Cormary - Roast Loin of Pork with Red Wine

I decided to use one of those pork loins I bought on an incredible sale.  I wanted something medieval and different to serve to company (who know that I experiment with cooking on them!).

I found an intriguing recipe in The Medieval Kitchen:  Recipes from France and Italy by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi.  

ISBN 0226706850

On page 107-8 they offer "Cormary," which they took from The Forme of Cury, where it was spelled "Cormarye."  The Cury book is a collection of 14th century English recipes that was republished in the 1800s.

Their translated version says this:

Take finely ground coriander and caraway, pepper powder, and ground garlic, in red wine; mix all this together and salt it.  Take raw pork loins, skin them, and prick it well with a knife, and lay it in the sauce.  Roast it when you wish, and save what falls from the meat as it roasts and boil it in a pot with good broth, and then serve it with the roast.

They also provide their redacted recipe, which I mostly followed.  I'll provide my version.

Cormary

1 pork loin, about 3 pounds (mine was boneless)

1 cup good red wine

4 large cloves garlic (mine were already chopped)

1 teaspoon whole coriander

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

1/4 teaspoon salt

scant 1/2 cup chicken broth

The baking dish asked to join the picture.

Mix the coriander, caraway, peppercorns, and salt in a mortar.  Grind well.  Add chopped garlic and grind some more.  Grind it to a paste.

Put the paste into a glass baking dish; add wine and mix well.

Poke the meat all over with a knife.  

Put the meat into the dish, turning it several times to coat it with the marinade.  Cover the meat and dish, and refrigerate for at least several hours, up to overnight.  Turn occasionally.

Once the marinating time is almost done, preheat oven to 350 degree F.  Pour off the marinade into a cup.

Bake the meat, uncovered, basting every 15 minutes with the marinade.  Stop when the meat is done to your taste, roughly 60 to 90 minutes for a 3-pound roast.

Pour the drippings off the meat and let the meat rest.  Put the drippings and the broth into a pan and boil to reduce.

After 10 minutes of resting, slice the meat and serve with some of the gravy poured over the top.

Spices and salt

All ground up

Adding the chopped garlic

Resulting paste.

Stabbing the meat

Meat in the marinade

Ready to roast!

My Notes

The spices smelled wonderful while they were being ground!  It was an interesting combination of scents.  

I turned the meat three or four times during the about 7 hours it was marinating.  

I put the meat in the pan fat side up for roasting.

I basted mostly by pouring the marinade over the top.  I only did a little bit of brushing.

It helped to have a timer set to remind me to baste.

I think 1/2 cup broth was too much.  I would use at most that much, depending on how much pan juices you end up with.  I probably could have used less than 1/4 cup.

I sliced the meat to about 1/4-inch thick pieces for serving.

Done!

Too much liquid.

The Verdict

I served it with green beans and stuffing.

It smelled lovely.  The spice mix scent along with the wine which, combined, didn't smell like any one singular scent, just mouthwateringly-tempting: spicy and sweet.  (I have to add that the leftovers, when reheated, still smelled that way!)

My guest tasters noted that the basted top had a nice, almost crunchy layer.  

We all enjoyed eating it.  Several of us thought perhaps I could have cooked it less, say 15 to 30 minutes less because while it wasn't dry, there wasn't any pink and it wasn't as moist as we would have liked it to be.  We can have pink in the center because we are confident the pork supply in my area is clean.

I thought the marinade flavor had intruded into the meat somewhat, and not too much.  I liked the idea of poking it with a knife to allow the marinade in; it seemed to work well.  

So, success!  We had enough for four people at dinner to have what they wanted and some left over.  Reheated tasted just as good, because I saved the extra drippings/broth and poured a little over the meat before putting into the microwave.

That being said, I think I am torn between the feeling that 1/2 cup broth was too much for the first time it was served and was just right for putting over the leftovers.  So judge your table guests:  Will there be leftovers?  Then may don't add as much broth so the flavor of the drippings is not diluted.  

Also, I wish I had defatted the drippings before heating them with the broth.  They were pretty greasy, which didn't seem to impact my guests' enjoyment at all.  I did defat the leftover broth with ice cubes before storing it in the refrigerator.  (I know, I could have done that after the broth chilled in the 'fridge, but that is what I did.)

I would do this again.  

