Cooking notes from Coronet

Just a few notes from the cooking projects today before I drop off to sleep. The original idea had been to have a cooking-over-fire playdate at Coronet, since the site has the sort of large open barbeque pits that work well for this. But what hadn't been taken into account is that they're a short hike from the center of the event (and had about 6" of soggy ash in the bottoms as well) and it rapidly became apparent that there would be absolutely no casual traffic flow in that location. So roswtr and I (being the ones scouting out the location) made an executive decision that the "over fire" part of the cooking date was red-lined and we'd move the activity to one of the two Darkwood sunshades instead. As it happened, although there were several other arts activities in the sunshade, I ended up being the only person cooking. (I don't recall who else was planning to participate, but a lot of people adjusted their event plans due to the weather reports, like I did.) Once I got to the point of handing out free samples, I had fairly steady traffic just by accosting passers by, but a larger group of cooks would have produced a bit more critical mass. So here's what I cooked -- still following my plan of working from Curye on Inglysch for the season.

Freseyes. Streberyen igrounden wyth milke of alemauns, flour of rys othur amydon, gret vlehs, poudre of kanele & sucre; the colur red, & streberien istreyed abouen.

I ignored the "gret vlehs" part and stuck to something like a fruit pudding. A bit more than a one pound box of strawberries, sliced thinly, in a pipkin with about a cup of almond milk, a good bit of cinnamon, about 1/8 cup sugar, and about 1/8 cup rice flour. Simmered until the strawberries started to get mushy and then left on low heat until served. Even though I was using my propane camp stove, I was able to use some of my footed pipkins since over half the surface of the stove is a grill, which the feet can stand on. Having used the ceramics with coals, I wasn't too worried about the heat levels involved with propane flames.

Results: People liked the dish, but it was a bit awkward to share with passers by, being semi-liquid. Some people got around this by using the sliced apples waiting to be turned into fritters as dippers. But in general this would work better in a context where people have actual dishes and utensils.

Drepe. Take blaunched almaundes; frynde hem and temper hem vp with gode broth. Take oynouns, a grete quantite; perboyle hem and frye hem and do therto. Take smale bryddes; perboile hem and do therto, and do therto pellydore and salt, and a lytel grece.

I'm a sucker for recipes for "smale bryddes" and used a half dozen coturnix quail, as usual, since I can always find them at Berkeley Bowl. And you can't go wrong with "a great quantity of onions". But what to do about pellitory? Since I was looking up recipes on Friday, I didn't have a lot of time to hunt down proper substitutes, and there are two plants by that name that might be relevant: one a member of the nettle family, of the genus Parietaria, known as Pellitory-of-the-wall, where the young leaves are used but generally as a medicinal herb; one Anacyclus pyrethrum known as Roman or Spanish pellitory, where the pungent root is used, with properties that immediately reminded me of horseradish. The latter sounded more likely in the dish, although I may be on entirely the wrong track. But substituting fresh horseradish was at least practical.

Heat chicken broth with a quantity of ground blanched almonds. Mince and saute a medium onion, chopped finely. In the same grease, sear both sides of six quail. Add all to the broth with about a quarter cup of fresh grated horseradish. Simmer until the birds are well cooked and the broth thickened. Salt to taste.

I kept in on a low heat while cooking other things and took out one bird at a time to offer tastes. (I look forward with great anticipation to enjoying the leftover broth as well.) People loved it. I haven't really had a chance to evaluate how identifiable the horseradish is in the mixture, but in general the flavors all melded together well (which is what I look for in a dish like this). Due to atmospheric conditions, most of the tastes were consumed cold, so the flavors must have stood up fairly well.

Rauioles. Take wete chese & grynde hit smal, & medle hit wyt eyren & saffron and a god quantite of buttur. Make a thin foile of dowe & close hem therin as turteletes, & cast hem in boylyng watur, & sethe hem therin. Take hote buttur meltede & chese ygratede, & ley thi ravioles in dissches; & ley thi hote buttur wyt gratede chese benethe & aboue, & cast theron powdur douce.

Oops, just realized I forgot to cast on any powder douce!

I chose a couple of the recipes because they called for "thin foils of dough" and I still had most of a package of potsticker skins lying around from doing the "tartelettes" for Crown a few weeks ago. And I had about half a cup of ricotta left over from my mock lasagna experiment this past week. So ...

Take a cup of ricotta and beat together with 2 eggs and a pinch of saffron that has been ground with salt. (This is one of my favorite tricks for saffron. I have a small ceramic mortar and pestle I use for spices when camping. If you grind the saffron with either salt or sugar in it, you turn it into a powder and get much more even distribution in the dish.) I skipped adding the butter to the filling, I confess. I sealed spoonfuls of this mixture into folded over potsticker skins then cooked them in boiling water and served with a small drizzle of melted butter and a sprinkling of grated gouda. (Why gouda? Because I had some lying around and I knew it would grate well.) Rather than cooking a whole batch of these at once, I boiled them one or two at a time so they'd be hot and fresh for the tasters, which worked fairly well in the circumstance. I found the filling to be a bit bland, but using a strong flavored cheese for the dressing balanced it out. They certainly got gobbled up as quickly as I could make them.

