A Thing-A-Week Part XII: Mock Apple Pie

So, This is the experimental pie (see previous post). The book I am reading (also in a previous post) has the main character judging a baking contest. This pie was entered as a novelty Apple Pie. The book describes it as delicious with the only downer being the texture of the apples. And then you find out what it is....Saltine Crackers. Yup. The only fruit in this pie is lemon juice. I was skeptical so I decided I had to try this, and unveil it around others so that people wouldn't think I was making it up.

I brought it over to the Rockband group. The comments I heard were "this is really good" and "I like the cake but the pie is better." I was even floored that it tasted so good. One person guessed what it was but a lot of people couldn't believe it was saltines. The texture is indeed not quite right but it is yummy none the less and wasn't that difficult to make. Mine was rather soupy which is somewhat problematic. And, while I love the pie crust I use I don't think it is really meant to be used as a multi-purpose crust. I should give another friend's pie crust a try.

A Thing-A-Week Part XI: Apology Cake

So, I was going to take a pie over to the group playing Rockband for afternoon snackies. It was a new experimental pie and I wanted some opinions. A post will follow. However, because it was new and experimental I thought I should bring snacks that were less likely to suck. Since I had already made pie and popovers and was starting to get sleepy for some reason, I used a box mix and frosted it and made a Red Velvet Apology Cake. It was yummy.

A Thing-A-Week Part X: Popovers

Popovers!

So I, on a whim, purchased a book called "Key Lime Pie Murder" by Joanne Fluke. I like mysteries and I like books where food plays a part. I am often disappointed by both genres so I did not expect much in terms of quality of the work. And, thus far I have not been surprised--tepid writing that keeps me involved only because I want to find out what happens. This makes it an excellent book for bus-riding and I am always in search of those.

Anyway, the reason I eventually bought this book is because there were recipes inside. I am always won over by the opportunity to play. The main character of the story owns a cookie/coffee shop and generally shares some of the recipes she makes in her day-to-day life or in her cookie shop. Popovers happened to be one of them. I have never had a popover and I got the impression that they are extremely unforgiving so I have never tried them. But, this recipe seemed really simple (many of the recipes are) and so I gave it a try. And it was for the most part. I don't think I fully incorporated the flour which may have affected the results and I think that my oven didn't get hot enough so I may have to do some more experimentation. However, for a first go I was pleased that I got at least half of them to go boom! out of the sides of the pan. I put some one a plate with some jam and ate them on the floor picnic style with Aaron. It felt very decadent. They weren't too bad. They were sort of a biscuit-y french toast. I would be interested in trying different flavor varieties once I manage to make it work.

EDIT: So what are popovers supposed to taste like anyway?

Thing-A-Week Part IX: Tapioca Pudding

I suppose you can't possibly imagine who in the house is somewhat partial to tapioca pudding? I actually sort of enjoy making this (as long as it is in small batches) and knowing how much he loves it, I am periodically talked into doing so. I made this from scratch just using the box directions. I am not much of a pudding person but I do admit this does taste pretty good until I remember how much I hate the texture. I also really think the homemade vanilla really makes a difference with this. I might try using an actual bean next time and see how I like that.

I think one of my next period cooking projects is to adapt a rice pudding of some sort. I already have a guinea pig to test it and it might be a potential feast option whenever I do one of those again.

A Thing-A-Week Part VIII: Pepper Steak

I got this recipe from a cook my mom had by Paula Dean. It is a fantastic recipe and one that delights my boy. Sorry folks...I am not going to share the specifics on this one :)

EDIT: I almost forgot. This was a combined effort. Rice made by the boy.

A Thing-A-Week Part VII: Fine Cakes

Fine Cakes
"To make fine cakes; take a pottle of fine flour, and a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a little mace and a good store of water to mingle the flour into a stiff paste, and a good season of salt and so knead it, and roll out the cake thin and bake them on papers."

Sometimes the recipe redactions one finds on Gode Cookery are fantastic and sometimes they are really off the mark. This one wasn't too bad but I went a different direction with it.

A pottle equals about 2 quarts (8 cups) and that is an awful lot of cake to be stuck with if the recipe doesn't work out so well so I halved it and then halved the recipe again and ended up with this:

1/2 cup of butter (1 stick)
4 oz of sugar
2 cups of flour
less then a tsp of mace (I am guessing I used about a half teaspoon)
pinch of salt
enough water to make it all come together.

I mixed all of the dry ingredients together and cut the butter into it with a fork or pastry blender. I then slowly added water to it (I am guessing about a cup but this will vary so go slow) so that it came together. I think I may have added too much water to it as it was rather sticky. I decided to press it into a stoneware pan I have for making shortbread. Bake at 350 F for about an hour. I had to watch it.

