Mustasole, an Italian cookie with connections to immigration

I was studying the food opportunities (or lack thereof!) of people who traveled steerage class in the 1800s and early 1900s, when I came across a recipe that caught my attention.  It is from The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook, written by Tom Bernardin.  Click here to find it online.  Mr. Bernardin worked at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Immigration Museum sites, giving tours and developing a slide show on the history of Ellis Island which he presented many times.  In the process, he decided he needed to gather the recipes from the immigrants, employees, and their families.  His book was the result of these efforts.

ISBN:  0-9629198-4-5

His recipes came from 33 countries and often were accompanied by stories from the person who sent them, telling about the immigrant family member or the memories they had of the food.  As someone who is interested in food history, I marvel at the old methods of cooking contained in these recipes.  For example, one called "Biscuit de Reims" starts with: 

Take 9 eggs and weigh them and take the same weight in sugar.

Take 6 eggs and weigh them and take the same weight in flour.

Take 3 eggs and weigh them and take the same weight in butter. 

We don't think about measuring that way, but imagine a person who cannot determine in advance how much an egg from her hens would weigh.  Also keep in mind that standardized measurements were not common until the early 1900s (thank you, Fannie Farmer!), but using the weighing method - no matter what unit you worked in - should work.

The recipe I choose to make is called Mustasole, which is probably a spelling variant of Mustazzoli or Mostaccioli.  It is possible the name originated from the Roman words meaning "cake made with must."  Must is freshly squeezed, unfiltered grape juice; sometimes it is cooked to concentrate the flavors and intensify the sugars, and this is called "saba."  

This recipe is made with honey, so the flavor profile would be different than one using must.  The final goal is to make a cookie that is hard when dry but soft when moist, lasts for months or even years without spoiling, and does not make crumbs.

On page 116, we find mustasole recipe along with a reminiscence from the contributor, Ms. Saiia, revealing how her family and others used these cookies for nutrition on the sea voyage.

Mustasole

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour in a bowl

1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour in a cup

1 1/2 cups melted honey, warm

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla or lemon flavor

Place 3 cups flour in bowl, add hot honey, salt, flavor and mix well.  Add more flour to make very stiff dough, knead on a board till smooth.  Place in bowl and cover and let rest for at least 12 hours, not in refrigerator.  Divide in 4 pieces - knead each till smooth, using little flour.  Shape as you would children's clay - build on ungreased cookied sheets - add little oil on top and shine, or water to make it stick.  Bake at 325 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes (gas or electric varies) till golden brown.  Remove from pan while hot and lay on flat surface to harden.  (Limp when hot - hard when cold.)  No crumbs.

My Notes

I chose to use vanilla, although the lemon had me intrigued.  

I heated the honey in the microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes, so it was hot and very liquid.

I mixed all the ingredients in the bowl with a spoon until the dough was not as sticky.  Then I moved it to the cutting board that was dusted with flour.  I kneaded it by hand, adding flour, until the dough was smooth, firm, and not sticky when touched quickly.  I noticed that when the dough sat for a minute or two, it started to stick to the board.

The bowl for resting was lightly dusted with flour and I put the dough in that.  I covered it with a cloth and let it rest for 30 hours (it was a busy time!). 

There was about 3/4 cup of flour left of the 1 1/2 cups.  Flour can absorb different amounts of liquid depending on when the wheat was harvested or ground or how old the flour is, so having this extra was good.  

All bowl ingredients, before stirring.

Stirred, but with no extra flour added.

Stirred with extra flour added.  Ready for kneading.

Kneaded and ready for a rest.

Notice the instructions don't specify the thickness of the dough.  I tried thick (about 1/2 inch), thin (about 1/4 inch), and very thin (less than 1/4 inch).  I noticed that the thick took more than 20 minutes to get golden brown, thin about 15 minutes, and very thin about 8 minutes.  So aim for 1/4 inch thick.

So for thick I used my hands to roll a log and then pound it flat.  I used a bench scraper to cut the pieces.

For thin and very thin, I used a small wooden rolling pin.  This was amusing because with 1/4 of the dough, it rolled very, very long and narrow!