To Make a Creamapple Pie

Much of my historical cooking demonstration experience revolves around the Elizabethan period, that is, food from the reign of England's Queen Elizabeth I in the late 1500s.  It is acceptable to cook medieval recipes for this time period, but it really helps to have resources that match up with that era.  

One very good resource is Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book:  Elizabethan Country House Cooking as brought to us by Hilary Spurling.  Ms. Fettiplace was married to Sir Richard Fettiplace of Appleton Manor in Oxfordshire.  You can read more about her here.  Ms. Spurling is an author who cooked from the book for ten years before publishing it.  You can read more about her here.

Ms. Fettiplace wrote her receipt book (we use "recipe" instead of "receipt") by hand, passed it on to other family members who added to it and then passed it on.  Ms. Spurling acquired the book when it was inherited by her husband, John Spurling.

What I like about it is that the receipts are closer to what "ordinary" people would have made, keeping in mind that the Fettiplace family had more wealth than the average lower class worker.  When you read the recipes, you see many simple and tasty dishes and not the elaborate ones used by the very wealthy to impress at feasts.  

I chose a receipt on page 58, To Make a Creamapple Pie.  There are so many other receipts I want to try!

ISBN 0-670-81592-6

The way to format receipts in the Elizabethan times was in paragraph form.  This uses less space than our modern format.  It also gives few (if any) measurements and cooking times.  Measurements depend on the quantities you have available and cooking times depend on the size of the oven and the size of the fire that heats its.  Ms. Fettiplace assumes you have, or will get, experience in judging all this.  Fortunately, Ms. Spurling gives us her redaction, which I used but organized to our modern standards.

Original Receipt

Take your apples, & slice them, & put some butter & sugar to them, & so put them in the paste, & bake them, when they are baked cut open the pie, & put in a great deal of sweet cream, & stir it well togither, & then let it stand a little, till it bee somewhat cold, & so serve it to the boord.

Redaction

2 pounds tart cooking apples (see notes)

4 rounded tablespoons brown sugar

"a good-sized knob of butter" (I used nearly 1/4 cup)

1/2 pint cream (I used more)

dough for a two-crust, 9-inch pie

Two pounds apples is just four of these.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (or 350 degrees if the pie pan is glass or ceramic).

Line the pie pan with the bottom crust.

Quarter and core the apples, then slice thinly, leaving the peel on.  Spread in pie pan, piling it up higher in the middle than at the edge of the pan knowing they will settle while cooking.

Sprinkle the brown sugar over the top of the apples.  

Cut the cold butter into chips and slivers, and sprinkle them across the top of the apples.  I just held the knob over the pan and chipped away at it, letting the pieces fall onto the pie.

Cut several holes in the top crust then place on the pie.  Seal the top and bottom edges together.

Bake for 45 minutes.

As soon as the pie is out of the oven, use a funnel to help pour the cream into the holes.  Pour in as much cream as it will hold without overflowing.

Let cool to room temperature.  

Notes

I live in California, so the apples Ms. Spurling recommends, Bramley, are not available.  The internet told me that Granny Smith, Braeburn, Cortland, or Winesap are good substitutes, so I got Granny Smith.  These are green, tart cooking apples and are known to hold their shape when cooked. 

I bought 2 pints of cream and was glad because the pie took 1 1/4 pints until it was full.  Maybe because I used a 9-inch pan and piled the apples up so high?

I wanted to try Ms. Fettiplace's idea of cutting open the pie, but modified the idea to baking the top crust with parchment paper along the edges to keep it from sticking to the bottom crust.  You will see the paper in the pictures.  This idea did not work out as the top crust stuck to the apples and started to break when I attempted lifting it.  So I used Ms. Spurling's idea of using a funnel to pour the cream into the vent holes once I pulled the paper strips away.  The top sealed to the bottom anyway while cooling.

This crust experience makes me think that Ms. Fettiplace used a more robust and/or flexible pie crust than the store-bought one I used.  She felt you could cut it open and not have it break up at all.

Use this many apples

With sugar and butter

Skip the paper strips.  Just add the crust with vent holes.

Beautiful!

Now it is a creamapple pie.

The Verdict

It looked beautiful out of the oven and cooled.  

Cooled and ready to eat.

It sliced wonderfully.  The cream had set during the cooling process and did not pour out of the crust once it was cut.

No runny cream!

My regular guest taster and I loved it.  It was not an apple pie as our taste buds expected as it didn't contain the spices such as cinnamon that our tastebuds expected.  But the apple flavor was there and the cream added a richness and, well, creaminess to the experience.  The crust delivered a nice crunch, too.

