Gosling with Sour Cherry Sauce (I used duck) -- Transylvanian Cookbook!

I know, I've been away from the Transylvanian Prince's cookbook for a while.  I needed to try some other books and it felt good to do that.  But I had this particular recipe on my "to do" list for a while, so it was just a matter of time to get the ingredients.

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook


The recipe is #170,

Gosling with Sour Cherry Sauce

Have enough sour cherry for the gosling, pour some wine onto it; once washed, cook white bread insides and honey with the food as well; once cooked, pass it through a strainer, then add some salt and honey, and a bit of almonds, then cook them together. I’ve told you how to serve it. 

My Redaction

I figured it would be hard to get a gosling, so I settled for a duck from an Asian market.  But the sour cherries were the real challenge:  Everything I read said, "If you can't get sour cherries, use sweet ones and add lemon juice to make it sour."

I really didn't want to do that.  I wanted to try the Official Sour Cherries.  So the duck remained in my freezer until I found a new European market one day.  The place was small but it had two freezers with interesting ice creams and... bags of cherries.  I asked the owner if the cherries were sweet or sour.  She looked dejected and said, "These are European cherries, so they are sour."

Her expression brightened when I said, "Hooray!  Sour cherries!" and I bought two bags.

Now I was ready.  Everything I needed to make the recipe was acquired!

1 duck, cleaned and with the head and feet removed
2 ounces fresh bread crumbs, crust removed
about 2 tablespoons honey for the duck and another 1 tablespoon for the sauce
1 to 1 1/2 cups red wine
300 grams sour cherries (mine were pitted already)
salt to taste
1/2 cup raw almonds, chopped

The honey was en route.

DUCK!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put the duck in a big, oven-safe pan with a lid.  Add the cherries, bread crumbs, honey, and red wine.  Stir to mix as best as you can around the duck.

Cover and bake for 1 hour.  Uncover and bake another 15 minutes, or whatever it takes to get the internal temperature to 170 degrees.

Mmmmm.  Smells good!

Remove the duck from the pan and then strain the liquid in the pan into another saucepan.

It produced nearly two cups of liquid

Taste the liquid and add honey and salt to taste.  I aimed for a light sweet-and-sour balance, that leaned towards the sour side.  Add the almonds.

Bring the sauce to a boil, stirring constantly, and let boil/hard simmer for a few minutes.  The sauce got noticeably thicker, just not thick.

I sliced some of the breast meat before spooning the sauce on top and serving.  I dug deep into the sauce to make sure I got almond bits for the top.

Well, I should have arranged the parts a little more artistically.

The Verdict

I served it with a side dish of green beans and some fresh bread.  Because my cherries were pitted, I put some of them from the strainer onto the top of the duck.

Reactions were mixed.  The guest taster thought the meat was tender and succulent and the sauce was wonderfully flavorful.  I thought the meat was tough and had an off-flavor, but the sauce was wonderful.  So we agreed on the sauce!

It was thick enough to stick a bit on the meat's surface.  I put the extra sauce in a bowl on the table because we both wanted more sauce with the meat.

We thought the sauce was just right for tartness, with enough sweetness to keep our mouths from puckering.  The almonds added a crunchy texture, which was welcomed, and their flavor went well with the cherries.  The juices from the duck brought a savory deepness that kept it from becoming a dessert sauce.  It was also rich from the fat.

During the meal, the fat collected on top of the sauce, which I didn't like much.  I think next time I would try to remove much of the fat from the juices before making the sauce.  That would also make it easier to get sauce on the bread which I dipped into the sauce.

There was a lot of sauce left over, which I plan on using with other cooked meats.

I spent some time considering if the sauce would be improved with the addition of spices.  I think not, in that the cherry flavor was really emphasized in this simple sauce, and that a spice like cinnamon or cloves would shift the emphasis away.  Perhaps pepper, to bring some bitter into the sweet-sour combination.  I think I would add spices only if I wanted a change from the "usual."  (Unlikely!)

I also asked around about the off-flavor of the duck meat.  To me, it was strong enough to be off-putting.  I did not like the meat and the scent it had.  It might have been a gland that wasn't removed well when the duck was cleaned.  I really don't know.  So if I wanted this sauce again, I think I would use a chicken or a fatty piece of pork.