I played with the size of the shapes while the oven preheated.  

For the thick.

For the thin!

The dough doesn't spread, you can place them close together on the pan.  

Thick.  I didn't think they would spread, but I was careful anyway.

Thin.  Crowd them together!

Baked thick.

Baked thin.

The Verdict

The one recipe made a basket full of mustasole of all three thicknesses.

Liberty cookies!

They were as hard as rocks once they cooled down.  After a few days in the basket, they had absorbed some moisture from the air and were a little bit softer, especially the thin and very thin ones.

I tried eating them by soaking them in tea.  It took several minutes of watching tiny bubbles floating up from them before they were soft enough to chew without stressing my jaw joint.  Other times I broke up a cookie (thin or very thin) and put it in my mouth, holding it there until it softened from my saliva.

The flavor was good!  The honey and vanilla came shining through, which made the otherwise chewy experience pleasant.  I had to be patient while the cookie softened, so a little honey flavor in my mouth while waiting helped.

The texture was very fine, and I did not get any crumbs.  

The thick one, cut open to show the texture.

I declare it a success!  I can imagine an immigrant bringing a box of these to use as a meal supplement  (or replacement, as needed) on the ship ride, that the wait for them to get soft enough to chew made the meal seem longer, and that a taste of home would be welcome.

This recipe is very similar to the lebkuchen cookies I made previously, following a medieval recipe.  Click here to view it.  It took a few tries to get it successful, so click here to see the other post on it.  Basically, they are same, but lebkuchen has spices added to it.  Since the lebkuchen dough can sit in a container for years (supposedly with improvement), I didn't worry about the mustasole sitting on the counter for 30 hours.  I would say the mustasole has less sweetener in it, but that is just a guess. Both mustasole and lebkuchen are traditionally frosted with a chocolate glaze, if decorated at all.

I'm going to take most of the cookies, put them in a tin box, and put them in storage.  I'll check them in a few months to see how they are doing.  If there is anything important to report, I'll let you know.

Now I wonder how this cookie would do made with freshly-squeezed grape juice.  I think you would have to worry about the juice fermenting if you let it sit for at least 12 hours.  And would it store for a long time?

A Good Sauce for Chicken -- 15th Century Italy

I was given a copy of a Ken Albala book I did not know existed:  Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, part of the Daily Life through History series published by the Greenwood Press in 2006.  (Thank you, DS!)

ISBN 0-313-33096-4

Some of the recipes I had seen before, but many I had not and it was a fascinating read.  It has several organizational lists which I found to be very helpful.  One is by era (Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Late Renaissance and Elizabethan Era), and within it, subcategories (Cold Foods, Soups, Meat, etc.)  The other is by country (France, England, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland) with subcategories by era.  There is a list of recipes for special occasions (novelty, holidays, illness).

Ken includes a glossary at the beginning of the book.  Each recipe has a title and cites the source, location, and time period it came from.  He also puts comments after the recipes to define unusual words specific to the recipe or to clarify a technique.  Some of his comments help interpret the recipe to more modern, smaller quantities, since most of us are not cooking for large groups of people.  Clearly he has tried most of the recipes, so his experience and knowledge of food history are a valuable aspect of this book.

I recommend it as worthwhile for a better understanding of historical cooking and to get a feel for how a master historical cook would approach these recipes.

Today was a cold and rainy day, which made it perfect for building a fire in my living room fireplace.  This inspired me to cook something over that fire, and I found a recipe in Ken's book.  On page 51 is A Good Sauce for Chickens, cited as from Italy in the 15th century, by "Anonimo Veneziano", which Ken says means "Anonymous Venetian."  

To Make a good sauce for chickens, take pomegranate and make wine by hand, and place in this wine good sweet spices, and if it seems too strong, add pounded anise, or rosewater.  Others use wine of sour pomegranates and wine of good sweet grapes, and place these two wines together with enough sweet spices.  If you don't have grapes put in a bit of honey and let it boil, the spices should be raw, you don't want to let it stand so it spoils.