I felt I should have sliced the apples thinner.  Not that they were bad, but I felt that some needed a little more cooking.  So perhaps I could have left it in the oven another 10 minutes or so, but I worried I would burn the crust.

We both tried to imagine if cinnamon or cardamom or other spices would be a good addition.  Maybe.  But the pie as it was had a unique flavor, and I'm not sure I want to change that.

Two more guest tasters tried it.  One did not like it because she tasted a "tang" that reminded her of sour cream, which she dislikes.  The other enjoyed it but noticed that it was not the "usual" apple pie - she missed the spices she expected.  So she wasn't thrilled as we were but she liked it.

Ms. Spurling commented that the pie should not be served cold as the butter coagulates and is not pleasant to eat.  We warmed our refrigerated leftovers in the microwave for just long enough to remove the chill from the pie.  That worked out well.

Success!  Give it a try but be prepared for something different than what our tastebuds have been trained to expect from an apple pie.  You might use red (less tart) apples instead of the Granny Smiths.

For to Make Murrey -- a Mulberry Pudding

My mulberry tree is producing great quantities of fruit this year.  I've been sharing with friends and finding different ways to utilize this bounty.

Project Gutenberg's digital version of The Forme of Cury, a collection of recipes from the late 1300s AD England, which can be found here, offers an intriguing, simple dish that I would call a dessert, but could also be served as side dish to a robust main course.

I interpret it as a pudding, that is, a thickened, sweetened dish flavored with fruit juice.  Back then it was called Murrey:

XXXVII. FOR TO MAKE MURREY [1].

Tak mulbery [2] and bray hem in a morter and wryng [3] hem thorth a cloth and do hem in a pot over the fyre and do thereto fat bred and wyte gresse and let it nazt boyle no ofter than onys and do thereto a god party of sugur and zif yt be nozt ynowe colowrd brey mulburus and serve yt forthe.

[1] Morrey. Part II. No. 26. [2] This is to be understood pluraly, quasi mulberries. [2] Read wryng. For see part II. No. 17. 2B. Chaucer, v. wronge and ywrong. [sic]

In other words,

Take mulberries and pound them in a mortar and wring them through a cloth and cook them in a pot and add fat bread [crumbs] and lard and let it not boil more than once and then add a good amount of sugar and if it is not colored enough, pound mulberries [and add them to it] and serve it.

My Redaction

2 cups mulberry juice (see My Notes below)

1 tablespoon shortening or lard  (I used vegetable shortening)

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups bread crumbs (dried, not fresh)

That is about 4 pounds of mulberries!

Put the juice and shortening into a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the fat is melted.  Add the sugar and stir until it is dissolved.  The juice might be steaming at this point.

Add the breadcrumbs.  Stir and cook over medium or lower heat -- as the mixture thickens, the heat may need to be reduced and the mixture stirred more often so it cooks without scorching.

Cook until the mixture is thick enough to pile up on itself when a spoonful is scooped up and dropped onto the rest.

Serve warm or chilled.

My Notes

The fresh mulberries went into a blender, which is a modern version of braying them in a mortar.  😀

Then I put the resulting puree into a cloth bag, closed the top with my hand, and used the other hand to start squeezing the juice out into a measuring cup.  The bag kept the seeds, stems, and some of the pulp out of the juice.  The juice was not clear and that did not matter to me.

I changed the order of mixing because I knew the bread crumbs would thicken the mixture, and I wanted the fat melted and the sugar dissolved before that happened.  Part of redacting is finding my way through the recipe to determine quantities.  I wanted to know that I added enough (but not too much) fat to achieve a good mouthfeel.  The same for sugar -- was it sweet enough but not too sweet?  I taste along the way, and I felt that the breadcrumbs would shift that test enough to make it hard to tell.

Early heating -- juice and melting shortening

So feel free to follow the order given in 1390 with my measurements.  

Also consider using butter instead of vegetable shortening or lard.  Be aware that your butter is probably salted, which will change the flavor -- it might even make it taste sweeter.

My bread crumbs were made from a few days old, slightly stale French bread loaf, so probably not a "fat bread".  If your crumbs are fresh, you made need a larger quantity to achieve a good thickness.  If they are very dry, you might need less.