I think next time I am going to roll it out as directed. It didn't really bake evenly and didn't pick up the pretty design from the shortbread mold. It might be kind of nice cut into circles with a biscuit cutter and served with a fruit compote. And, the mace was certainly an interesting flavor. I am glad I didn't add any more (I thought I was being a little skimpy) because the flavor really enhances when it bakes and permeates the whole dish. This is something I need to play with a little more. I think I might try a little poudre douce next time. I have seen some similar cake style dishes in Markham that used cinnamon and ginger for flavor and that is something I might enjoy a little more.


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Markham, Gervase. Best, Michael R (ed). The English Housewife. McGill-Queen's University Press. London: 2003. (page 117)

Thing-A-Week Part VI: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

I am counting these as a project just due to shear volume. See we got a new oven because our old oven always picked the temperature it wanted not the temperature I chose. Usually varying between 25-50 degrees. This played some serious havoc with my baking. So we finally convinced the complex that we needed an oven.

Only my brain is still geared towards the old oven. See with the old oven I had to make gigantic cookies or they would burn. The adorable little cinnamon chip cookies Ciara makes would have been heartily laughed at by the old oven and quickly turned to charcoal. So, with cookies I had to think big.

I was making these for someone at work who is having a birthday this week. And, because they are peanut butter chocolate chip I also wanted some for Aaron. And, because the enormous cookie rule means you only get a dozen or so cookies out of a batch I doubled the recipe. Bad idea. The stupid things wouldn't bake. It took forever and I ended up with about 70 some cookies. So, in the end it became a project and I have lots to share. They are tasty. They are Reeses' peanut butter chips and Ghiradelli cocoa powder (the only product of theirs that I love!). Recipe is on the back of the bag. Not complicated at all, just tiresome when you are making ridiculous quantities of them.

Thing-A-Week Part V: Another Lumpy Dishrag

Yet another lumpy dishrag. This one was truly lumpy because I tried something stupid that didn't work very well. But know I know why it doesn't work for future reference. This was made with more of the Sugar n Cream cotton yarn my mom gave me. Cast on 36 stitches I think on size 8 metal needles.

I am now up 5 projects. I am just one short to be caught up with my goal of 52 for the year if I actually plan to do 1 thing a week. There will probably lots of catch up weekends and I am not sure if it is cheating to do 3 recipes in a weekend and count them each as separate thing but I did produce "things" so who knows.

Thing-A-Week Part IV: Fake Fish

Fake Fish:
I don't have a mortar and pestle large enough to crust the apples so I had to be creative using a bowl and a meat tenderizer I don't actually use for tenderizing meat. It worked fairly well actually. I was not ambitious enough to try this with gingerbread as I didn't want to make gingerbread ahead of time and couldn't find an acceptable substitute at the grocery store. I just used the crushed almonds instead. In fact, I used the strained almonds left from an almond milk experiment earlier this week so as not to be wasteful. I mixed all this with a little sugar, cinnamon, and ginger and baked it in a happy fish shaped shell. (It is supposed to be a catfish for the local SCA group's heraldry.) About 10 minutes before I took it out of the oven I brushed on an egg wash with some crushed saffron for a nice golden color. The flavor was very scrumptious and I certainly will be making this again.

Thing-A-Week Part III: Flownys in Lente

Flownys in Lente:

“For to make flownys in lente, take good flour and make a good paste; take good almond milk and rice flour or other starch[i] and boyle them together that they be well chariand. When it is boiled thick, take it up and lay it on a fair board so that it be cold, and when the coffins (pastry crusts) have been made, take a part[ii] and do upon the crusts, and carve them in slices[iii] and do in them good almond milk and figs and dates and carve it in four parts and do it to bake and serve it forth.”

I think my problem with doing redactions is that I am far too literal when I try to translate things. The “ands” in this recipe kept throwing me off. I started by making a flour roux and then adding this to a pot with the unstrained almond milk and a couple tablespoons of rice flour. I cooked this over medium low heat stirring fairly constantly. I ended up with a thick almond porridge. The redaction found at the same source as the original text had taken this mixture and spread it in a thin layer and when it cooled breaking it up into pieces. I can kind of see where they got this interpretation out of the original recipe and as this was the part that was a little muddy for me I tried it this way. I super-cooled this in the freezer to save me some time.

Iohanna had come over to experiment with me and she thought that perhaps the “take good flour and make a good paste” referred to the pie crust itself and so she tried a batch of strained almond milk (we used commercial to try this first before using the limited quantity of “real” almond milk) to see if getting it to boil would have made it more candy/brittle like. However, the rice flour separated a lot and it didn’t seem to thicken. We strained it after a while and set it on a plate in the freezer to cool. It did thicken a bit but became rather blob like and not something that could be sliced.

When the almond porridge had cooled, I was able to break it into soft pieces and lay this in the bottom of the crust. I covered it in diced figs and dates and poured the ½ cup of strained almond milk we got after pressing the thicker stuff. This I baked in the oven for about 40 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

I think the next time I try this I will pour the almond porridge directly into the base of the pie shell as the stuff that I cooled turned back into paste at room temperature. The flavor was interesting. I am not much for custard but I really liked the almond goo. I still am not a big fan of dates or figs but some other dried fruits might be heavenly in this instead.

