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...

Halva Sharieh -- A Lebanese Sweet Treat

My Persian friend M shared another of the sweets she likes to make, and this one I made correctly the first time around.  This is another halva that doesn't use sesame.

She shared a website that has the recipe she likes:  Click Here!

The translated version is pretty cute, because this treat uses pasta but the translation keeps calling it "poetry." 

Pasta!  In a dessert!  Not that it is THAT unusual but not what I think of when I think of for Lebanese food.  And in this case, it is used in what I think is an unusual way.  Here goes...

Halva Sharieh

1 bag Vermicelli (super thin!) pasta, 150 gram size
1/2 stick (1/8 lb or about 50 grams) butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
pistachios for decoration

M kindly gave me the pasta

This recipe requires careful preparation before you actually start cooking. 

(1)  You need to decide how you want to serve the final product.  For example, you might want to shape each piece into a little "nest" to hold the pistachio nut meats.  I chose to make the whole batch as one large, flat piece that I would cut up into individual servings.

(2)  Once you have decided the final shape, you need to decide what container the final product will sit on.  I chose a glass baking dish that was about 8 inches by 12 inches.

(3)  Butter that container well.

(4)  Open the can of sweetened condensed milk.  Note that you will use about 2/3 of the can.  You can measure it out or just estimate.

(5) Now for the fun part:  Without opening the pasta bag, use your hands to squeeze the bag, breaking up the pasta into small pieces.  The crunchy feeling is quite satisfying!

(6) Open the bag and pour the broken pasta into a bowl.

I broke this up even more after I put it in the bowl.  

Now it is time to cook.

Melt the butter in a pan that is big enough to hold all the pasta comfortably.  You want room to stir it without bits of pasta leaving the pan.

Add the pasta and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring often.  You want it to get only lightly browned.

I cooked it in a large Dutch oven.

Turn off the heat, add the sweetened condensed milk, and stir well.

Allow the mixture to sit for about 1 minute.  The pasta absorbs the milk and the residual heat continues to cook the milk and butter together.

Then quickly spread the mixture into your buttered dish.  A buttered spatula or spoon helps with this.  I aimed for a uniformly thick layer across the dish.

Be willing to pat it flat

I used a buttered knife to cut it into pieces.  The mixture was still warm so some of the cuts closed when the mixture flowed a little, but it was no problem to recut them.  It helped to wiggle the knife side-to-side to make gaps.  Then I placed some pistachios on each one for decoration, and pressed them down a little.



Let the whole thing cool. 

The Verdict

I took it to a work gathering so I could get a variety of opinions.

Overall, it was well-received.  People enjoyed trying something different. 

General comments:

The crunch was surprising, in a good way!
The flavor was very much like caramel.
The nuts were a nice variation on the texture.
Some people thought it was too sweet and others thought it was just right.

I liked the sweet level if I ate just one piece.  Two pieces was too much.

The pieces were soft, so they bent a little when I picked them up.  But I was surprised that they weren't sticky on my fingers.  I liked that.

The pistachios didn't always stick to the surface, so that was a problem.  It might have been better to use chopped nuts and spread them on top before cutting, so they had a chance to stick before the mixture cooled.

I think it would have been okay to cut them into smaller pieces, especially for a gathering where a lot of other food was around, too.  I was reluctant to do that because I was using the large nutmeats and didn't want the pieces to look too crowded.

I also think it would have been good to use salted nuts.  The salt would have been a good contrast to the sweet.

So success!  This was quick and easy to prepare, traveled well, and tasted good.  Definitely poetry!

Plus it left me some sweetened condensed milk to put in my morning tea.  That is a happy thing.