The mixture with the bread crumbs did boil but only ever-so-slightly, more like a few "blurps" in the thickened version.

I felt the color was right, so I did not add any more berries or juice.

Starting to get thick

The Verdict

Still warm and very thick

We tried it still very warm from the pan, then cool, and then thoroughly chilled.

We felt it was thick enough even while warm to be just right.  It had a good mouthfeel: enough to taste rich (but not overwhelming) and substantial.  There were chewy bits from the larger chunks of bread crumbs, which we liked.

My guest taster, not knowing all that went into it, could taste the mulberries, thought there was lemon juice in it, that the sweet-tart balance was just right, and enjoyed it very much.  He liked it even more when it was cooler, and his favorite was when it was thoroughly chilled.

I agreed with his flavor assessment.  I liked it best warm or cool.  I liked it chilled but I felt the fat amount was too much; if I planned on serving it chilled, I would reduce the fat to probably 1 teaspoon.  I did not like the feel of grease on my lips while eating it chilled.

I wondered if it would be better with less sugar, and he felt that it would be too tart that way.  My mulberries were a mix of very ripe, ripe, and somewhat under ripe fruit, so the amount of sugar may vary depending on the overall sweetness of the juice.  

We both felt that the murrey did not need any spices.  The fruit flavor was dominant and didn't need enhancement from spices.  We wanted to taste the mulberries!

Success!

It would make a good side condiment to roast meat, especially when warm or cool.  But also as a dessert.  If a dessert, I think I would add some fresh berries on top when I served it.

Would 1/2 cup sugar to 2 cups juice have been considered a goodly amount in 1390?  I don't know, but the goal is always to produce a dish that is tasty, and I think I accomplished that.

I think the technique would translate well to using store-bought pomegranate or cranberry juice.  The sugar amount would have to be adjusted, so start off with less and add while tasting to get to just barely sweet.  The idea is to let the fruit flavor shine through.

Another variation idea is to mix some fresh pieces of mulberry into the finished pudding.  Or garnish the top with pieces or a whole berry or two, depending on the size.

Carnel of Pork

I was perusing Project Gutenberg's copy of The Forme of Cury, a collection of recipes compiled around 1390AD "by the Master Cooks of King Richard II", which you can access here.

My goal was to find recipe(s) that I could successfully do at an historical cooking demonstration location.  I finally was able to get back to doing some demonstrations this year!  The site had a lovely outdoor kitchen with tables for preparation, many platters/bowls/cooking pots, a big fire pit, and a wood-fired oven.  I decided I wasn't ready to try baking as I needed to get back into the techniques needed to prep and cook over fire in front of the public.  The venue was set in Elizabethan England, so recipes prior to 1600 would work just fine.

One that caught my attention was

CARNEL [1] OF PORK. XXXII.

Take the brawnn of Swyne. parboile it and grynde it smale and alay it up with zolkes of ayren. set it ouere [2] the fyre with white Grece and lat it not seeþ to fast. do þerinne Safroun an powdour fort and messe it forth. and cast þerinne powdour douce, and serue it forth.

[1] Carnel, perhaps Charnel, from Fr. Chaire. [2] ouere. Over. So again, No. 33.

In other words, 

Take pork, parboil it, grind it small, and thicken it with egg yolks.  Cook it with lard and cook it slowly.  Add saffron and powder forte, and put it on a platter to serve.  Sprinkle with powder douce, and serve.

 My Redaction

1 pound pork tenderloin (boneless)

3 egg yolks, well beaten

1 tablespoon vegetable shortening or lard

1 teaspoon powder fines (see note below)

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon saffron

1/4 teaspoon salt

a sprinkling of powder douce (see note below)

Notes:  My powder fines is a spice mix containing cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron.  Powder forte is supposed to be a strong (forte) flavored mix, which is why I took the fines and added more pepper to it, along with salt to more suit modern palates.  

My powder douce is a spice mix containing cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and star anise.  Powder douce is supposed to be a sweet (douce) mixture; what I used was a Baker's Spice Mix -- good for sweet breads.  It was mild enough to be a garnish.

The powder douce did not make it into the picture.

Grind the spices and salt together.  Set aside.

Cut the pork into chunks -- I did four 1/4-pound pieces.  Bring a saucepan of water to a boil, then put in one chunk.  This will drop the temperature to below a boil.  Set the timer for 5 minutes and watch the water.  You want at most a slow simmer for a parboil, so adjust the heat as needed.  When the time is up, remove the meat and place in a bowl to drain.  Keep parboiling the pieces like this.  The goal is to lightly cook them without making the meat tough; they don't even have to be cooked all the way through.  Just not completely raw.  

