More Stewed Pears

Been busy. Really, really busy. Two shifts for Sweet Daughter, three linen shirts, all hand-finished, leather binding on my stays, and tonight I'm trying to get my documentation together for the cooking competition at MTA this weekend. While looking through the 1781 version of Hannah Glass, I saw the "Pears Stewed Purple" recipe that I am NOT using.

To Stuff a Chine of Pork

Make a stuffing of the fat leaf of pork, parsley, thyme, sage, eggs, crumbs of bread; season with pepper, salt, shallot, and nutmeg, and stuff it thick; then roast it gently, and when it is about a quarter roasted, cut the skin in slips; and make your sauce with apples, lemon peel, two or three cloves, and a blade of mace; sweeten it with sugar, put some butter in, and have mustard in a cup.
 
Hannah Glasse, "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple"

Modern adaptation here.

Since the chine is the backbone, and those are hard to come by, I went with the suggestion of using a pork loin.

"Take your pork loin and unroll it with a knife as you slice it lengthwise about ½ to ¾ of an inch thick. You should end up with a long rectangular piece of meat."

Uh, this sounds suspiciously like "foodie" territory. But I gave it a shot.

 

"In a large mixing bowl combine the bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, sage, nutmeg, pepper, salt, shallots and bacon. Blend these well with your hands."

 

"In another bowl, whip the eggs, and add it into the bread crumb mixture. Mix well with your hands until it is a stiff 'stuffing' consistency. If it is too dry, add another egg."

 

Since I wasn't roasting this, I went ahead and pre-cooked the bacon.

"Spread this stuffing over the loin to cover the entire surface of the pork. Don’t worry if it isn’t perfect."

 

 

"Gently roll up the pork from one end to the other. Tie it with cotton string in three or four bands around the meat. Place it in a greased baking pan."

 

 

Here's where things changed. The recipe says to roast at 350 degrees and baste with butter. What's not to love? Except that I'll be doing this over an open fire and I'm not sure if it's going to be raining (read: Will I have coals for a bake kettle?).

 

So, I wrapped it up in a linen pudding cloth, tied it up with string and boiled it in apple cider.

 

 

This worked well. Really, really well.

 

 

Add the seasoned apples or the mustard, and you have a winner!

EDITED to ADD: If you make the "sauced apples" I suggest you substitute nutmeg for the cloves, and maybe cut back on the amount. The cloves completely overpowered the pork and stuffing.
 

 

Stewed Spinage and Eggs

Pick and wash your spinage very clean, put it into a saucepan, with a little salt, cover it close, shake the pan often, when it is just tender, and whilst it is green, throw it into a sieve to drain, lay it into your dish. In the meantime have a stew pan of water boiling, break as many eggs into cups as you would poach. When the water boils put in the eggs, have an egg slice ready to take them out with, lay them on the spinage, and garnish the dish with orange cut into quarters, with melted butter in a cup.

Hannah Glasse, “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy”

Thoughts …

1.      Wow. Make this again. Fast, easy and good.

2.      I put a very little water in with the spinach and figured it was done when limp but still bright green.

3.      Spinach always cooks down more than I expect.

4.      Drain the spinach well.

5.      My egg poaching skills need work as far as pretty whites go, but even with guessing on the time (just waited for the whites to get good and opaque) it all worked out okay.

6.      Melted butter across the top is good. So is fresh orange juice.

 

Loaf Spanish-Fashion

Cut off the tops of six rolls, take out all the crumbs, fill them with a ready made [chocolate] cream, and cover them with the tops that were cut off, soak them in sweet Spanish wine, about a quarter of an hour; then wipe and flour them; fry of a good colour, and glaze them with sugar.
George Dalrymple, The Practice of Modern Cookery adapted to Families of Distinction as well as to those of the Middling Ranks of Life, Edinburgh, 1781

Here is the modern adaptation.

Let me just say that the chocolate custard is so fantastic by itself, I thought the wine-soaked, deep fried, sugar-strewn rolls took away from it. Yes, the chocolate is that good. Since I'm going to be making this over an open fire in as yet unknown weather conditions, I think I'm just going to stick to the custard.

Here are some of my amateur observations:

If you let the rolls sit out for a day, it's just about impossible to grate the crust off, at least with the microplane I have. Instead, I grated them and hollowed them out and then let them get good and stale.

I think soaking in wine is a bit of overkill and made them soggy. I just dipped them in a bowl of wine, and still thought they were too soggy. I would actually do this step first, and give them more time to drain, or I'd sprinkle them with wine and let it soak in slowly.

Deep frying in a saucepan (because all I'm going to have at the event is a spider) is not my strong point. Especially with cup-shaped, hollowed out rolls. And deep-frying in the rain doesn't sound like fun.