Lamb with Red Cabbage -- Another recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Today I picked recipe number 82, found on page 20.


Lamb with red cabbage. 

Put the lamb on the fire, cut it, boil it, then roast it, add some bacon, but you can do it without. Boil it until tender, put it to the fire and let it cook, clean the red cabbage, poach it, wring it out, then put it with the meat, then add some honey and spices. 

I love how this recipe gives me so much room to experiment.  Spices?  Which spices?  I look around at other lamb recipes in the book and only got a glimpse of what our author might choose.  Garlic didn't seem right but Recipe 84 suggested black pepper and ginger.  Some websites I browsed suggested that you need spices that would stand up to the stronger flavor of lamb.  So I decided on pepper, ginger, and cinnamon.

The book's translators noted:  "This preparation for lamb, spit roasting, slicing, cooking in broth, then a final roast appears in nearly all the lamb recipes in this section".  I assumed that the spit roasting happened with large pieces of lamb, since you slice them and then continue the cooking.  As I had purchased boneless lamb steaks for this recipe, I decided I would start with the "cooking in broth" step.

My Redaction

2 lb. boneless lamb steaks
2 1/2 cups beef broth (enough to barely cover the lamb in the cooking pot)
1/2 pound bacon, sliced
1 large head of red cabbage (mine was 2 1/2 lb before preparing); cored and sliced or shredded
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

And broth

Put the lamb in a covered pan big enough to hold the meat in one layer.  Put in the broth and bring to a gentle simmer.  Simmer, covered, until fork tender.  Mine simmered for 1 1/2 hours and would have benefited from more time.  I turned the meat twice, once after 30 minutes of cooking and again at 45 minutes.

The beginning of the cooking

Place the meat in a greased oven-proof pan and cover the top with the sliced bacon.

The more bacon, the better!

Core and slice or shred the red cabbage and put into a large, covered pot.  Strain the broth and pour it over the cabbage.  (Mine was about 2 cups broth.)  Bring to a boil over medium high heat, cover the pan, and cook the cabbage.  Stir occasionally and taste test for tenderness.  My goal was to cook it to tender but not limp.  I didn't note the time but it was less than 20 minutes.



When is cabbage is done, remove pan from the heat and stir in half of the honey (I approximated rather than measured) and all of the spices.  Mix well.  Scoop into serving bowl, leaving most of the pan liquid behind.  Taste for seasoning.  I put in the rest of the honey at this point.  My mixture was only slightly sweet and the spices were tingly on my tongue.

Broil the lamb until the bacon is crisp and the meat is browned.  It doesn't take long so watch it carefully.



The Verdict

I plated a piece of lamb covered with a piece of bacon on top of a nest of cabbage.  It was served with a side of baked butternut squash and a nice pinot noir.



My guest taster was happy with the tenderness of the lamb, but I was not.  I wished I had let it braise longer (but I ran out of time).

Most bites consisted of lamb, bacon, and cabbage, and that was lovely!  We both agreed that the lamb and cabbage was a good combination but it was the crispy bacon that pushed the taste to excellent levels.

The spices did hold their own against the lamb flavor; in fact, I felt that the flavors all blended nicely together and that none actually dominated.  This is interesting because when I ate the cabbage all by itself (still a good thing), I could really taste the pepper and ginger.  The honey seemed to just mellow the cabbage flavor and shift it to a gentle sweet.

Success!  Lovely!  A nice way to serve lamb without a lot of fuss.  I think it would be fun to try different spice/herb combination in the cabbage to see if there are any better versions out there.

One last note:  The leftovers are tasty, too, although we needed more bacon...

Eating an Egg Sausage - part two of a recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

Yesterday I posted about how to make an egg sausage.  The recipe was from

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

This is recipe number 44, found on page 11.


Cow intestines stuffed with sweet milk. 