If a piece looks only slightly cooked, put it back into the hot water for a few more minutes.

Before parboiling

Parboiled:  the two pieces on the left went back in for 3 minutes each

Let the meat cool until you can easily handle it.  Cut it into small pieces or grind it (I cut it).  Mix well with the egg yolks.

Melt the fat over medium heat in a saucepan.  Add the meat and stir well.  Cook slowly over a low to medium heat (2 to 4 out of 10), stirring occasionally to mix the meat, yolks, and fat together.

Cook until the meat is no longer pink, 15 to 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat.

Mix in the spices thoroughly while the meat is still hot.

Put the mixture into a bowl or other container that functions as a mold for the final product.  Compress the mixture using a flat-bottomed cup or similar object.

Put a plate over the bowl and quickly turn the bowl and plate over to unmold the meat.

Sprinkle with powder douce lightly as a garnish.

Serve and enjoy!

My Notes

I first made this for a public demonstration.  I parboiled the meat at home in advance, then completed the preparation in front of the public.  I chose to cut instead of grinding because I didn't want to pound all the meat in a mortar.  For the demonstration I used 2 pounds of pork, 5 egg yolks, and double the amount of spices listed above.  It turned out well and I wanted to make it for this blog.

The meat is much easier to cut up into small pieces after parboiling.  Well worth the time.

I pounded and rubbed the spices together in the mortar until they looked reasonably blended.  The saffron threads did not all break up, which was fine with me.

It took some time to cut the meat up in small pieces, about 1/4 inch cubes.  Smaller pieces would work, too, or grinding/pounding them to more of a paste.  Notice the pink in the pieces below, but none of them looked completely raw.

Meat and yolks before mixing.

The idea of the yolks is to coat the meat pieces before cooking.

Ready to cook!

The slow cooking and regular stirring keeps the yolks from turning into hard-boiled egg consistency.  It acts like a sauce.

No pink.  It is done.

With the spices mixed in.

Packed into the mold.

You can see flecks of color where the spices are.  The saffron displays as orange threads.  They smelled good while I was mixing them in.

Unmolded and garnished.  Ready to serve.

The Verdict

I served it as the main course along with sliced tomatoes garnished with minced shallots, green onions, and parsley dressed with a mixture of olive oil (lemon infused), balsamic vinegar (lime infused), and a little salt.  Also toasted sourdough bread.

My guest taster and I spooned some of the carnel onto our plates.  We ate it like that or spooned onto a piece of toast.  At the public demonstration, the carnel was part of a larger potluck and was placed on the main dish table, and served as it was presented.

We both loved it.  Meaty, creamy, and the spices were zesty!  My tongue got little blasts of spice while I was eating it, not quite like having chiles but close.  If the spice level was lower, I think the carnel would have been bland and uninteresting.  

I felt the same way about it at the public demonstration -- I almost underspiced it then; I'm so glad I didn't.

The meat was very tender, which we both appreciated.  

Success!  

This is so easy to do, and I think it would be a good dish for a potluck.  

Grinding it would make it more of a paté, so it could be spread on toast or crackers.

Leche Lombard, a medieval date roll, with a Chinese-style bonus!

Leche Lombard is a medieval English recipe on page 133 in A Taste of History by Maggie Black.  I made this dish once before, years ago, and recalled how much I enjoyed it.  When I came across the recipe again, I took the opportunity to make it.

ISBN 0-7141-1788-9

The word "leche" implies that something is thickened.  In this case, a spiced date puree is thickened with egg yolks and bread crumbs, turning it into finger food, and served as an appetizer or a dessert.  It is not hard to make, especially if you have modern kitchen tools like a stick blender or a food processor.  If you want to go more "medieval", you can use a mortar and pestle.

In this case, I was taking it to a social gathering where I knew the people would be willing to try something new.  

Leche Lumbard -- Date Slices with Spiced Wine

1 3/4 pound dates, pits removed

3/4 pint medium-dry white wine

3 ounces light soft brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

6 hard-boiled egg yolks

about 6 ounces soft brown bread crumbs **have more on hand just in case**

3 - 4 tablespoons Madeira heated with a pinch of mixed spices

My bread crumbs were not brown, but they were soft.

