pot.
Gordon: Do you season it before cooking?
Richard Fitch: No. The thing you have to realise is the limited quantity and availability of seasoning at the time. A small amount of salt, a very expensive commodity then, would have been added toward the end of the cooking process. The most common seasoning in Britain in the Middle Ages was mustard. Pepper was also used, but to give you an idea of how precious it was, in a household of 20 staff consumption of pepper would have been less than a quarter of a teaspoon per person per week!
Gordon: Unbelievable! What about vegetables….surely they can’t have changed very much over 400 years?
Richard Fitch: No. Basic vegetables are basic vegetables. The kind of things they didn’t have would have been imports from the New World and the Americas. In the 15th century and earlier, vegetables were seen as the preserve of the poor. The rich, if they did cook vegetables, would have boiled them to death and thrown away the water, losing all their goodness.
What we also find 400 years ago is that we were very reliant on what we’d stored over the winter. The household would have smoked a large amount of meat – slaughtering the pigs in the autumn, keeping a little bit of fresh meat, but preserving as much as possible as it had to last all the way through until the next year.
Though the meat is very tender Gordon finds the taste and texture pretty disgusting – like cold porridge with a slight seasoning of salt! In the hopes of finding something more suitable to the modern palate he moves on to find out about mid-17th century puddings…
Richard Fitch: We’re going to make quite a sweet dish – sack posset, or thick alcoholic pudding. The dish includes certain spices – some mace, cinnamon and nutmeg. These spices become more common the closer you come to the present day.
In the 15th century they would have been purely the preserve of the social elite. By the time we reach the mid-1600s they’re becoming more available to the town class.
SACK POSSET
4 egg yolks
2 egg whites
1/4 pint dry sherry
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground mace
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
1 pint single cream
3 oz sugar
Beat together the egg yolks, egg whites, sherry and spices, and gently heat in a large pan, stirring constantly, until warm, but still not thickened. Heat the cream and sugar together and as it rises to the full boil pour from a good height into the warm eggs and sherry mixture. Allow the posset to stand in a warm place for a few minutes, sprinkle a little sugar across its surface, and serve.
To avoid further scandalizing the blog's host, here is a recipe for
Uska
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 large egg
1 tbs vegetable oil
2-3 tbs water
Mix ingregients in bowl until they form an elastic dough. (Adjust quantity of water as needed.) Cover with warm bowl for at least ten minutes.
Divide dough into two or three portions. Roll out one portion on well-floured cutting board, to 1/8th inch thickness. Cut dough into 2-inch squares. Put about a tsp of filling into center of a square, fold along the diagonal to form a triangle. Seal the edges, then fold and pinch the two corners on the longer edge together. With practice, the result will look something like a pig's ear (uska is "ear" in Polish). Repeat this process for the rest of the dough.
Cook dumplings in boiling, salted water until done (about 3 minutes). This may be done ahead of time, and the dumplings refrigerated.
Yields about 24-36 dumplings.
To serve, place one serving's worth of dumplings in the bottom of a soup bowl. Add hot soup (traditionally beet soup, but it's your dinner), allow dumplings to come up to temperature, and serve.
Since uska are featured in the traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner, they are often made with a meatless
Filling 2 cups porcini mushrooms, minced
1/2 cup onion, minced
3 tbs butter
salt and pepper
dash truffle oil (optional)
Melt butter in a frying pan on medium. Add onions, cook until tender. Add mushrooms, cook until very tender, 10-15 minutes on medium. Season with salt and pepper; mix in a few drops of truffle oil, if desired.
Dried mushrooms can be used, by reconstituting in warm water before mincing. (Save the water for soup.) Other mushrooms may be used as well.
1/2 gal dry red wine
8 oz raisins
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 pint whisky
2 cinnamon sticks
12 cloves
12 cardamom pods, crushed
Place cinnamon sticks, cloves, and cardamom in a muslin bag. Bring all ingredients except whisky to a boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool before adding whisky. Leave the bag of spices in for 12 hours, remove and bottle.
3 1/2 c (fifth) 100 proof vodka
1 tsp. glycerin
6 Tbls. instant coffee
1 inch vanilla bean
3 3/4 c sugar
1 1/2 c water
Boil sugar and water. Add vanilla bean and boil just until you dissolve coffee in 1/2 cup hot water. Remove sugar water from heat; remove vanilla bean and let sugar water cool. Add coffee, vodka and glycerin. Let stand 2-3 weeks.
My mother would save Kahlua bottles, fill them, cap and let sit 2-3 weeks.