Wash the intestines so that they will not smell; you will need sweet milk, eggs, saffron, black pepper, but mostly eggs. Mix these together, this is the stuffing. Add some parsley leaves to the milk, tie the two ends of the intestines so that the stuffing won’t leak. Poach it in hot water so that the milk will get dry like a liver. If you’re cooking it, cook it in another pot of clean water, once cooked, pass the water through a strainer, pass some sweet milk through a strainer on top of it, put some parsley leaves on it and cook it like that. Add some saffron half an hour before serving it, add some black pepper and salt.

You can view my redaction here.

Today I will tell you the results (in other words, I ate them!) of the sausage-making adventure.

When I considered the instructions, I decided that first you cook the sausages in water, and then make a sauce (of sorts) in which to further simmer the sausages and possibly serve them in it.

The sauce ingredients

1/2 cup hot water from simmering the sausage
5 threads saffron
1 cup milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon chopped parsley




I put the bigger of the two sausages into a pan with just enough water to cover it and simmered it until I thought it was heated all the way through.  When the water started to simmer, I took out 1/2 cup, strained it, and put the saffron in it to steep.

Simmering sausages!

Once the saffron had steeped for about 20 minutes, I stirred in the milk, salt, pepper, and parsley.

Then I poured the water off the sausage, rinsed and cleaned the pan, wiped the foam off the sausage, and put the sausage back in the pan.  I poured the milk mixture over it and brought it to a slow simmer, turning the sausage over once.

Not a lot of sauce in which to simmer.

I waited about 15 minutes and decided that the sausage was cooked enough.  I wasn't clear on how to use the milk sauce and it seemed thin and not very flavorful, so I chose not to use it when I served the sausage.

I put the whole sausage on a plate and cut it into serving-sized pieces.  I garnished it with a little more parsley but it didn't seem to matter.



The Verdict

I served it as it was.  The focus was on flavor and texture.

First, the sausage casing was rubbery and difficult to cut.  I have since learned from my online friends that I should have let the sausages sit uncovered in the refrigerator for 24 hours to fix that problem.

The filling was soft, with bits of the seasonings either at the top (parsley floats) or at the bottom (pepper sinks) and nothing in between.

  

The texture was strongly reminiscent of flan -- a very delicate, fine-textured custard.  It was the texture I had hoped to achieve when I first envisioned this recipe.

The flavor was very bland.  I could not taste the seasonings except when I chewed on a piece of casing.  This was okay sometimes but other times I got a blast of pepper, which I did not enjoy.

Overall, the group impression was, "Meh."  Not interesting.  I found myself thinking of flan even more as I ate it, and wishing there was a caramel sauce over the top.  (Not that it would go with the parsley or pepper.)

I would call it a success in that the recipe turned out as I expected.  But we did strategize on how to improve the eating experience for the rest of the sausages and for if I made it again.

For Eating the Rest

I took several pieces and fried them, like regular sausages, in olive oil.  That crisped up the casings but did nothing to make the flavor exciting.

Then I cut up the rest of the pieces and cooked them with chopped ham and cubed cheddar cheese.




This was tasty but why not just put the ham and cheese with scrambled eggs?  Why go to the trouble of making these sausages?

For Making It Again

My first thought was to make the filling more like scrambled eggs, so possibly make it 2 parts eggs (or more) to 1 part milk.  That might keep the seasonings better distributed in the filling, too.

The next idea was to simmer the spices in the milk first to flavor it, then let the milk cool before mixing it with the eggs.

I also thought it would be interesting to make it more flan-like by making it sweet and use spices like cinnamon, and then serving it with a thin caramel sauce.  A dessert sausage!  Quite the sotelty, I think.

It Was Asked

My guest tasters asked, "Why do you think this was made in the first place?  What made this recipe important enough to be included?"

My guess is that it is intriguing.  It is a pretty sausage to look at, with the yellow and the speckles of seasonings.  That is enough to get a guest's attention.  And then when you discover it is a sausage filled with eggs (or custard) instead of the usual meats, that can cause discussion.  I think if I could fathom the right egg-to-milk ratio and get the seasonings to distribute well, it could be a very tasty treat on my guests' plates.

I won't make any promises, but if I do this recipe again, I will report on it.  I do still have plenty of sausage casings left over!

