TV Interview

Last week I had a brief interview with "Goodday Sacramento" on the Sacramento CBS affiliate.  The fact that this was my first TV appearance meant that I had no idea what to expect.  It turns out that for morning news shows the operating word is "fast" - I don't think I was on the air for more than a minute.  Obviously that's not enough time to go into any significant depth on a subject (and I know I can get awfully wordy), so I thought I'd take some time to give more leisurely answers here for the questions I was asked.

The first question was along the lines of "Why cook medieval recipes?"  My answer was that one could just as easily ask, "Why cook Chinese recipes?" or "Why cook Indian?"  Medieval European cuisine is a unique style of cooking, with its own balance of flavors.  I also noted that the flavors of Medieval English cooking are surprisingly similar to those of modern Indian, leaving out the capsicum peppers.

In medieval England - especially in the 14th and 15th centuries - spices like cinnamon, ginger, cumin, and saffron were used, especially in meat dishes.  The combinations of these spices gives a flavor that is very similar to that in modern cooking in the Mediterranean and India.  On a side note, the word "curry" itself comes from Middle-English, and means "cook".

I was then asked about how hard it is to find recipes.  I said that when I started researching, 20 years ago, it was very difficult.  You needed to be near the right library or know the right people.  Now many of the texts are freely available online, and I have a list of links for them on the website.

This has really changed medieval cooking research an incredible amount.  Not only are libraries now putting images of the original manuscripts online, but researchers (both amateur and professional) are transcribing and translating the documents into multiple languages.  In just the past five years the number of medieval recipe books that are readily accessible to the average geek has gone from a handful to hundreds.  Medieval English and French cookbooks have even been translated into languages like Russian and Japanese.

Finally, I was asked about Thanksgiving dinner.  Given that they didn't celebrate Thanksgiving in medieval Europe (for the most part they still don't, but I've heard that's changing), what medieval foods could be served in it's place?  I responding with a menu that most would find surprising:  honey mustard barbecue chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and peach pie.

I unintentionally described this as a "traditional menu", but it's more accurately a "menu of traditional foods".  No, I have no record of any medieval cook serving exactly that meal, but all those foods can clearly be traced to England in the 14th century.  I often use that fact to pull people out of the mindset that medieval food was all about huge chunks of roast meat and tankards of wine.  The recipes we have from back then are surprisingly sophisticated and exhibit a wide range of flavors.

There is a copy of the video online.

From a technical viewpoint, I have a few observations.  First is that I look and sound like a total goob.  I'd like to think that it's the fault of the camera angle and the cheap microphone built into the computer - please don't tell me otherwise and ruin my happy delusion.  If I should end up with another interview via Skype, I'll make sure the ambient lighting is better.  The room was fairly well lit about 15 minutes before the start of the interview, but it then clouded up outside and things got too dark.

... about that Solstice Dinner

Last night we had our Solstice dinner, celebrating the long night with the kids and a couple of (newlywed) friends (Hi Kristen & Shane!). I posted the menu a couple of days ago, and I thought I'd make a couple of notes about how it went.

Roast Capon - I'd never cooked a capon before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  Both before and after cooking it really looked just like a chubby chicken.  I made the stuffing as per the directions (but using whole hard-boiled eggs instead of just the yolks), and cooked it in the oven for two and a half hours.

The result was ... a chubby chicken.  The meat had a very nice flavor, and was moist to the point of being buttery.  The stuffing was loaded with flavor, and went really well with the capon.  What did surprise me was the amount of fat in the capon.  Even after cooking there were still layers of fat here and there.  Yummy, but this is not a diet bird.

Roasted Turnips - This is an old standby now.  It's almost as much a custard as it is a turnip dish - add some sugar and it could just about pass for a dessert.  However, with all the eggs, butter, and cheese - this one is also not diet friendly.

Brussels sprouts (steamed, plain and simple) - I made about four tons of sprouts for this dinner and there were no leftovers. None.  Aren't these supposed to be one of the least liked vegetables?  I didn't even smother them with cheese or cream sauce.  I didn't add bacon.  I didn't add sugar.  Just plain old sprouts.  Either the world isn't like I've been lead to believe, or I have a weird family and friends.

