Something Different: A Culinary Symposium

My kitchen does not exist right now.  It is four walls with new electrical work and lights but no cabinets, counters, or appliances.  The remodel is moving along well!  For this post, I thought it would be fun to tell you about the culinary symposium I attended last March.

The West Coast Culinary Symposium is an event put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).  Their web page promised "a chance for like-minded and enthusiastic people to get together and share their love and knowledge of pre-1600 period cooking and practices and share the tasty results.  It is also a time to gather as friends, make new ones, share ideas, and teach our skills to others hoping to learn."  All this came true and then some!  Excited historical cooks from all over the United States and some international travelers attended.

First, the Food 

The arrival evening was a "Traveler's Potluck" where we all brought something to share and the symposium supplied a variety of soups.  What an opportunity for showing off our skills! I brought my Deviled Eggs for Dessert, An Illusion Food which I posted on this blog on March 15, 2014.  But oh, the other offerings:  homemade cheeses, meat pies, pickled vegetables, artisan breads and spreads, fruit pies, Roman era gingerbread, and more.  Even taking small portions of these temptations didn't leave me enough room to taste all I wanted to try.

Asparagus Omelet

Onion Relish and Herbed Cheese Spread with pear slices

Meat Pie!  With pork, beef, chicken, and onions.

Meat Pie, the interior

Compost -- a medieval chutney

The groaning table

We also were served breakfast, lunch, dinner, and breakfast over the next two days.  These were cooked onsite by different groups and they all did fabulous jobs.  

Breakfast:  eggs, cheese, bacon, bread, apricot jam with rosewater, grapes, stewed greens

Lunch:  Porridge, cheese, red cabbage, sausages, onion relish, cheese, fruit, shortbread, various sauces

The lunch table:  I like how they served spreads in goblets

The dinner was particularly exciting as it was attended by the King and Queen of the kingdom.  Everyone went all out with the menu!

Elderberry cheesecake -- yum!

Meat pie as a peacock -- a subtlety

A meat stew subtlety, too

Homemade cheeses

One of my servings  : )  The chicken was baked with bacon and there is a nice spinach dish, too

You might have noticed that some dishes ended up being offered at two meals -- a very efficient way to use the leftovers.  But what was particularly nice was having leftover elderberry cheesecake for breakfast the next morning!

A good morning start

Oatmeal with stewed fruit

Next:  The Food Classes

I took three classes but got the benefit of a fourth in that they shared their food creations. 

In the Ottoman Turk cooking class we made several dishes, all tasty!  Most of the time my hands were busy helping out so I don't have a lot of pictures showing the preparation steps.  Also, with the construction going on, I can't find my notes.  Once I do, I'll update this post.

One recipe involved eggplants and gourds.  They were hollowed out, stuffed with a lamb and mint mixture, then steamed.  For serving they were sliced and adorned with a yogurt sauce and chopped mint.

Eggplant sliced open lengthwise and hollowed out

The hollowed gourd

Getting ready to steam

Slicing in anticipation of serving

What a lovely presentation! 

We also used a lamb and mint stuffing to fill up grape leaves.  A special addition to the mixture was "Golden Prunes" which are dried and have a lovely tart taste.  It added a zing to the mixture that I liked very much.  The stuffed leaves were steamed at the same time as the eggplant and gourds.

Stuffed, rolled, and ready for steaming

Steamed and ready for eating!

Another dish, absolutely yummy and a surprising combination of foods, contained cooked chicken that was deboned and shredded then mixed with noodles, grapes, and almonds.  I can't recall the sauce but will look it up later.

The noodles, uncooked

The finished dish

We also made a sweet treat, a type of folded pastry filled with an almond mixture.  There was a professional pastry chef in the class who assisted in the rolling, cutting, and closing the treats.

The dough for the treats

Aren't they cute?

The finished product.  YUM!  Hard to save some for others.

The afternoon class was about outdoor cooking.  The instructor had a neat portable fire pit that assembles from boards and uses sand and bricks to insulate the wood from the fire.  A metal structure fitted around it to provide a place to hang pots and spits.  The advantage of it coming apart is that the otherwise very heavy pit can be broken into easily carried pieces.