Ken notes that "wine" means "juice" and that the goal is a sweet-and-sour fruit sauce with spices.

It is winter, and my grape vine is merely empty twigs, but I did have a bag of frozen grapes from it.  After they partially defrosted, I put them in batches into the blender to coarsely chop them.  Then each batch went into a small cloth bag, where I squeezed out the juice.  This resulted in grape juice that was light in flavor and tart, not sweet.  

Grapes, stems and all

Pulsed to coarsely chop

Squeeze to nearly dry

The juice, more than enough for this recipe

I also had a bottle of homemade pomegranate molasses.  Using fruit from my own tree, I had mixed the juice with a little sugar and lemon juice, then reduced it to 1/4 of its volume.  This stores the juice well for a long time and takes up a small space in my refrigerator.

I was ready to give this recipe a try.

My Redaction

3 large pieces of boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 2 pounds total)

olive oil

1/4 cup pomegranate molasses

1/2 cup grape juice

1 teaspoon poudre fines (a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron)

1 tablespoon honey

The honey and olive oil were added later.

The chicken meat was coated on all sides with olive oil and placed on a hot, oiled grill over live coals.  While it was cooking, I kept track of the heat from the coals and added more coals as needed.  It took about 40 minutes to cook the meat through, turning it over once after about 20 minutes.

I mixed the pomegranate and grape juices with the spices, then tasted it.  Both juices were tart, and the mixture was less tart than the molasses but still too tart for my preference.  So I added the honey.  The mixture was put in a small ceramic pan near the fire to begin warming it.  Once the chicken was nearly done cooking, I put the pan on a trivet closer to the fire and with hot coals near one side.  I stirred it with a fork often to even the heating through the liquid.  Once it was steaming, I considered it ready.

Cozy, warm, and welcoming.

Starting to cook the chicken

Warming the sauce while the chicken cooked

Heating the sauce in earnest

The Verdict

Dinner is served!

A piece of chicken was set on top of a slice of sourdough bread, then the sauce was spooned over the top.  This put sauce and some spices on the meat.  Most of the sauce, though, ran off the meat where it was soaked up by the bread.  This was served with a simple side salad of greens, tomato, and croutons, with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.

View from above.

My guest taster had no idea what was in the sauce, so I had him describe what he tasted.  He thought there was citrus in it, and said it was fruity.  He could taste some spices but none were dominating.  He did not think it needed salt and that the sweet-and-sour ratio was just right.  Over all, he loved it and had seconds.  He particularly enjoyed how the bread soaked up the sauce; he cut a piece of soaked bread with each bite of chicken, which I did, too.

See how the bread soaked up the sauce?

I thought the sweet-and-sour ratio was just right, too.  It was not "balanced" as it was more on the sour side.  The sweet was just enough to temper the sour; the sour was just enough tempered to make my taste buds tingle, my mouth water, and inspire me to take another bite.  If it had been any sweeter, I don't think I would have had the same physical reaction, and I wanted that reaction.

It is possible I could have put in more spices, but I'm not sure I wanted them to be more prevalent.  They were there and they added depth to the sauce.  I really enjoyed the emphasis on the fruit flavors.  

Success!

It was great fun cooking over fire in my home.  It doesn't get cold enough in sunny Southern California to build fires often, so I take advantage of it when I can.  It reminds me of the times I've spent demonstrating historical cooking to the public, which I miss.  And the chicken, by itself, had that wonderful grilled meat flavor you can only get from cooking it over fire.  Mmmmmmmmm!

Maiale Arrostito Nel Latte -- Pork Roasted in Milk (part 2)

Yesterday I posted the Artusi version of Pork Roasted in Milk.  Today I am posting the translator's variation as Part 2.

The book is Pellegrino Artusi's The Art of Eating Well.  Yesterday's post describes the book and its history and impact on Italy's culture.  Read it!  Amazing!