Break up the dates and simmer with the wine and sugar until pulpy.  Pound or put through a food processor until almost smooth.  Mix in the spices and sieve or work in the egg yolks.  In a bowl, knead in enough breadcrumbs to make the mixture as stiff as marzipan.  Form it into a 2 inch (5 cm) diameter roll, and chill until firm.  Cut into 1/4 inch slices.  Arrange in overlapping lines on a plate, and trickle a drop or two of cooled, spiced wine over each slice.

My Notes

This recipe and a different redaction of it, is also found on page 138 of Fabulous Feasts by Madeleine Pelner Cosman.  That is how I knew the original name, which is not part of A Taste of History.

Here are the pictures of cooking the dates "until pulpy."

Ready to cook.

Pulpy.

I used a stick blender to puree the dates in the pan:

Smooth enough!

Just for fun, I pounded the bread in the mortar and sieved it until it was little bits.  I also pushed the egg yolks through a sieve until it was tiny pieces.

Then I mixed everything together well.  It wasn't as stiff as I wanted or as I recalled when I made it previously, but I was out of breadcrumbs.  I had to take it as it was and hope for the best.

So I rolled into a log shape and wrapped it in waxed paper for chilling.

About 2 inches in diameter and 15 inches long.

This fit on a tray in my refrigerator.

It didn't firm up as much as I had hoped, even after 4 hours of chilling.  But I sliced it anyways and arranged it on a serving platter with the spiced wine on top.

The Verdict

They were sticky but not terribly so.  I could pick up a slice and eat it without losing much or any along the way.  I liked them -- the texture was interesting, the flavor was spices and dates and richness.  It was not too sweet, and the wine seemed to add a more "adult-like" feel to this dessert.

The people at the gathering I attended enjoyed it.  One thought it was good enough that maybe it was "healthy", which made me laugh.  No, not really, but it was fun to think so.  Most pieces were gone by the end of the evening and the host wanted me to leave some behind, which I did.

Success!  Although I would add more bread crumbs to make it thicker and not so sticky.

I also think that you could make the texture more interesting by kneading in some toasted nuts (I would use chopped almonds) before making the roll.  

And Now for the Bonus

What I took to the gathering was not all the date mixture.  I had a lot left over at home.  I decided it would be a good filling for a Chinese moon cake.  Completely non-traditional, I guessed, but I had been given a moon cake mold by YT and wanted to play with it.

Exterior view of the mold.

Interior view.

I used a recipe from Nyonya Cooking's website to make the golden syrup and the dough.  Click here to see it.  I already owned a bottle of lye water.  Golden syrup is just a simple syrup of water and sugar with a strong lemon flavor, and it was easy to make.

Just add water.

Simmered for 35 minutes to turn golden.

It tasted lovely!  I think I would make this just to have on hand for an ice cream topping or brushing on a cake or to put in my tea.  

To make the dough, which the site calls "foolproof", requires cake flour, for which I substituted 200 g all-purpose flour mixed well with 40 g cornstarch.  Also, the dough recipe author has never met this fool, as I managed to mis-measure the lye water, putting in too much.  I completed the recipe anyway.

Include the golden syrup!

I found that the mold could hold 25 g of filling with 25 g of dough comfortably.  It took a little practice to get it to work well in the mold, but it wasn't hard.  Weighing everything on a scale was a good idea.

This was too big for the mold.  Reduce by half.

Out of the mold, ready to bake.

First you bake them for 10 minutes, let them cool for 10 minutes, brush them with the egg wash, then bake them again for 10 minutes or until golden brown all over.  

Done!

Honestly, the filling was better distributed than this in many of them.

The Verdict

Nyonya's site says to let the cakes sit in a closed container for about 3 days for the oil in the filling to soften the crust.  Another website agrees but encourages tasting it while the crust is still crispy.  I did both.  

First, it was really obvious that I had put in too much lye water.  I could taste it and it was not a pleasant addition.  Even after the cakes had matured for a few days, the lye flavor was there.  However, I could get past that in order to judge the final result.  

I thought the leche Lombard filling was a very good idea.  It achieved similar results to the professionally-made moon cakes I have previously tried.  Tasty, not too sweet, and balanced with the crust.  My observation is that Asian desserts are very understated, and this was that.  But it was still flavorful enough to be interesting.  

Success again!  Just be careful in measuring the lye water...