Applemoyse (with snowe) - Ok, this is now officially my favorite medieval recipe.  Not only is it incredibly quick and easy to make, but everyone seems to love it (including me).  I made it properly this time (which adds the oh-so-difficult-and-tedious step of separating three eggs), kept it warm until serving, and topped it with snowe that I'd made ahead of time and kept in the fridge.  I think I'll make some more for dessert tonight.

All that's left for my holiday season is the dinner on Christmas Eve.  There's some extended-family drama that may complicate things, but we'll see how it goes.

Solstice Menu

Barring last minute changes, I think I've got the menu set for dinner tomorrow.  Here's what we'll be having:

Roast Capon

Roasted Turnips

Brussels sprouts

Applemoyse (with snowe)

The capon and applemoyse recipes are English (15th and 17th centuries), and the turnips are 17th c. French.  I'm going to keep the sprouts simple - steam and butter, and maybe a bit of garnish or spice, don't know for sure.

The capon recipe will be new, so I'll need to keep track and write things down.  I'll also try to get pictures of the capon and the turnips (which is a recipe I've had for quite some time, but haven't managed to take a photograph for it).

A Capon Recipe for the Solstice?

I've got two "big" dinners to cook next weeks.  The first is a solstice dinner for my immediate family and a couple friends (Hi Kristen & Shane!), and the second is Christmas eve dinner for the family and in-laws.  This means that right now I spend a good amount of time musing over potential menus.

While I focus almost entirely on traditional new-world foods for thanksgiving dinner, I've tended towards medieval English foods for the solstice (and Christmas eve dinner ends up being an attempt at more fancy foods).

For the solstice dinner this year, I think I'd like to roast a capon.  But which recipe should I choose?

A search of the online medieval cookbooks finds heaps of poultry recipes, dozens of which are for capons.  However, the majority of the capon recipes are boiled rather than roasted.  I sifted through a bunch of the more interesting ones and came across two likely candidates.

Capon or goos roste. To rost capon or gose tak and drawe his leuer and his guttes at the vent and his grece at the gorge and tak the leef of grece parsly ysope rosmarye and ij lengs of saige and put to the grece and hew it smale and hew yolks of eggs cromed raissins of corans good poudurs saffron and salt melled to gedure and fers the capon there withe and broche hym and let hym be stanche at the vent and at the gorge that the stuffur go not out and rost hym long with a soking fyere and kep the grece that fallithe to baist hym and kepe hym moist till ye serue hym and sauce hym with wyne and guingere as capons be.  [A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)]

Capoun in Salome. Take a Capoun and skalde hym, Roste hym, then take thikke Almaunde mylke, temper it wyth wyne Whyte other Red, take a lytyl Saunderys and a lytyl Safroun, and make it a marbyl coloure, and so atte the dressoure throw on hym in ye kychoun, and throw the Mylke a-boue, and that is most commelyche, and serue forth.  [Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (England, 1430)]

Both of these sound interesting, though I'm leaning towards the first one as the herb and currant stuffing sounds more holiday-like to me.

For side dishes, I may go with some "garnished" or roasted turnips, or maybe compost (pickled root vegetables).  I'll want something green as well - maybe Brussels sprouts (they're the traditional holiday vegetable in England, aren't they?).

Thanksgiving in Perspective

The Thanksgiving holiday is approaching for those of us here in the US - one that is pretty much all about the food. The menu for this year is pretty much like the ones I posted back in 2007 and 2008 (I went to visit my parents last year, and therefore didn't have much control over what was cooked).

I've been putting together the shopping list and planning what to cook when, and it stuck me that it all seems too easy. It should be complicated and stressful and a big deal, but it isn't. Then I figured out why.

When you've cooked for around 100 people, sometimes without proper kitchen facilities, and managed to serve multiple course meals with upwards of 20 different dishes, a fancy home dinner for 8 seems pretty simple. After all, I have a full day to do most of the cooking, and a decent kitchen to work with.

Happy Thanksgiving! May your turkeys be juicy and your gravy be lump-free.

(I'm trying out a medieval recipe tonight and will post about it soon)

A busy time without much to show for it...

The last couple of months went by in a blur, but apparently very little of what I did was related to medieval food.

The holiday insanity of course started with Thanksgiving. This year we spent it at my parents' house, which limited my cooking a bit. Still, the food was good. I've posted before on what I cook for Thanksgiving - the short version is that I focus on all new-world foods, and not medieval at all (a fun sort of cognitive reversal for me).