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[i] “Amydon”. Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition 1989. Oxford University Press. 9 Sept 2008.

[ii] “Perty” is generally thought to be pretty however later in the same recipe “perty” seems to be used to reference parts as in cutting into “fowre pertys” so I chose this translation.

[iii] “Shive”. Oxford English Dictionary. Second Edition 1989. Oxford University Press. 9 Sept 2008. I could not specifically find references to “schiueris”; however, I found “shiues” and “schyves” both quoted from similar time periods referencing slices or discs and this seemed appropriate to the recipe.

Thing-A-Week Part II: Almond Milk

In preparation for the cooking fun at my place this weekend I made some almond milk. I tried this recipe:
"Take blake sugre, an cold water, an do hem to in a fayre potte, an let hem boyle to-gedere, an salt it an skeme it clene, an let it kele; than tak almaundus, an blawnche hem clene, an stampe hem, an draw hem, with the sugre water thikke y-now, in-to a fayre vessel; an yf the mylke be noght swete y-now, take whyte sugre an caste ther-to.

- Austin, Thomas. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS. 4016, with extracts from Ashmole MS. 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS 55. London: for The Early English Text Society by N. Trübner & Co., 1888.

http://www.godecookery.com/nboke/nboke57.htm

I translated it to:

"Take pale sugar and cold water and add them into a fair pot and let them boil together, and salt it and skim it clean, and let it cool. Then take almonds, and blanche them clean, and stamp them, and draw them with the thickened sugar water into a fair vessel; and if the milk be naught sweet enough, take white sugar and caste there-to."

I took about a cup of sugar and 1-1/2 cups of water and an extremely small pinch of kosher salt (I used this ratio from the candied almonds I make. I know it makes a good syrup which, while I did not interpret it as the intent, I wanted to make sure there was enough liquid to dissolve the sugar and have it thicken a bit) I put this on high heat and stirred it until it just came to a full boil. I didn't let it reduce to a syrup but it seemed a little thicker then before. I took this off the heat.

I decided against blanching and grinding the almonds as I don't have the right modern tools and not enough patience to do it the period way. I generally buy pre-ground almonds. It saves me time and hassle and I accept it as a substitute. I added the sugar-water to 10 oz of ground almonds. I added about a cup more cold water to this as I thought it seemed a bit thick though I am not sure of the exact propotions. I ended up with 4 cups of almond "milk". It is really thick and very sweet (I am glad I am using this in a custard as I don't think it would be very good with chicken or anything but who knows). I did not need to add any more sugar. I kept wanting to go back for spoonfuls.

I have also been working on my recipe redactions. I have a good idea what I want to do for the Fake Fish but I am having problems with the Flownys in Lente. I read the other redaction but I really want to decide for myself which direction the recipe is going. I am very much enjoying one of the perks of my job being access to the online OED. I am not finding everything I need though and the last little bit doesn't make sense.

I get that I am making a very thick almond milk--almost a cream or custard. This is going in some sort of pie crust with figs and dates. I can kind of see where the original redaction was going with the cooling the milk (like a 'brittle' I think) and laying it in slices in the pie crust and then pouring more milk over top of it and some fruit but that seems sort of silly to me. I can kind of see that in the recipe but I also don't think that is what it is saying either. I just can't figure out what I think it is saying.

I am probably thinking too hard. Redaction isn't something I do much of. I usually read old texts and compare it to someone else's work and go with the recipes seem the most viable as compared to the old text. It is kind of hard to sit down and really think about things but I suppose that is sort of the point. I am worrying too much and should go to bed now.

EDIT: 2 cups of almond milk when squeezed of all the almond pulp made about 1/2 a cup of actual "milk"

Thing-A-Week Part I: A scary dishrag

So this is my first "thing." I had wanted to make some dishrag/washcloth things as Twelfth Night gifts. My mom has a pattern for them and used to make them all the time. I however couldn't make any sense of the pattern so I just knit a roughly square object. My knitting is really bad and it looks rather scary up close. But, I think it will serve it's purpose and is going to go into my camp kitchen set which I am slowly building (as in, look I have the first piece of my camp kitchen set!).

The problem I have with knitting is that it just doesn't make "sense." Embroidery makes sense. I understand the mechanics of it, what goes wrong when things do go wrong, and just sort of the nature of the beast. Knitting doesn't make any sense to me. I can't figure out why things go wrong. I am still baffled by patterns and anything more complicated then casting on/off, knitting, and purling (and the latter is still a toss up). I have some blanket patterns I might try at some point but for now I will keep making lump scarves and dishrags and just enjoy the calming rhythm of the needles. If I want to make something presentable I will just have to stick with embroidery for the time being.

On the embroidery front, I am progressing on the "chicken of doom" which will hopefully be a forthcoming post.

That is of course the other problem with the whole thing a day or week problem for me. Many of my projects require more than just a day and many of my days are already filled with work stuff. But maybe this is a good chance to do some more cooking experimentation.