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. 

Sohan Halwa -- A Persian sweet for a Sweet New Year!

Welcome to 2019!  This is the beginning of my EIGHTH year of blogging about historical cooking.  I am astonished that I have been able to do this and keep it going.  It has been fun, intriguing, and educational, but most of all it has been a source of pleasure to meet people who like to cook historical recipes, too.

For the record, this is my 167th post and my blog has had over 64,000 page views from people around the world.  I am honored they have read my work and hope they have benefited from it.

I decided 2019 needs to be a sweet year, so I chose a sweet recipe to help kick the year off right!

My friend M is a lovely Persian woman who is also smart, pleasant, and very kind.  Occasionally we have a chance to talk about food and its preparation, and it is fun to see what sorts of recipes she has been preparing for her family.

One day she showed me a picture of some Persian sweets she had made.  Impressive!  Beautiful!  They looked like a professional confectioner had made them.  One in particular was pink and shaped like roses.  M told me they were called "Sohan Halwa" and they were the soft kind.

I knew the word "halwa" or "halva" as a confection made from ground sesame seeds and I have tried several flavor varieties, and liked them.  But this was different:  Instead of sesame, it was made from wheat flour and there was a very specific way to treat the flour that I had never tried.

So M dictated to me the ingredients she uses and the method she follows.  I tried it once and brought her the results; I was glad I had because I had not gotten the flour cooking method right.  M was able to help me understand what I needed to change.  I tried it again and she declared it, "Just right!"

Here is the recipe she shared with me:

Sohan Halwa

200 grams white wheat flour
90 grams butter, softened
200 grams powdered sugar
4 tablespoons rose water
2 tablespoons rose powder
1 drop of food coloring

You can see the rose powder in one bag and the whole rose petals in another

Put the flour in a dry, shallow frying pan over medium heat.  Set the timer for 5 minutes and cook the flour while stirring it continuously.  The flour should change color but only to the palest ivory color.  The goal is to get the flour hot and to cook out the raw flavor, but not let it get browned at all.

Barely off-white, but very warm

Put the cooked flour in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients.  Stir well or, if it is cool enough,  mix with your hands, until you have a uniformly mixed, soft, pink ball of dough.

This was the first correct attempt.

Press the dough into a buttered pan or individual molds.  M bought a set of rose-shaped molds and was very pleased with the result.

Put the pan or molds into the refrigerator to chill.  After it is firm, cut the slab into small pieces and serve.

My Notes

I chose unsalted butter and red food coloring.  Also, I weighed the flour, sugar, and butter before I started the cooking process.

M had given me the bag of powdered roses and the bag of whole rose petals; later I found an online source for food-grade dried roses so I could make my own powder.  It was simple to put the petals into my (never-for-coffee-beans) coffee grinder and turn them to powder.

After the dough has formed -- all the ingredients came together easily and quickly, and the butter didn't melt as much as got softer -- I used my hands to push it into the buttered pan.  After it had been pushed over most of the pan, I put a sheet of waxed paper over the top and used a glass to roll the dough to an even thickness and smooth the surface.  My fingers were just the right tool to push the dough down on the edges of the dough to help keep them uniform, too.

This is the first correct attempt.

Then I used a knife to score (not cut all the way through) lines on the surface to show the pieces.  I used a tiny appetizer fork to press a design into each piece.

Second correct attempt.  Less coloring and smaller piece size.

After that, I covered it and put it into the refrigerator to chill.  The next day (but several hours would have worked, I think), I popped it from the pan and cut it into pieces.


The Verdict

I made this correctly twice.  The first time was just as M had instructed me to do.  She tasted it and declared that it was exactly what she expected.  Hooray!  I loved the strong rose flavor and the creamy texture and the sweetness.

Success!  It was good!  The only part that I would change is cutting it into smaller pieces.  It is rich enough that a small piece would have been better.  Perhaps about 1 inch x 1 inch in size.

But there was a part that my other guest tasters (many of them) wanted to change:  the strength of the rose flavoring.  People who are not accustomed to it found it too strong.  The scent gets to your nose first and your taste buds next, and some people were put off by just the scent.  Others were willing to try it (they liked the scent) but the taste was too much.

So I tried it again, and this time I used 2 tablespoons rose water and 2 tablespoons water.  This gave me the same result for texture but a lighter rose scent, which people liked much better.  One guest taster said she could taste the sweet and the butter more that way.

My advice to you is to know your audience.  If they already like the rose flavoring, as I do, then use the full strength.  If not, back it off a little or a lot to help them appreciate it before they even take a bite.

My thanks goes to the lovely M for sharing this recipe and for giving me the dried roses.

And I wish you all a Happy New Year!