The ceramic pots are used as cloches

Notice the spitted roast is off to the side of the fire and has a drip pan beneath it.  The sand you see is only a few inches deep.

There was also a portable all metal fire pit that was fun to look at.  The ceramic pot is being used to help heat the charcoal faster and also to warm the pot up before it is placed over cooking food.

Love the medieval styling

The warmed cloche will go over the chicken, making a little oven and cooking the meat faster and more evenly

The class next door on Roman Empire cooking generously shared the results of their cooking.  I got to try some food items that were entirely new to me!  One item I didn't get a picture of was fried pig's ears.  Yes, you read that right.  They were sliced into strips and fried until they were chewy, tasty treats.  Not exciting from my point of view but certainly fun to try and tell people about.

Another surprise was the grilled pig nipples.  They were marinated in some lovely sauce and then we helped to grill them.  They, too, were chewy but I liked the bacon-y flavor and would definitely try them again.

Heading to the grill.  The specks are seeds in the marinade

Cooking up nicely.

I don't want you to think the pig nipples were the big surprise, though.  No, that honor belongs to the dish containing leeks, pine nuts, and ... wait for it ... pig uterus.  That's right:  sow's womb.  The sauce on the dish really brought the flavors together and made my tastebuds sing:  a taste of olive oil and spices.  The uteri made me think of slightly chewy macaroni, which is what they looked like, too.  In all seriousness, I would eat this dish again.  If I couldn't get uteri, I would use macaroni. 

Very, very tasty!

My last class was on subtleties and illusion foods.  These are foods designed to "fool the eye" into thinking it is something it is not.  The instructor was very knowledgeable, experienced, and creative.  She had brought pictures of some of her past creations and also taught us how to work with sugar paste using a store-bought gum paste mixture and rosewater.

The carrots are made of meat loaf mixture and the shrimp are really marzipan.

This is made of sugar paste!

Adorable hard-boiled egg mice

Tools of the sugar paste sculpting trade

Mixing the gum paste with rosewater to make a smooth dough

Creating!

Creations

More creations

Food Related Fun

The days were packed with good food, good learning, and good people!  We also had a keynote speaker and two competitions.  One was called "Mortal Peril" and consisted of categories with answers to which we had to provide the questions.  Anyone could participate in the first round and the top three winners went on to the final round.  Great fun!  The other competition was a spice identification challenge, where about 30 spices were put in numbered glass containers and the competitors were given a paper listing all the spice names.  We could look at, sniff, and taste the spices to identify them.  It was quite a challenge!  I was pleased with how many I got right.  

The Verdict

Overall it was exhausting, exhilarating, and worth every minute.  I'm so glad I was able to go!  Along with all the knowledge I got from the classes, I learned that I love elderberry cheesecake and anything with rosewater in it.  I came home with cookbooks, spices, a two-hundred year old sourdough starter, a ceramic alembic, and a strong desire to sculpt in sugar paste.  I met a lot of nice and interesting people, had conversations about all sorts of cooking styles and methods, enjoyed the mountain setting, and filled my stomach with tasty and exotic foods.  I am not a member of the SCA but everyone was friendly and welcoming and accommodated my lack of SCA social skills.  

This event has my hearty recommendation!

Eggplant, The Perfect Way -- Calabria

I have returned to A Mediterranean Feast by Clifford Wright.  I suspect it will become a favorite because of its diversity of recipes, and I've only read the first hundred pages!

ISBN 0-688-15305-4

In Part I:  An Algebra of Mediterranean Gastronomy, Chapter 2:  Harvest of Sorrow, Food of Dreams (page 77), I came across Melanzane alla Finitese, with an accompanying paragraph of:

Arab agriculturists brought the eggplant to the Mediterranean from Persia, or perhaps even from the Arabian peninsula, in the ninth or tenth century.  The eggplant was treated with suspicion at first, but soon became a favorite vegetable. ... Calabrians have seemingly hundreds of different preparations for eggplant and many might agree that this is the perfect way. The late American food writer Waverly Root claimed that this dish is so called because it is a specialty of San Martino di Finita.