ISBN 0-679-43056-3

The variation, on page 318:

Maiale Arrostito Nel Latte -- Pork Roasted in Milk (part 2)

Cut the zest from a lemon, in thin strips, and sliver 2 cloves of garlic.  Stick the pork with the lemon and garlic, tie it with string, and rub it with salt and pepper.  Brown it in 2 tablespoons of oil, turning it frequently, and then add the milk.  Reduce the heat and simmer the meat until done, turning occasionally, and stirring the curds that will form to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pot.  Continue cooking until the milk has almost completely evaporated, about 45 minutes, then remove the roast and let it sit for 5 minutes.  Slice it thin, spoon the curds over the slices, and serve.

My Notes

I did not have any fresh lemon or garlic in my kitchen at the time (how embarrassing!).  But I did have a store-bought mixture of lemon peel, dried garlic, salt, and pepper.  I rubbed the outside of the pork loin with a generous amount of it.  The meat weighed about 1 1/2 pounds.

I browned the meat in a cast iron skillet in about 2 tablespoons of oil, turning it to brown it all over the wide sides.  Then I added about 2 cups of whole milk.

This recipe does not call for the meat and milk mixture to be covered, which is why I decided to cook it in the skillet.

Right after the milk was added.

I raised the heat to bring the milk to a boil then reduced it to make the milk simmer.  It was a challenge to turn the meat because it was so easy to splash the liquid out of the pan (yes, it happened!).  After about 45 minutes, I saw mostly curds in the simmering milk.

Just before removing the meat.

The meat sat, covered, while I simmered the liquid for a little while longer to reduce it.  The curds became dominant and beautifully light brown.

Curds and liquid.

When I sliced the pork, I discovered that it was not completely cooked inside.  I took what I could off the ends and served it with some of the curds and liquid spooned over the top.

With a parsley garnish, of course!

The Verdict

The meat was moist.  The lemon and garlic flavors came through lightly and created a gentle blast on the taste buds.  The curd sauce had a meaty flavor.  It was great!  My guest tasters and I agreed it was a better experience than the Artusi recipe.  Don't get me wrong:  we liked Artusi's version.  But this was definitely the better of the two.  Success!

We ate what was available and enjoyed every bite.  I took the part that wasn't cooked thoroughly and put it back in the liquid.  It simmered while we ate dinner.  That cooked it and it wasn't dry.

Both versions made excellent leftovers, too.

Maiale Arrostito Nel Latte -- Pork Roasted in Milk (part 1)

I had a lovely pork loin that was crying out for some fun way to prepare it.  Of course I turned to Artusi!

ISBN 0-679-43056-3

The book is The Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi, who lived from 1820 to 1911, translated by Kyle M. Phillips, III.  It is considered "Italy's Most Treasured Cookbook" and here is why:

Before Marcella Hazan, Guiliano Bugialli, or Ada Boni, there was Pellegrino Artusi.  A prosperous Florentine silk merchant, Artusi was also a passionate gastronome, and over his long life collected a large number of recipes for the foods he loved to eat and serve to his many guests.  In 1891, he collected them into a cookbook, La Scienza in Cucina e l'Arte di Mangiar Bene ("The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well"), for which he could not find a publisher.  So he published the book himself.

Over a hundred years later, Artusi's book is still selling in every bookstore in Italy.  It has gone through 111 printings, and a copy can be found in almost every Italian home. ...

But The Art of Eating Well is not just a cookbook.  Artusi was also a bon vivant, a noted raconteur, and a celebrated host, who knew many of the leading figures of his day and read widely in the arts and sciences.  His book is an extensive compendium of recipes, but also provided Artusi with ample opportunity to share his knowledge of the natural world, snippets of philosophy, dietary advice, and the occasional earthy anecdote.  Artusi is also loved by Italians for his wit and his way with words; his book is one to read as well as cook from. 

(Quoted from book cover flaps.)

But the enthusiasm for his work doesn't stop there.  Here is a passage from the Introduction, by the translator:

In 1982 I bought a copy ... from a used-book seller who also carried a few new books on the side.  My copy was new.  I didn't want a new copy, but when I asked him if he had any used ones, he shook his head and replied that mothers passed their copies on to their daughters.  He'd sold only three used copies of Artusi, as the book is called, in thirty years.  I thought about that on the way home, and when I opened the book, began to see why.