YMMV, but I think I'll just stick with the custard.

To Make an Onion Soup

To Make an Onion Soup

Take half a pound of butter, put it into a stew pan on the fire, let it all melt, and boil it till it has done making any noise; then have ready ten or a dozen middling onions peeled and cut small, throw them into the butter, and let them fry a quarter of an hour; then shake in a little flour, and stir them round; shake your pan and let them do a few minutes longer; then pour in a quart or three pints of boiling water, stir them round; take a good piece of upper crust, the stalest bread you have, about as big as the top of a penny loaf cut small, and throw it in. Season with salt to your palate. Let it boil ten minutes stirring it often; then take it off the fire, and have ready the yolks of two eggs beat fine , with half a spoonful of vinegar; mix some of the soup with them, then stir it into your soup, and mix it well, and pour it into your dish. This is a delicious dish.

Hannah Glasse, “The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy”

Color me skeptical, but I thought this looked awfully … bland. The modern commentary on it claimed that “the English recipe uses an egg yolk liaison and a splash of vinegar to add richness and depth.” I’m no foodie, but I figured what the heck. I’d give it a try, but I decided to just make a half batch.

This turned out to be a good decision.

Melted butter? Good. Onions (BTW, a “middling onion” was probably about an inch and half or so across) frying in the butter? Better. It was all good until I added the water and the bread crumbs. “Season with salt to your palate.” Okay. Now I am 1/16th (I think it is) Norwegian, which seems to have manifested itself in my cheekbones and tastebuds. My mother was from the upper Midwest where “whitening agents” were regularly added to food to make sure they were bland enough. My palate is calibrated to where I find Taco Bell with NO added sauce quite festive, thank-you-very-much. I tell you this so you understand when I say this was bland, I know what I’m talking about. Even with salt, it was tasteless, so I added a period pepper blend. Now it was simply insipid. I thought that maybe the vinegar was the magic bullet it needed, so I added the egg yolk/vinegar “liaison”. The improved it to a point where I’d be comfortable calling it “weak”.

Good enough for a cooking competition? Eh. I’m sure a foodie could find some way to put a positive spin on this and sell it to the judges, but I can’t do it. My commentary would have something to do with the fact that every bad British cooking joke can trace its origins to this dish.

BTW, I added chicken bullion, kielbasa, brown rice and some leftover black beans. It may not be great, but at least it will have some taste. And I’ll have lunch for the week.

Pears Stewed Purple

Time for a test run of the first receipt (recipe)! I was at the store and grabbed a couple of winter pears. Aren’t they pretty? Too bad I didn’t research them until I got home. Red pears have only been around for 20 years.

Good enough for a test run, anyway …

Pears Stewed Purple

Pare six large winter pears, and either quarter them or do them whole: they make a pretty dish with one whole, the rest cut in quarters, and the cores taken out; lay them in a deep earthern pot, with a few cloves, a piece of lemon-peel, a gill of red wine, and a quarter of a pound of fine sugar; if the pears are very large, they will take half a pound of sugar, and half a pint of red wine; cover them close with brown paper, and bake them till they are enough.
Serve them hot or cold (just as you like them), and they will be very good with water in the place of wine.To Stew Pears in a Sauce pan put them into a sauce-pan with the ingredients as before; cover them and do them over a slow fire; when they are enough take them off, add a pennyworth of cochineal, bruised very fine.

- Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy

I pared them, sliced them into eighths, put them in a saucepan and covered them with a sweet red table wine, cloves and lemon peel. Since the wine was sweet, I went a little easy on the sugar.

I tried a slice of pear and … meh. Not much flavor at all. So I set them to stew. Still meh. And stew. And after two hours, they were most certainly “enough” and I had very flavorful pear slices. They were also most definitely purple. (I didn’t even need to use the cochineal.)

 

This one looks like it will be a keeper.

Getting ready for another season

It’s that time of year again. Time to start hauling out the reenacting gear and see what needs to be updated, repaired, or replaced. It’s time to find everything and put it back where it belongs so I can find it when again when I need it. And it’s time to start planning for MTA.

We’re going to have a small group this year, and while I want to compete in the cooking competition, I have no illusions that we’ll place in the ribbons without our cook. That, however, is beside the point as the purpose of this event (in my mind, anyway) is to get us to improve our impression.

Plus, I have a secret weapon. American Heritage Chocolate. This stuff ain’t cheap. It runs about $12 for a little over 5 ounces. But who can resist the idea of chocolate seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, annatto, red pepper, orange, salt and vanilla mixed with port, heated until it melts and then whipped into a froth?

Or a chocolate custard of sorts that is poured into a stale roll that has been hollowed out, soaked in wine, fried and sprinkled with sugar?

Looks I’ll be doing some “research” this weekend. I guess the diet will have to wait a while longer.