Eggplant, The Perfect Way

8 baby eggplant (about 1 1/2 pounds)
Salt to taste
2/3 cup freshly grated pecorino cheese
1/4 finely chopped fresh basil leaves
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Basil doesn't get any fresher than this!

1.  Slit each eggplant open in the middle, slicing it lengthwise and making sure you do not cut all the way through.  Hollow out a small amount of pulp with a small spoon such as a demitasse or baby spoon.  Save the pulp for making the recipe on page 531.* Open the eggplant with your fingers and salt the inside.  Leave them on a plate to drain of their bitter juices for 30 minutes, then pat dry the insides with paper towels.

2. In a small bowl, mix the pecorino, basil, and pepper.  Using your fingers, stuff each eggplant with the cheese mixture.  Close each eggplant with a toothpick if necessary so very little stuffing escapes.

3.  In a medium-size skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat and cook the eggplant until soft, about 25 minutes.  Transfer to a serving platter, drizzle with a little olive oil, and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Makes 4 servings.

* Eggplant Omelette Fritters

My Notes

I used only two baby eggplants so I reduced the cheese mixture quantities to match (about one fourth of the recommended amounts).

They didn't say anything about the stem end, so I cut it off as close to the stem as I could.  This turned out to be convenient for hollowing out the pulp.  I was careful to open the eggplants only enough for the work that needed to be done so the uncut part would not split.

Slit, scooped, and salted

Since I was only using two eggplants, I did not save the pulp to make the recipe on page 531. 

For each eggplant, I used about 1/2 tsp of salt which I poured into my hand then gently poured into the eggplant.  Closing and shaking the eggplant helped distribute the salt. They were placed cut-side down on the plate to make the draining easier.

The cheese mixture had a bit more than 1/8 tsp. of pepper, which I thought was too much but my guest taster liked.

The toothpicks went in at a slant to the cut.

The olive oil was heated until it started to smoke, then I turned the heat down until it was barely smoking.  Then I put in the stuffed eggplants.  My concern was knowing when they were done -- nothing happened for about 7 to 8 minutes after they sat in the hot oil.  Then some sizzling occurred and I felt like they were actually cooking!

See the toothpicks?

I turned the eggplants four times, letting them sit at least five minutes on each side before turning.  The skin turned dark and the flesh slumped, showing me it was getting soft.  It was pretty easy to see they were getting done. 

To serve them, I pulled out the toothpicks and opened them up, trying to get some of the stuffing on both halves.  That was hard; one half had most, if not all, of the stuffing.  I didn't drizzle more oil on them because they had oil on them still from the pan.  I did let them rest ten minutes, as directed.

The Verdict

This was very good!  At first I thought I should avoid eating the skin but it tasted fine -- not burnt or scorched or bitter.  Parts of it did slide off the flesh so you can look for that if you don't want to eat it.

The flesh was tender and mild; the cheese, basil, and pepper combination is tasty in its own right but a good accompaniment for the flesh -- the pecorino was strong but the basil was in enough quantity that their flavors blended and complimented each other.  No one flavor dominated even though I thought there was too much pepper.

I sincerely wished for more of the tasty stuffing.  I used all that I made but I felt the eggplants were modestly stuffed; I think the next time around I would fill them full.  Next time, too, I would consider serving them unopened (but without the toothpick) because I expect it to be easier to get the stuffing in every bite.

Success!  I would do this again and especially for company.  It is unique, simple, and impressive.  My guest taster was very suspicious of eggplant yet liked it enough to eat the whole thing.  I served it with broiled steak; fresh tomatoes dressed with balsamic vinegar, pepper, and basil strips; and pine nut couscous.  A very satisfying meal.

Hot enough to steam up the camera lens

Baked Cottage Cheese Pudding -- Take 2

This is an update on the Russian dish, "Baked Cottage Cheese Pudding", originally posted on 1 June 2014.  

I tried this recipe again, doubling it because the size of the cottage cheese carton makes that convenient.  I used only finely grated orange zest and some extra sugar as the flavoring.  The entire batch went into the pie pan.