UPDATE:  My friend, SS, believes this recipe might have been invented as a food for Lent.  It would make a meal more like you were eating meat, giving variety to an otherwise repetitive diet.  I think that is an excellent observation.

Making an Egg Sausage (part 1) -- Another Transylvanian cookbook recipe

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Today I picked recipe number 44, found on page 11.


Cow intestines stuffed with sweet milk. 

Wash the intestines so that they will not smell; you will need sweet milk, eggs, saffron, black pepper, but mostly eggs. Mix these together, this is the stuffing. Add some parsley leaves to the milk, tie the two ends of the intestines so that the stuffing won’t leak. Poach it in hot water so that the milk will get dry like a liver. If you’re cooking it, cook it in another pot of clean water, once cooked, pass the water through a strainer, pass some sweet milk through a strainer on top of it, put some parsley leaves on it and cook it like that. Add some saffron half an hour before serving it, add some black pepper and salt.

My Redaction

The idea is that this is a sausage that is filled with an egg/milk mixture.  When I first read it I thought the filling should be like a stiff custard.  To make a custard, you use roughly 2 parts milk to 1 part egg, however the instructions say "mostly eggs", which made me think (as the translators noted) this should be more like scrambled eggs.  I struggled with this and so compromised by using roughly equal parts milk to egg.

This is my first time ever working with sausage casings (pig intestines, not cow) so I was a little nervous.  I asked my online friends who make salumi and used their experienced advice on how to poach it without overcooking it.

12 eggs (2 1/2 cups), well-beaten
3 cups milk
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely minced
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
saffron, ground in the mortar (see close up picture for quantity)

1 four foot and 1 two foot sausage casings (32 mm diameter), soaked and rinsed

This much saffron.

The sausage casings had to soak for nearly an hour, so while that was going on I put water in my big Dutch oven and put it over high heat with the cover on.  When it got to a boil, I turned the heat to low.

The four foot casing

The beaten eggs, milk, parsley, pepper, and saffron all went into a pitcher.  I saw that this liquid stuffing would be best poured into the casing and the pitcher made it easy to control the flow.  I noticed that the parsley and pepper floated to the top, so I kept a spoon handy and stirred it well just before each pouring.



Once the casings were ready, I slid them over the end of a funnel and tied a knot in the end.  I decided I would work over a bowl, just in case I lost my grip on the casings or there was a leak or other disaster.  It was really pretty easy to pour the egg mixture into the casing and allow the casing to slide off into the bowl.

The entire four foot casing fit over the tip!

The parsley and pepper floated to the top anyway.

When the first casing was full (the four foot one) and tied off, I realized I had about 1 1/2 cups of filling left, so I soaked the second casing.

I think it is pretty!

At this point I was ready to poach the sausage.  I brought the water back up to a boil, turned off the heat, put the sausage in, then put the lid on and set the timer for 20 minutes. At the halfway point, I turned the sausage over.

When the time was up, the sausage was firmer and lighter yellow in color.  I moved it into a bowl of ice water, as my salumi friends said it was best to poach it gently (as I did) and then shock it in the cold water.  I added more ice as needed to keep the water very cold and turned it over once.
It is obvious in these pictures that the parsley and some of the pepper floated to the top and the rest of the pepper sank to the bottom along the length of the sausage.

The "up" side

The "down" side

It took about 20 minutes until the sausage was cool to the touch.  Then I drained it and put it on a towel on a plate.  I put it into the refrigerator, uncovered, to dry and continue to cool overnight.



The second sausage was prepared just like the first, except it only took about 10 minutes in the ice water to get it cool to the touch.  I noticed that a lot of the pepper had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher, despite my attempts to keep it afloat with stirring.  It was hard to get it to go into the sausage casing.

Pre-poaching sausage number two.

This is the end of making the egg sausages.  Tune in tomorrow for part two, eating the sausages!

Capon with Raisin Sauce -- Another recipe from the Transylvanian Cookbook

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Before I get started, I want to say that reading this book and considering how I would redact the recipes is quite a joy.  Some look straightforward and some are intriguing and some make me wonder what I'm supposed to do.  Parsing through these categories inspires me to think, create, and experiment, all of which are activities I love to do.  I am so glad I get to do this.