 ... Pellegrino Artusi read widely, corresponded with the intellectuals of his day, and had something to say about just about everything. ... While today his comments are merely interesting, at the turn of the century they undoubtedly provided the first glimpses of the outside world to many of his readers who lived in small towns and had neither the means nor the opportunity to travel.

Over the years, Artusi's influence on Italian cuisine, and, for that matter, on the Italian language, has been profound.  When he published the book in 1891, only a small fraction of the Italian population even spoke Italian, and almost all lived in abject poverty, a poverty known simply as miseria.  If the average Italian even managed to stay his hunger, much less eat meat once a week, he considered himself lucky.

There was, however, a new star emerging:  the middle class.  These were households prosperous enough to eat meat regularly, if not daily, and to enjoy a varied diet, but not wealthy enough to afford the armies of servants employed by the aristocracy. ...  They greeted Pellegrino Artusi's book with joy for two reasons:  The recipes are tasty but not extravagant, and the book is written in clear, straightforward Italian.  ... France was the cultural and culinary hub of Europe, and the Italian aristocracy ate French cuisine. ... 

Consequently, in Artusi's day, most Italian chefs were French trained, and the cookbooks they wrote were so heavily laden with French culinary terminology that they were difficult to follow.

I could keep going with the list of contributions attributed to Artusi's book, but I suggest you get a copy and read the entire introduction yourself.  You will learn about his early life, the challenges his family faced, and of his success as "a shrewd and gifted investor."

Here is the last paragraph in the Introduction:

Pellegrino Artusi set out to write a cookbook and instead helped to establish a national cuisine and unify an incredibly diverse country.  At the end of his recipe for gnocchi alla Romana he says, "I hope you will like these as much as my guests have.  If you do, toast me if I'm alive, or say a Rest in Peace if I've gone to push up cabbages."  He deserves many of both.

So let's give one of his recipes a try!  I chose

Maiale Arrostito Nel Latte -- Pork Roasted in Milk    (page 318)

Take a piece of pork loin that weighs about 1 1/4 pounds, salt it, and set it in a pot with 1 1/8 cups of milk.  Cover it and simmer it until the milk has almost completely evaporated, about 45 minutes.  Increase the fire to brown it, stirring constantly, lest the curds stick and burn.  Once it is browned, remove the meat, drain away the excess fat, and add a few more drops of milk to the curds in the pot.  Bring the mixture to a boil, and use it brush slices of toasted bread, which you will serve with the meat.

In all, 1 1/2 cups of milk will suffice.  Pork cooked this way is delicate and is not filling.

Special Note:

After Artusi's recipe, the translator has included a variation.  Since my pork loin weighed over 3 pounds, I cut it in two and tried both recipes.  The variation will be posted tomorrow as part 2.

Pork, milk, and salt.  That's all, folks!

My Notes

The piece of loin I used for this version weighed about 1 3/4 pounds, so I adjusted the milk amount to almost 1 3/4 cups.  I used whole milk.

I used about 1/2 teaspoon of salt.  I think it would be acceptable to use more.

The pork (fat side down) and milk went into a large kettle so it would fit and I could cover it.  Notice that the milk does not cover the meat at all.

After it was all in the kettle, I brought the milk to a boil.  Then I reduced the heat to a simmer and covered the kettle.  The timer was set to 45 minutes but at about 22 minutes I peeked in and decided to turn the meat.

The meat is turned.  Notice the initial curd formation on the sides of the pot.

At the end of the 45 minutes, this is what it looked like.

More curds!

The milk still had some evaporating to do so I left the lid off and raised the heat a little.  I stirred it almost constantly, working around the meat, until most of the moisture was gone and the curds were numerous.

This looks right!

Then I removed the meat and added about 1/2 cup of milk to the curds.  I brought it to a boil.  It did thicken just a little bit.  I did not pour off any excess fat because it didn't look like any was there.  

Notice the curds and liquid are a light brown in color.

I sliced the pork as thinly as I could.  The curd mixture was spread on dark rye toast, as instructed.

As served, with a little parsley garnish.