It took longer to cook, as I expected: about 45 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit in a ceramic pan.  I liked that the top browned and did not get rubbery at all, that the filling was thicker and therefore more tender, the flavor was great, and the overall look was more substantial.

The only problem was that the mixture was very watery after baking.  I am not certain but I think the different brand of cottage cheese was wetter than in the first attempt.  So my solution would be to either add more semolina to absorb the water or drain the cheese before adding it to the mix.

This is really a tasty dish!  I had it for breakfast with some grapes and poached eggs.  Excellent with sour cream and a bit of key lime marmalade.  Success, again!

Addendum:  I had the leftovers a few days later and I still think it tastes better cold.  

Baked Cottage Cheese Pudding -- A Russian "Twofer"

Many (but not too many) years ago some friends went to Russia to adopt a daughter.  While they were gone, I helped out with some of their responsibilities.  When they returned, they brought me this book, Russian Cuisine, by Lydia Lyakhovskaya:

ISBN 5-8194-0010-0

It is a charming book with a lot of great pictures, some cute illustrations, and interesting authentic recipes. 

The recipe that drew my attention was Baked Cottage Cheese Pudding (page 66). It is in the category of "Cereals, Pasta Poaches, and Omelettes" and is presented as a lovely dish to serve when having tea or coffee. 

Baked Cottage Cheese Pudding

1 cup cottage cheese
1 egg
1 tsp. sugar
a dint each of salt and soda
1 tbsp. semolina
1 tbsp. candied orange peel or a handful of raisins
1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. bread crumbs

Ready to be doubled.

Rub cottage cheese with salt, sugar and egg, add semolina and soda, stir until well blended and spread as an even coat in a buttered mould or pan sprinkled with bread crumbs.  Bake in a 356 to 392 degree oven until brown.  Serve the fritter with sour cream, honey, jam, cranberry or currants ground with sugar, for tea and coffee.

My Notes

Notice there are no directions for what to do with the orange peel or raisins.  The picture looked like the orange peel may have been scattered across the top but it was hard to tell if it was before or after baking. 

I was having trouble deciding if I wanted to use the orange peel or the raisins and then I realized one container of cottage cheese was big enough for a double recipe! 

I wasn't sure how much a "dint" was, much less doubling a dint, so I treated it like a "pinch" and made the doubled measure about 1/8 teaspoon.

The soda was baking soda and it made the mixture bubble just a little bit.

After I made the doubled recipe but before I spread it into the pan, I split the mixture into two bowls.  Two and half cups split into one and a quarter cups per bowl.  Then I mixed in a handful of raisins into one and about 1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest and 1 teaspoon of extra sugar into the other.  (Candied orange peel does not last long around my house!)

Each flavor went into a buttered pie pan.  My bread crumbs were homemade and rather large.  Some would compare them to Panko crumbs.  They kept the pudding from sticking to the pan, as desired, but also formed a nice crunchy crust on the finished product.  That really added to the overall texture.

Ready for the oven.

 The two pans baked at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes.  They smelled delicious and the crumbs browned. 

Ready for eating.

The Verdict

Taking the advice of the recipe, I served the puddings with hot tea in a clear glass cup.  The cup has a map of the world on it, so I enjoyed looking at Russia while I dined.

Ready to please.

I tried the puddings both hot and cool.  I liked the cool best because the flavors came through clearly.  My first reaction was that I absolutely loved the orange peel one and imagined that the raisin one wouldn't be as good.  As it turned out, the raisin pudding was very good, too. 

The puddings were each very thin.  The surface was a little rubbery and the inside was soft and creamy.  The rubbery did not detract from the flavor or texture.   The orange flavor with the cheese was outstanding.  The raisins added a bit of sweet chewiness.  I think it might be tasty to put both orange peel and raisins some time!

After the initial taste as they were out of the pan, I tried them with sour cream -- an excellent accompaniment, especially with the raisins -- and with strawberry jam and orange marmalade.  The jams were good, too, but I thought they overwhelmed the flavor of the orange peel.  My guest taste tester thought everything was good and loved both the sour cream and jam on them. 