Today I picked recipe number 175, found on page 40.

Capon with raisin sauce.

Don’t boil the water to be as hot as for the old geese; then remove the feathers, scorch it, wash it, cut the animal’s nails; put its gizzards into another clean water pot; then put it into another pot, and keep it there until you cook it. When cooking it, stitch it and add some salt; while you’re cooking it, make some sauce. Do it like so. Take a very good wine or mead, we use wine in Transylvania. Add some honey to the wine so that it will be sweet, break some juniper berries; add some currants, saffron, but don’t add black pepper. Chop a loaf of white bread into cubes, fry it in butter, but don’t burn it; add some spices and ginger. Put equal amounts of sugar, cinnamon and ginger into it. When serving it, put the fried bread into the sauce. Slice the capon and put it into the plate. Add some spices. Serve it when hot. Do the same with a fat hen.

My Redaction

Fortunately I don't have to deal with preparing a live chicken for cooking (although I have done that in my ancient past).  The focus of this recipe is really the sauce and that is what my redaction addresses. 

So for my "fat hen", I simply rinsed and dried it, then put it in my Dutch oven and sprinkled it with  1/2 teaspoon of salt.  It baked, covered, in a 400 degree F oven for about 1 hour, where the last ten minutes had the lid off to allow it to brown a little.  The result was tender and moist, and perfectly ready for serving.

Sauce Ingredients

2 cups white wine (I used chardonnay)
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 tablespoon juniper berries
5 threads saffron
2 tablespoons raisins or currants (I used raisins)

about 6 ounces white bread (I used sourdough), crusts removed
1/2 tablespoon each of cinnamon, ginger, and sugar (*see note below)
butter for frying (I used about 1/2 of a stick or 1/8 of a pound)
more raisins or currants for garnish (I used currants)

Sauce ingredients

Timing seemed important here:  I thought the juniper berries and raisins would need time to hydrate in the sauce (no crunchy berries wanted) and for the sauce flavors to blend.  So I started the sauce as soon as the hen went into the oven and worked with it from there.

First I crushed the juniper berries in the mortar.  I decided I didn't want finely crushed particles, but I did work them until there were small bits with just a few larger ones.



This is a two-part sauce. 

I put the wine, juniper berries, raisins, honey, and saffron into a pan over a very low heat.  I stirred them to mix and then put the lid on the pan. 

After about 10 minutes, the liquid was simmering slowly.  I let it simmer for a few minutes and then turned the heat off. 



While that was sitting, I cubed the bread into about 1/2 inch pieces and mixed the equal parts of cinnamon, ginger, and sugar in a small bowl.



I decided to fry the bread cubes in small batches, adding butter as I needed it, and stirring them often so they wouldn't burn.  It worked well to add butter twice:  once at the beginning just before I added the cubes, and then again about half way through, when the pan started looking dry.

Partly toasted and almost ready for more butter

Toasted and ready to leave the pan

Once the bread cubes were toasted, I moved them into a bowl and sprinkled them with the cinnamon-ginger-sugar mixture.  Then I tossed them to make sure the bread cubes were lightly coated with the spices.

Tossing to distribute the spice mixture

My goal was to spice the bread cubes but not over do it.  I kept thinking about the flavor balances in the whole sauce and decided I could always add more spice mix to the final sauce if I felt it needed it.

When the hen was about 10 minutes from being cooked, I reheated the wine mixture, again over very low heat.  I wanted it steaming hot and not really simmering.  Letting it wait while the hen cooked was a good idea:  the raisins and juniper berries were much softer and the flavors had infused the wine.  I turned off the heat before adding the bread cubes.

The second heating

I let the hen rest out of the oven while I combined the two parts of the sauce.  My concern was this:  How much of the bread should be put into the wine mixture?  What was the goal?  I decided to put it all in (but I did it in two batches, just to be sure) because I decided the sauce should not be runny.  I was okay with it being fairly thick, as long as it was moist and flavorful.