I did do a little bit of medieval cooking in December though. For our regular solstice dinner I used the Sauce Madame recipe from Forme of Cury to go with a roast turkey (the last time I cooked a goose - which was good, but not good enough to merit the extra cost). I think I'll have to look into other types of stuffing for next year, just for the sake of something different.

I also made a batch of Cameline Sauce for Christmas Eve dinner with the in-laws. It went really well with the beef tenderloin and duxelles (just learned about duxelles this year - Oh my! - why didn't anyone tell me about them before? Wikipedia says they go back to La Varenne, but I'll have to look and see if there's anything similar in the medieval sources).

There are some neat things in the works for 2010. I hope to teach a couple of cooking classes, which will be a bit of a new thing for me. I've also got one transcription project and a couple of other bits for the web site that I hope to have done soon. I'll be trying out the odd recipe here and there - Kristen told me yesterday that she got some more deer kidneys. Then there's helping others nearby to cook medieval feasts, and in my copious free time I'll finish writing a novel.

I get the feeling that 2010 might be a blur too.

Goose and Sauce Madame

[Sorry about the recent lack of posts. Chalk it up to a combination of a minor flu bug and a hectic schedule.]

Back in December we had some friends over for a Winter Solstice dinner, and one of the dishes I cooked was Goose with Sauce Madame. I should have taken some pictures, but (of course) things were behind schedule and the kitchen was crazy and yadda yadda yadda, so you'll just have to imagine what it all looked like (though I'll admit it wasn't this pretty). I'll be posting the recipe for Sauce Madame on the website sooner or later (maybe after a couple more tries using chicken or duck instead of goose), but I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the dinner and how things turned out before I completely forget things.

First, the goose: I'd never made goose before, and the one I got from the grocer was actually relatively small - 10 to 12 pounds. Geese are weird, plain and simple. The skin was tougher than I thought, the meat was (way) darker in color than I expected, and while it put out lots of fat in the roasting pan (which I did expect) there was almost nothing in the way of juices. The meat tasted good enough to eat, but wasn't anything to rave about. Maybe bigger geese are better? Dunno. I've always heard that goose was something people ate more out of tradition than because they like it. That seems believable now.

The Sauce Madame smelled fantastic up until I added the goose drippings as instructed. Everyone seemed to like it (especially my wife), but it had an oily aspect that just didn't sit well with me. Maybe with more broth instead of oil (which implies some other bird than goose)?

The Wastel y-Farced turned out fantastic. I'd used a square, 2 pound loaf of sourdough bread. I had to improvise a steamer using a large pot with some water in the bottom and a bowl to act as a spacer, and the bread resting on the bottom of a small tart pan. It was warm, slightly gooey, and slightly sweet. Got to remember to make it again soon.

For a vegetable I went with the inevitable Brussels sprouts. I was too rushed by this point to make a cream sauce or anything, but perhaps next time. They were fresh, easy, and the family likes them, so if nothing else they blended into the background.

Finally there's the plum pudding. I love making plum pudding each year, and this one turned out just fine. Hector, who had just returned from school in England, noted the amount of butter and brandy used over there when serving these things, but otherwise didn't comment. Maybe I should take that as a bad sign. Then again, I like my plum pudding the way it is (as does the family), which I guess is what's important. Though ... more butter and brandy ... that doesn't sound too bad, eh? Maybe a tweak or two is in order.

So on the whole, it was a bit hectic and crazy, a good amount of yum, a heap of traditional, and a lot of fun. That's what the holidays are all about.

Solstice Dinner

For the past couple of years I've cooked a big dinner on December 21st to celebrate the winter solstice. Partly it's a traditional way to observe the changing seasons of the year, and another special thing to enjoy over the holidays. The biggest reason though is so I can cook a fancy holiday dinner the way I want without making any additional fuss and mess on Christmas eve or Christmas day.

The menu hasn't settled down yet, but this year I decided it should be a counterpoint to Thanksgiving. I've selected mostly medieval English dishes and the focus is on old-world foods. Here's what I've got so far:

Roast Goose with Sauce Madame - The goose is stuffed with fruit and herbs. After roasting, the stuffing is removed and used to make a fruit sauce. This is my first time making this recipe (and for that matter, my first time cooking goose), so we'll see how it goes.

Wastels y-Farced - Since the goose isn't going to have a bread-based stuffing, I thought I'd make this old favorite. It's essentially a steamed, savory bread pudding.

