Cooking the Books (40 page)
Authors: Kerry Greenwood
Medieval cookery is simple enough (not counting making comfits, which is a bugger), but you need a good modern redaction of the original. Any Society for Creative Anachronism website has them. You will find some dishes strange. The amount of spice, for instance, is greater than modern usage. That’s how you demonstrated that you were rich, in the old days. No tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, avocados, eggplants, etc., as America has not been dis- covered yet, except by all those highly civilised people who have been living there for millennia. On the other hand, the bread is wonderful. When you have a cold Sunday afternoon, bung on the oven and start kneading.
Note that cooks writing books in medieval times accepted that they were writing for experts, so they do tend to say things like ‘cook until it is cooked’ and ‘mix until it is as you like it’. Ingredients are never measured. They say ‘take sufficient flour’. Medieval beginners started off as children in a castle kitchen, twirling the roasting jacks. Anything is an improvement in conditions from twirling the roasting jacks . . .
Use your leftover bread to make:
GYNGERBREDE
1 jar honey
several handfuls of coarse breadcrumbs
pinch of saffron
1 teaspoon cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
2 teaspoons powdered ginger or chunk of ginger root
1 teaspoon powdered cloves
lots of whole cloves, to decorate
red colouring, if you like
Bring the honey to the boil, then take it off the heat. Skim any scum off the top. Pound the spices together into mush (or use powdered spices), then mix the spices and the food colouring into the honey. Drop in handfuls of breadcrumbs, stirring well. You will have a mixture which is not quite crumbly, like the base for a cheesecake. If you overdo the breadcrumbs, add more honey. Press the mixture into a greased baking dish, slice it into diamonds, and put a whole clove into the centre of each diamond. Leave it to set. Delicious, very strongly flavoured. Sort of like baklava. You can vary this by making, for example, a lavender-flavoured gyngerbrede with lavender honey and dried lavender flowers on top. Or a rose one with petals. It was meant to provide a sugar hit for a cold night. Needed due to the bouncy, enthusiastic exercise known as medieval dancing.
SAINT BRIGID’S BREAD OR BARA BRITH OR BARM BRACK
This is a rich celebration bread, using expensive dried fruits and spices. The ‘barm’ refers to an ancient word for yeast. For all you linguists.
6 cups strong bread flour
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1⁄4 cup caster sugar, or 1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
1 package dried yeast
300 ml lukewarm milk
150 ml lukewarm water
4 tablespoons softened butter
21⁄3 cups chopped dried fruit—raisins, figs, currants, dried apricots, candied peel . . .
Mix the flour, spice, one tablespoon of the sugar (or all of the honey), salt and yeast. Pour in the water and milk mixed together. Combine well, adding the rest of the sugar. Make a sticky, soft dough. Plump it into a clean bowl to rise for about an hour. Then drop it onto a floured surface and knead it into a flattened oblong. Spread the butter on it, add the fruits, roll it up and start kneading again until it is all more or less incorporated. It looks like a speckled sedimentary rock but tastes much better. Prove it again for half an hour. Oil a round cake tin of about 23 cm. Pat the dough into it and leave it to prove again for another half an hour. That dried fruit is heavy. The yeast needs to get its little pseudopodia going in order to raise it. Then glaze the top with milk and bake in a moderate oven for at least 45 minutes. If the top starts to scorch, cover it with foil. It’s cooked when you tap the bottom and it sounds hollow. Most of my ancestors only got to eat this to celebrate a wedding or a birth. Enjoy.
PEA AND HAM SOUP
1 ham hock, ask the butcher to split and break it for you (those lads get a massive kick out of being asked to break bones, it is a little worrying), or several slices of bacon, crisped in the microwave
1 stick celery
1 carrot
1 onion
3 leeks
2 cups green split peas, soaked overnight. Any soaking cuts down the cooking time, but if you forgot or the dog drank the water, use them out of the packet and just cook the soup for longer.
I make this soup in two stages. One, I boil the ham hock in about two litres of water for several hours, until the flesh falls off the bones. Then I remove the bones and cut up the ham. I cool the stock overnight and skim it in the morning. If you are making vegetarian soup, of course, omit this step. Don’t throw away the water—add the vegetables and the ham and the peas and simmer it all for about three hours. If you are using bacon, just put all the ingredients into the pot, add water, and cook gently for the three hours until the peas are melted. Leave it to cool, then blend it, and sprinkle the bacon on top. Do not be alarmed if, when you come to reheat it, this soup has gone solid. That’s a good sign.
Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot, nine days old
—as we used to sing while skipping. This reheats very well in a microwave, stirring after each minute. Serve it with rye bread, if you have a good baker.
For more of Corinna’s recipes, please visit the Earthly Delights website, www.earthlydelights.net.au
Also in the Corinna Chapman series:
Earthly Delights
Heavenly Pleasures
Devil’s Food
Trick or Treat
Forbidden Fruit
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