As I expected, the bread cubes soaked up the wine mixture.  After some stirring and letting the sauce sit while I carved the hen, there was very little liquid in the sauce.  I felt I had achieved the goal of the recipe.

I chose to use just the breast meat.  Once it was sliced and on the serving dish, I sprinkled it with the cinnamon-ginger spice mixture.



Then I spooned the sauce over the meat and garnished it with currants.



The Verdict

I served it with a tossed green salad and warm bread. 

First off, let me say that it was very, very good.  The sauce was moist and flavorful; I would liken its texture to a bread stuffing that was very wet.   However it was not runny, which made it easy to eat and to spread across the meat as I was eating it.

My guest taster and I agreed that there were layers of flavor that you "tunneled" your way through as you were eating it.  If I focused, I could tasted the saffron, but mostly it was a background flavor.  I liked how the cinnamon and ginger worked together, making the sauce very complex in its flavor range.

I was glad, too, that I sprinkled the meat with as much spice mixture as I did.  I think it increased the flavor levels without making the spice levels of the sauce overwhelming.

Despite the honey and sugar, the sauce wasn't sweet.  I would be fine with it being sweeter, but I knew in advance that my guest taster would not appreciate that, so I held back on the honey.  As it was, he kept thinking I had put apples in the sauce until I told him about the honey.  (Personally, I think sauteed apples would be a good addition.)

The butter in which the bread was fried became part of the sauce, lending a richness and a satisfying mouthfeel that was welcomed.

We differed in opinion only on one aspect of the sauce:  its bitterness level.  It was not so bitter as to put me off -- I had no problem eating it! -- but it was almost that bitter.  I couldn't decide if it was from the dry white wine or the juniper berries.  I decided that if I made this again, I would use fewer berries, maybe 1/2 teaspoon before crushing them.  He actually loved the bitterness and was glad it was there.  This is truly a matter of personal taste.

So success!  We enjoyed the meal and discussing all the flavors in the sauce.  I would make it again and be willing to serve it to guests. 

*One note:  I could have done with less of this spice mixture as I had a lot left over.  I would probably use 1 teaspoon each instead of 1/2 tablespoon. 

Stuffed Eggs, part 2 -- another recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

This is my second attempt at stuffing eggs by following a recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook.  You can see the first attempt's write up here. 

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:  http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts/transylvania-v2.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

These are the recipes I picked out.  Today I am trying the second one, using the experience and ideas I got from trying the first one.

Stuffed Eggs

(532) Stuffed eggs. Poke a hole into the eggs, blow out the insides, fry it and slice it, stuff it with honey, black pepper, currants, saffron and cinnamon, then put it on a thin skewer, roast it far from the coal, then serve it.

(599) Egg stuffed in shell. Put twelve eggs on a plate, poke a hole in them, blow out the white and the yolk. Once blown out, add black pepper, saffron and salt, put them into butter and cook it, cut it with a knife, whip two raw eggs, add sugar, small grapes and some parsley. Then pour it back into the egg shell. Make a skewer, put the eggs on it, and roast them.

(601) Stuffed egg white. Wash the egg, boil it, once boiling, pour the hot water down and add some cold water. Poke the end, blow out the yolk onto a pot, leave the whites inside. Cook the yolk like scrambled eggs, add sugar, saffron, black pepper, salt and small grapes. Put some parsley and whip some eggs into it, stuff it into the shell, boil it again in water, once boiled, take down the shell, only the white will be stuffed. Put it on a skewer and roast it; you can make any sauce.


My Redaction

5 eggs
butter for cooking the eggs
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 pinches ground saffron
1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons dried currants
1 teaspoon dried parsley

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F.

Pierce and blow four of the eggs as described in part 1.  Set aside the shells.

Beat the whites and yolks well, then mix in the black pepper, saffron, and salt.

Melt the butter and scramble the eggs, but stop the cooking while the eggs are still very moist.  Immediately move the eggs into a bowl and cut or mash with a fork.

Scrambled, still moist

Scrambled, moist, and broken up with a fork

Add the sugar, parsley, and currants, then mix well. 

All the ingredients together

Pierce and blow the remaining egg.  Beat the white and yolk, then add to the scrambled egg mixture.  Mix well.  The result should be very wet and chunky.