Plum Pudding - While plum puddings aren't at all medieval, I've become quite addicted to this particular English tradition. The holidays just wouldn't be complete without it.

The only thing I still can't decide on is a vegetable. I've thought about Brussels sprouts, but somehow they just don't click. I'll have to make up my mind soon.

If I have time, I'm going to make some gyngerbrede too. Not for dinner or dessert, but as a treat for during the day and with mulled cider later that evening.

Why Plum Pudding Isn't Medieval

For the past few years I've been making a traditional plum pudding at Christmastime. The recipe I use is a sort of average of the one from the Better Homes cookbook, and several that I found online. This year, as I was mixing it up and putting it into the pudding mold, I was musing over how medieval the recipe seemed.

Plum Pudding

(Not Medieval)

First, it's a holiday recipe that contains lots of dried fruits and spices. This is typical of a lot of medieval dishes, where imported fruits and spices served both to excite the palate and to blatantly advertise how wealthy the host was. Also, the general form of the dish - a boiled pudding - is in itself very typical of the middle ages. A prime example is Wastels Yfarced, a recipe where a bread crust is hollowed out, the crumb is mixed with eggs, currants, and spices, is put back into the crust, and then the whole thing is boiled. Add to this dishes like haggis, and some "sausages" where often little or no meat is used, and the filling is stuffed into an animal stomach or intestines and boiled.

So plum pudding is probably medieval too, right? Sadly, no. Oddly, I've found very few medieval recipes for boiled puddings that are desserts - almost all of them are savory dishes. The really big clue though is the inclusion of baking powder or baking soda. This makes the pudding turn out something more like modern cake, and neither baking powder or baking soda were used in cooking until after the sixteenth century. My guess is that somewhere in England in the late seventeenth century, a cook decided to experiment and crossed a medieval-style pudding with a new cake recipe. That, or they put the baking soda in by accident (it happens). Either way, whoever that cook was, I am forever in their debt.

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Rumballs and Gyngerbrede

While looking through Christmas cookie recipes last year, I came across a couple for rumballs. I probably would have skipped right over them, but I thought I remembered that my grandmother used to make them once upon a time, so I took a closer look. Immediately I was struck by how similar the recipe was to many of the medieval Gyngerbrede recipes. I've made gyngerbrede before, so how hard could this be? Things got busy though, as they frequently do during the holiday season, and I just didn't get around to trying it out.

The though did stick in my mind though, and either I'm way ahead this year or I'm way behind and haven't figured it out yet, because I managed to have time to make a batch this evening. The results? Well ...

Let me start with a small rant. One of the worst things a person can do - something that in my book guarantees them a place in the 5th circle of culinary hell - is to intentionally give out a bad recipe. I'm not talking about vague recipes, where they say "keep adding flour until it's thick." I'm not talking about typos or stupid oversights. I'm talking about when they tell you the wrong amount of flour, or leave the cinnamon out, or any number of tricks, just so they can be sure no one will be able to make the dish as good as they can. It's a form of lying and it's just plain evil. If you don't want to share a recipe, that's fine, but have the guts to say so. Don't pretend you're sharing. Ok, I'm done now.

I'm not sure that the recipes I'd found are examples of this, but there are aspects of each that make me suspect something. From my experience with the gyngerbrede, all of them looked like there was too much liquid and not enough solids - they'd end up really gooey.

So I made a chocolate cake (from mix), crumbled it up, added less rum than the recipes called for (1/2 cup), added less sticky liquid (chocolate & karo syrups) than they called for (3/4 cup), added the same amount of ground pecans, and mixed it up.

They ended up really gooey.

So to try and salvage the goo ('cause it tasted good), I took a trick from the gyngerbrede recipe and started adding bread crumbs until it was too thick to stir. Fifteen slices of bread later and it was workable. I rolled a bazillion bite-sized balls and rolled each one in ground pecans. The wife and kids thought they were ok. I think they could be a lot better. So here's what I'm going to do next time:

1. Make two (2) cakes, and let them sit out overnight. I don't want them to be too stale (that'll make the final product too grainy), but I really should have let the cake dry out more. I figure with double the cake I may not need any bread.


2. Add rum flavoring. I could just barely taste the rum, and using more would probably make it gooier (gooeier? gooeyer? is that even a word?).

All that being said, I've still eaten too many of the blasted things and am about 15 minutes away from a food coma, so they can't be that bad.

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