The Verdict

I ate the meat and the toast separately, which was acceptable.  The pork itself was a little dry but had a nice, delicate pork flavor.  Not salty at all.  I blame the dryness on me; I think it was the extra cooking with the lid off.  If I did this again, I would remove the meat before reducing the liquid.

The toast with the curds was excellent.  I worried that the curds wouldn't have much flavor but they did!  I didn't get any milk or dairy sensation from them but they had absorbed the salt and nice, meaty pork flavors.  The curds were on the surface of the toast and the liquid had soaked into it.  I would have been happy just eating that.

Artusi's version is the pork slice next to the bread.  I served it with a fruit salad.

So this gave me an idea.  I put the slice of pork on the bread and spooned a little of the extra curd sauce on top.  This was even better!  No more dry meat and the flavors all combined to a lovely main course.  My guest tasters agreed this was the better way to serve it.

Success!

I suspect that if the meat hadn't been dry, just serving the meat on top of the toast would have been fine.  Perhaps that is what Mr. Artusi had intended.

We all agreed it was a success!  

Rest in Peace, Pellegrino Artusi!

Historical Raviolis! The fourth filling (somewhat English)

See the previous post from September 1 for the dough recipe and first filling recipe, the September 15 one for the second filling, and also the October 1 one for the third filling.

My daughter and I decided to experiment with 14th and 15th century recipes for raviolis.  We had to redact the recipes ourselves, working from the lists given but having to figure out quantities by taste and goal.

We were working from a website that looked like a good class handout for a Society for Creative Anachronism workshop, called "Pasta Class" and found at this link:  http://www.katjaorlova.com/PastaClass.html

After successfully redacting three fillings for boiled raviolis, we decided to try a fried version.  The Pasta Class document lists some fried raviolis and some other books we perused mentioned them, too.  We wanted something sweet, so we adapted the recipe for Emeles, a medieval almond cake, as the filling.

England + Italy = Middle East

2.5 ounces ground almonds
1/2 ounce graham cracker crumbs
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
3 tablespoons honey

Mix the ingredients well.  Like in the previous filling recipe, we chose not to use an egg to bind the mixture for two reasons:  one was that we made a small amount of filling and one egg might have been too much and the other was that the honey seemed to be doing a good job of binding by itself.  It went into the refrigerator while we worked on the dough.

We used graham cracker crumbs because I already had them handy.  Dried bread crumbs would work well, too.

The mixture turned out to look like what we expected for the Emeles:

Nutty, sweet, and spiced

We made a second batch of dough only this time I added a tablespoon of sugar to the flour.  By the way, I had to add a lot more flour to the recipe to get the right texture for rolling.  I am convinced the original recipe contains a typo.

We rolled the entire batch out into a rectangle, cut it in half, and covered one half with a damp towel to keep it from drying out.  

We scored the bottom dough and portioned out the filling.  Oops!  There was not enough filling for what we planned, so we used some of the leftover cheddar/bacon/chicken filling for the rest.

I should have doubled the filling amounts as I had first planned

Then we wet the scored edges and placed the top dough, pushing out the air and making neat little packets, then cut them apart.

This time I fried them a few at a time in about 1/4 inch of hot vegetable oil until they were a delightful brown on both sides and crispy.

Too many at once and the oil has a hard time staying at the right temperature

After that I drained them on paper towels and dusted them with a cinnamon and cardamom sugar mix.

The Verdict

This was incredibly tasty.  In fact, they tasted like mini-baklavas!  We were not expecting that and it was quite a treat.  They were crispy, spicy-sweet, and nutty with a depth of flavor from the honey.  They were not greasy -- I credit frying only a few at a time.

Success!

The only thing I would change is that we didn't roll the dough out to be as thin as we had for the boiled raviolis.  It wasn't translucent.  I think the raviolis would have been crispier if we had.  I'm not complaining, mind you!  They were delicious.  I would do it again to surprise people with the flavor.

One thought:  If I were feeling lazy or in a hurry, I might use purchased won-ton skins instead.  They are thin and pre-cut and I know they fry up well.