Wet!

Using a small spoon, fill each shell to almost full.  It is like feeding a baby:  Spoon some into the hole and then use the spoon to scoop up and redeposit what didn't make it into the hole the first time.  Also, it helps to hold the shell so that one finger covers the little hole in the bottom to stop leaks.

Wipe the filled shell with a damp cloth to clean it, then dry it with another cloth. 

Once all the shells are filled, bake for 35 minutes.  Serve hot or warm.

Note:  The stuffing may have expanded and run onto the outside of the shell.  You might want to wipe it off with a warm, damp cloth before serving.

In need of cleaning

The Verdict

One goal I had this time was to boost the flavorings up to make the stuffing more interesting.  All my guest tasters agreed I achieved that goal.  Even the person who said the first attempt was bland and not exciting!  While one said the texture was still very much like oatmeal, it was intriguing and flavorful oatmeal, which made all the difference.  Everyone liked the result.

Easiest to eat it cut in half.

I could taste the egg (the chunks were bigger this time) and the pepper made an interesting tingle on my tongue.  The salt and sweet balance were just right, and the saffron and parsley made a light undercurrent of flavor throughout.  The currants were pleasant little bursts of chewy and sweet to give a change to the texture.

We all agreed this would make a fun sotelty, as something to serve at the beginning of the meal to start it off with a fun surprise.  Each egg was just a few bites, a perfect size for an appetizer.

Success!

It was easier to stuff the shells with the very moist mixture.  The moisture made the mixture flow more into the shell.  It was easier to compact it by gently shaking the egg or stirring the mixture with a thin tool.  It took less time to stuff each shell.

I baked them longer this time because I wanted to make sure it they were cooked all the way through.  35 minutes achieved that, although I think they could have gone longer, up to 40 minutes.  The inside texture was moist but cooked, and not at all dry.

Stuffed Eggs, part 1 -- another recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:  http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts/transylvania-v2.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Today I picked out three recipes, and I picked three because of how similar they are.  The first and second look pretty straightforward.  I considered the third and decided I really didn't want to try that, at least not for my first attempt.

Stuffed Eggs

(532) Stuffed eggs. Poke a hole into the eggs, blow out the insides, fry it and slice it, stuff it with honey, black pepper, currants, saffron and cinnamon, then put it on a thin skewer, roast it far from the coal, then serve it.

(599) Egg stuffed in shell. Put twelve eggs on a plate, poke a hole in them, blow out the white and the yolk. Once blown out, add black pepper, saffron and salt, put them into butter and cook it, cut it with a knife, whip two raw eggs, add sugar, small grapes and some parsley. Then pour it back into the egg shell. Make a skewer, put the eggs on it, and roast them.

(601) Stuffed egg white. Wash the egg, boil it, once boiling, pour the hot water down and add some cold water. Poke the end, blow out the yolk onto a pot, leave the whites inside. Cook the yolk like scrambled eggs, add sugar, saffron, black pepper, salt and small grapes. Put some parsley and whip some eggs into it, stuff it into the shell, boil it again in water, once boiled, take down the shell, only the white will be stuffed. Put it on a skewer and roast it; you can make any sauce.

I loved the idea behind all of these recipes:  They are creating a "sotelty", an illusion food.  What is served might look like a hard-cooked egg, but when you crack it open, you get a surprise.

I think it is worth a try!

My redaction for the first recipe:

4 eggs
butter for cooking the eggs
1 1/2 to 2 tsp honey
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tablespoon dried currants
a pinch of saffron

I warmed the honey so it would be liquid.

First, preheat the oven to 225 degrees F.

Preparing the eggs

I took a small appetizer fork that has very sharp points and used it to poke a big hole (about 1 cm diameter) in the blunt end of each egg.  I had to poke some tiny holes first, then the shell started cracking and I was able to pick out bits of shell until the opening was big enough and somewhat round.  Then I poked a very small hole on the pointy end of the egg.

Big hole, with little in the back.

Little hole, just bigger than the skewer diameter

Holding the big opening over a bowl, I blew on the small hole until the yolk and white left the shell.  Then I wiped down the shell.