The rest of the dishes were a selection of fritters, which turned out to be the most logistically successful type of dish to make for tasting samples, since they're best when hot out of the pan and I was basically cooking them to order as people showed up. I made three types:

Frytour blaunched. Take almaundes blaunched, and grynde hem al to doust withouten eny lycour. Do therto poudour of gyngeuer, sugur, and salt; do this in a thynne foile. Close it therinne fast, and frye it in oile; clarifie hony with wyne & bake it therwith.

I made a sauce of equal parts red wine and honey, simmered together until the alcohol was driven off. Given the physical circumstances, I wasn't going to be able to bake the dish, so I didn't worry about that part. I took about half a cup of ground blanched almonds mixed with about a teaspoonful of ground ginger, about 1/8 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. Since it didn't look likely to hold up well as a filling, I borrowed from the general shape of other fritter recipes in the same text and added a couple egg yolks (left over from the next item) plus a little almond milk until I had a manageable texture. This went into more of the potsticker skins. I was frying fritters in a little oil in a small skillet and while this worked well for the other, more batter-like fritters (see below), it didn't work as well for these, since the sides got cooked but the crimped edges of the dough didn't see much heat. In the end, I finished up the last half dozen or so by boiling them like the ravioli. In any event they got served with a drizzle of the honey-wine sauce. I got some good feedback on them, but I wasn't particularly happy with the appearance. If I'd been able to deep-fry them, the method would have worked better, but I'm not willing to try that over a camp stove.

Frytour of mylke. Take cruddes and presse out the whey3e clene; do therto sum whyte of ayren. Fry hem as to fore, & lay on sugur, and messe forth.

I took about half a cup of farmer's cheese, mixed with two egg whites, and because it looked like it was going to be awfully bland, I confess I added a good sprinkle of powder douce as well. The notes in Curye on Inglysch suggest that the recipe has omitted flour as a necessary ingredient (based on other parallel recipes) so I added about a quarter cup flour. The result was something like a sticky biscuit batter consistency which I fried in hot oil in a small skillet, flattening them out slightly after spooning the mixture in. They were sprinkled with a pinch of sugar when served.

I did a second cheese fritter because I had a bunch of the ravioli filling left after using up all the potsticker skins, and since it started out with the same basic structure (cheese curds and egg), I simply added a bit of flour to the remainder and fried them up and served with sugar as well. (These were very yellow from the saffron, though.) These seemed to go over very well, although I was having a little trouble controlling the heat evenly and got a little bit of scorching.

Frytour of pasternakes, of skirwittes, & of apples. Take skyrwittes and pasternakes and apples, & perboile hem. Make a batour of flour and ayren; cast therto ale & 3est, safroun & salt. Wete hem in the batour and fry hem in oile or in grece; do therto almaund mylke, & serve forth.

I only did the apple version. Peel and core three apples and slice into as thin slices as you can mange easily. Make a semi-runny batter of flour and water with yeast in it and let sit for a couple hours to work. (I'm assuming the ale would primarily be a source of barm, although it would add flavor as well. I skipped that part on this occasion although I've done beer batters before.) Beat in a couple of eggs and add a pinch of saffron ground up with a bit of salt. Heat oil in a skillet and dip the apple slices in the batter then fry. Serve with a bit of heated almond milk drizzled over them. (I also added a sprinkle of powder douce, just because.) These were really yummy and worked very well as a cook-as-you-go dish.

Normally, I dislike trying to do fritters for at-event cooking since they invariably end up cold and soggy by the time you get around to eating them. But as a cooking-demonstration piece, they're perfect because people end up eating them fresh out of the pan and piping hot.

Lessons learned: I'm a sucker for strawberry dishes when they're in season, but it was a mistake for this particular venue. The fritters, on the other hand, were perfect and would be a good repeat item in any context where I'm going to be feeding passers-by directly. It is perfectly possible, when cooking over a Coleman one-burner+grill camp stove to have a small saucepan with boiling ravioli and a small skillet with fritters sharing the burner, and a pan of strawberry pudding, a pot of stewed quail, and two small pots of warming sauces on the grill portion. Possible, but not optimal. It was very cramped and the fritters suffered by the somewhat uneven heat on the skillet. On the other hand, the overall number of dishes and pans required fit my resources fairly well, so my subconscious must be good at logistical planning.

Sorry -- no pictures, I was too busy cooking!