I declare it a success!  This was so easy to do and very tasty.  I think it would make a good breakfast or brunch dish, along with some grapes and perhaps a croissant or a bagel.  It was quite excellent with tea.

I called this a "twofer" because I got two flavors from one recipe.  I'll add in another twofer by mentioning that the next page talked about "Cottage Cheese Fritters" which is this recipe except use 2 tbsp. wheat flour instead of semolina.  Roll the batter into a round strip, cut into pieces, shape them into an oval or round shape, then saute' in butter on both sides until brown.  Sounds like a good camping recipe to me.

String-Roasted Chicken

My experience in roasting over fire, admittedly limited, was with putting the meat on a spit and having someone sit around it for a while turning the spit.  Nice, fun to look at a demonstration, but tough to keep at it well.  Even the books I have read and the historical kitchens I've visited had spit roasting only.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I came across this book, The Magic of Fire by William Rubel at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles. 

ISBN  1-58008-453-2

On page 62 is the introduction to String Roasting:

"When it comes to hearthside roasting, the elegant solution is to roast from a loop of cotton string hanging from a hook, a practice that lasted well into the nineteenth century.  Today, it is only in France that the system the French call a la ficelle -- on a string -- remains more than a historical curiosity."

I had a Cornish Game Hen that I wanted to try.  I reasoned I wanted a small one for my experiment so it wouldn't take too long to cook.

To summarize the instructions:

   You need a mature fire with a substantial bed of embers. 
   Truss the meat so it is as compact and as symmetrical as possible.
   Skewer the upper and lower thirds of the meat so that the skewers are parallel and at the center of   
       the meat.

On a stick!

   Hang a string from above the hearth or firepit and tie a loop in the end.  The length should get the
       meat pretty close to the embers.
   Make a loop of string and place on part on the skewer, pass the other end through the hanging loop,
       and then over the other side of the skewer.
   Adjust until the meat hangs vertically, without tilting.  Press the loops against the meat.
   Give the meat a spin.

A whirling dervish

   Put a drip pan under the bird and add 1 cup water.
   Baste the meat as needed.

Getting golden

   When the lower part looks done, flip the meat by moving the string to the lower skewer.

Flipped

 Let the meat rest for 10 minutes when done.

 My Notes
I used a technique I learned a few years ago from Gervase Markham's The Complete Housewife (published in the late 1590s) for spit roasting:  he suggests you coat the bird with butter and then with dried bread crumbs.  At first you have to baste it with butter and the drippings but after a little while the bread crumbs have soaked up enough fat to take over the basting themselves.

So what I have here is a chicken that is self-turning and self-basting.  A Renaissance cook's dream come true!

This bird hung over the fire for about four hours.  It should have taken maybe one hour.  My fire was hot but I think the bird was too high above it to get enough heat to cook it to a decent internal temperature.

I liked that the outside was getting golden brown even at the top before it was flipped.  That kept me for worrying that the meat was going bad.

But after four hours I decided to finish it off in a Dutch oven.  I put it and the drippings into the oven with a bit of water then covered it.  Once over the fire I turned it occasionally until it was hot and cooked through.

The Verdict
This has to be labeled as a failure because I was not able to cook the bird completely even in four hours.  However I believe the fault was mine in not getting the fire hot enough or hanging the bird low enough over it.  This is the same error I made the first time I tried spit roasting a chicken -- and the second attempt with the needed corrections worked beautifully. 

So I will give it a failure rating but tell you that it was partially successful because the meat was tender and moist and flavorful.  I did not use any seasonings, just butter and breadcrumbs, and yet everyone who tried commented on how succulent and tasty it was.

I look forward to trying it again some time.  Now I have a better idea of what to do and how to do it.

Chicken Hutspot, in the Spanish Fashion (Netherlands)

I have this lovely book entitled The Dutch Table, by Gillian Riley, which does not contain very many recipes but the ones it does have are teamed up with excellent paintings.  Many are still-life paintings of food and portraits of banqueting people or people preparing food, and were made during the "Golden Age" of genre painting in the Netherlands.  This is the seventeenth century.