I think it is inevitable that some tiny bits of shell will get into the whites/yolk, but I was able to pick out most of them before I beat it with a fork until they were well scrambled.

The cooking part

I melted some butter in a pan and gently cooked the eggs.  I intentionally undercooked them so they would be very moist.  I wanted my final mixture to still need cooking once the shells were stuffed.

Moist eggs

I used the fork to break up the eggs and to mix in the spices, currants, and honey.  I added the honey last and tasted the mixture several times until I thought it was lightly spiced and moist enough.

With all the ingredients, and broken up with the fork into small pieces

To stuff the shells, I used the tines of the fork to scoop up the egg mixture and place it over the hole.  Then I used the flat of the fork to gently push the stuffing into the hole.  Sometimes I used the appetizer fork to push the stuffing down once it was inside the shell.

Don't worry about the mess on the shell, it will clean up.

When I felt I couldn't put in any more stuffing, I first wiped the shell with a damp cloth, then dried it with another cloth.

Each stuffed egg felt heavier than they were before they were blown.  Also, the amount of stuffing was just right:  I had just a little left over in the pan once I was through.  I put in effort to compact the stuffing while I was putting it in.

Four stuffed eggs, all clean and pretty!

The baking part

The recipe called for putting the eggs on a skewer, which I assumed would be necessary for roasting eggs over coals.  While I was stuffing the eggs (it took a while), I decided that the skewer would make a fun visual effect for serving, so I put two eggs on one skewer.  Be sure to put the tip of the skewer into the small hole first, so that it is easy to find the big hole as the skewer exits the stuffing.

I think this looks neat!

I put the eggs on a tray and baked them for 20 minutes.




The Verdict

I served them as they were, right out of the oven.

It took a little experimenting, but we found the best way (I thought) to eat them was to crack them in the middle with the edge of the spoon, which allowed the eggs to be broken in half by hand.  Then we used the spoon to scoop out the stuffing from each half.  The first attempt (see the pictures) was to peel the eggs like a hard-cooked egg and then scoop, but that made a big mess of shell.  It was too easy to eat some shell in the process.

We cracked the shell with the bowl of the spoon, or tapped it on the plate.

Peeling away the shell.

Ready to eat!

I did not tell my guest tasters what was in the stuffing.  I challenged them to tell me what they tasted.  

One was certain the stuffing was mostly rice, with some spices and currents.  He wasn't impressed with it and thought it needed salt.  He did salt several bites and said that improved the flavor.  In the end, he said it wasn't bad but he didn't think it was exciting.

The other two guests thought the stuffing was mostly oatmeal.  Once they knew it was egg, they decided they thought it was oatmeal because it had the sorts of flavors they associate with it (honey, cinnamon, currants or raisins).  They said there was enough blandness that it seemed like oatmeal.  

However, they liked it and were intrigued with the technique.  We discussed ways to make the stuffing more appealing, and agreed it needs a bit of salt and more spice to really bump up the flavor.

Success!  I want to do it again with those improvements.

There are some things I would do differently.  I wish that I had taken the scrambled eggs out of the pan before mixing in the other ingredients.  I think the eggs cooked more than I wanted from the residual heat in the pan, and I wasn't happy about that.  Perhaps the result would have been more flavorful on its own.  I also think I would mix the saffron into the uncooked eggs so it could flavor them better while they cooked.

While preparing the stuffing, I thought a lot about the purpose of baking the eggs.  I decided it was to heat them all the way through, and perhaps to get the stuffing firmed up in the shell.  That is why I picked a low temperature (slow heating to get through to the center) and left them in there for 20 minutes.  I think it was a good choice.  The stuffing was very warm completely into the center.  

We had a good conversation about other stuffings to make.  The idea I liked best was to mix the uncooked beaten eggs with a little salt, tiny bits of cooked bacon or sausage, and some herbs or spices or chives or green onion.  After plugging the tiny hole with a bit of cheese, pour the egg mixture back into the shell.  Bake it to serve an omelet in its shell!

Tune in tomorrow to read about my second attempt at stuffed eggs.