ISBN 1-56640-978-0

Here is my favorite quote from the introduction:

The gorgeousness of the worldly goods displayed in paintings depicting the interiors of private houses, public ceremonies, and still-lifes seems to reflect the enjoyment by an unrepentant population of the conspicuous consumption denounced by the preachers of a theoretically austere and self-denying culture.

She also points out that the recipes "attempt to convey the spirit of the paintings they accompany, in the light of what we can tentatively deduce about the eating habits of the time."

Chicken hutspot, she says, is a medieval Arab recipe, arriving in Holland by way of Spain.  There is the more traditional beef hutspot which contains onions and parsley and often carrots.  That is the basis of the accompanying painting, by Gerrit Dou (1613 - 1675), "Young Woman Chopping Onions."

The dish gained recognition in 1574 from an event in Leiden:  The Spanish had besieged the town for months and so the community leaders decided to open the sluices to flood the enemy.  This worked and Leiden was free.  "A small boy crept into the deserted camp and there, still simmering on the dying embers, was a cauldron of stew.  An abandoned hutspot."  This victory is celebrated in Leiden every October 3 with dancing and communal feasts.

The chicken hutspot appealed to me the most as I am very fond of chicken and of dates and of the spices recommended for the dish.

Chicken Hutspot, in the Spanish Fashion

For 6 people

1 free-range chicken, cut into pieces (I used 6 boneless, skinless thighs)
1 cup white bread crumbs
marrow from a marrowbone, or butter
ginger, cinnamon, saffron, sugar, and salt to taste
lemon peel, in slivers
1 cup dates, stoned and chopped

Cook the chicken pieces in water or stock made from the carcass until tender, then add the bread crumbs and seasoning, together with the dates and lemon peel, and simmer for about half an hour, until the flavors have amalgamated.

Use butter instead of bone marrow, if expedient.

My Notes
One aspect of this recipe that stood out to me was that the cooking should be very slow and gentle.  No rushing here!  Everything went into a large cast iron fry pan and that worked well.

I cooked the chicken in a broth at a very slow simmer for 20 minutes, and about half that time there was a lid on it to help cook the top.  The broth came up about 3/4 of the height of the thighs.  This cooked them almost all the way through and they were very tender.

The recipe didn't specify it but I took the thighs out of the broth after the 20 minutes so I could add the other ingredients and whisk them together well.  Then I added half of the dates, replaced the chicken on top of those, and then added the rest of the dates.

I made the bread crumbs by putting two frozen dinner rolls in the blender (one at a time) and processing them until they were fine crumbs.

Butter was expedient for me.

My taste wanted 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/8 tsp ground saffron, 1 tsp sugar, and no salt because the broth already had salt in it.

The lemon zest was finely grated and was from about half of the small lemon I had.

I only used about 1/2 tsp of butter because there was already fat from the chicken in the sauce.

Then I let the flavors amalgamate for 30 minutes over the lowest possible setting on my range.  I made sure to spoon the sauce over the top of the thighs several times while they were cooking.

The sauce thickened beautifully and coated the meat well.

The Verdict
Oh my goodness.  The sauce was absolutely wonderful!  Thick, not too sweet (which surprised me because of the dates), just a bit spicy from the cinnamon and ginger, and the lemon zest -- oh!  the lemon zest! -- was the perfect addition.  It added a bit of sparkle and citrus perfume to play off against the other flavors.  The dates made the sauce nicely crunchy.

Pairing it with the very tender meat was heavenly.  Once I finished a thigh I used a roll to get all the rest of the sauce because it should not go to waste.  My taste buds are still doing the happy dance as I type this. 

What a success.  I would do this again in a heartbeat.  It would be an excellent main course for company and easy to prepare, too.  It definitely needs that 30 minute amalgamation time to thoroughly infuse the zest with the rest of the spices.

No wonder Ms. Riley quotes historian Simon Schama as saying this recipe is "the perfect way to sanction abundance without risking retribution for greed."

I'm going to have a second piece now.

YUM!