Cooking with Fire

[hrj]

As instigated by j_i_m_r there was a cooks' play-date yesterday, piggy-backing on the Calderium live chess game event, and inspired by the nice large permanent BBQ pits at the event site. Since I've been collecting reproduction medieval ceramic cookpots for several years now, I decided it was time to actually break them in (hopefully without the "break" part).

Concerning Fire

There were two fire-containing structures at the site, both in the form of a large rectangular brick & concrete structure, standing counter-height, with posts at either end supporting the apparatus to raise and lower a rectangular metal mesh-shelf which fit precisely into the rectangular "well". (The apparatus was built such that the mesh-shelf was stable with no tipping, which was very useful.) The smaller of the two structures had an interior maybe 4-foot square with the "floor" standing at easy arms-reach from the top. The larger was more like 4x12 feet with the "floor" around ground level. I believe the general idea is to build the fire in the bottom of the structure and then lower your Great Hunks Of Flesh down to the appropriate level on the mesh.

The construction meant that the smaller one was the only one suitable for manipulating cookpots. We also used the larger one for some grilling and griddle work by means of starting coals on top of the mesh and then manipulating the food and dishes around it, but it was less satisfactory in general. The smaller structure, however, worked quite well (especially given that the recessed nature of the cooking area meant that breezes weren't an issue -- something that hadn't occurred to me until this moment). I happened to be the first of the cooks to show up, so as soon as I had my gear off-loaded I started up a pile of coals and they were ready to go by the time the food was prepped.

Since I was being a bit paranoid about how well my pots would take the heat, my strategy was to surround the pipkin with about a 3/4 ring of coals without any of them actually touching the pot. So by the time I had three pipkins going, the fire looked a bit like the ruins of Skara Brae. Other folks, with more confidence in their equipment, were sticking coals right up against the pots or even under them, so I can probably be bolder in the future.

There was a really pleasant rhythm to tending the fire: periodically placing new coals along the existing lines, keeping a broad "life cycle" of burning going evenly everywhere, keeping enough existing established coals to set up a new pot if desired without wasting them burning to no purpose. My tentative conclusion is that for any cooking project of significant size one should have a dedicated fire-tender whose job is to keep the existing heating going smoothly, anticipate upcoming heat needs, and perhaps periodically remove the burnt ash (which was only beginning to arise as an issue towards the end of the session). But for only a few dishes, I didn't have any real problems going back and forth between food prep and fire tending, given that the prep area was only a couple steps from the fire.

Concerning Pots

I'd brought three pipkins of varying sizes (although all in the general 3-4 cup size, I think), plus the usual small iron skillet and two smallish tinned coper saucepans. I also had a footless ceramic casserole-type dish that may work for fire cooking if supported (not a historic repro -- a yard-sale find -- so if it fails spectacularly my heart won't be broken) but since I didn't have a trivet for it, I only ended up using it as a serving dish. The three main dishes I had planned all involved a relatively long slow simmer, but with slightly different requirements -- I'd picked them to some extent to test different heat strategies. I found that using the "ringed but not touching" coal arrangement, the contents came to a bubbling simmer quite quickly but never moved on to a full roiling boil (which was a desirable thing in this case). One of the dishes was a custard and I aimed for a slightly lower heat (but placing the coals farther out) both for the initial heating of the milk and after mixing in the yolks. This worked in terms of not scorching the milk or curdling the custard, although I think if I'd been willing to spend more time stirring the custard I could have increased the heat and decreased the cooking time successfully.

Overall, cooking time seemed functionally identical to what it would have been on a gas stove with conventional pots. All the dishes were fully and properly cooked by the time the mid-afternoon lunchbreak was called. (It helped that I'd had my usual paranoia about getting things started promptly and had been on-site and getting started by around 10am.)

Clean-up was surprisingly (and delightfully) easy. Two of the dishes (the pear compote and stewed quail) had bubbled over the edges a few times during cooking and I was fully expecting to deal with the start of a permanent patina on the exterior of the pots, but pretty much everything came off easily in hot soapy water, despite having to wait until I got home to wash up. The interiors cleaned off veryeasily (being glazed). I'd noticed a little bit of cooked-on milk in the custard pot when I was mixing the milk into the yolks, but it never scorched and came off easily. Similarly there was one hot-spot on the pot with the quail where the contents had stuck a little to the pot (but not burned), but again it came off easily. I suspect that a reasonable level of paranoia about overheating the pots will be sufficient to avoid any problems with cooked-on food.

Concerning Logistics

In addition to the three pot-based dishes I'd planned (stewed quail, pear compote, custard) I brought materials for doing cheesy wafers and for oat cakes (and caws pobi -- cheese for toasting), in part with the thought that I might have some down-time when the pots were simmering. I was correct that there was a point when the pots didn't really need any intensive tending and I had time to fiddle with other dishes, but it was a mistake to plan two fiddly dishes for that point, especially because the griddle for the oat cakes ended up on the small fire while the optimum fire for doing the wafers was the one in the larger pit, so I was doing more back-and-forth at that point than was really optimum. I've strengthened my conclusion that making wafers would be a really good "sitting around the fire after dinner" activity. They really are best when hot off the iron.

Concerning Food

Small Birds y-Stewed

This is becoming one of my favorite standards from Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks (my current "work through this in detail" cookbook). I love how the flavors all meld together by the end of the cooking period and how the sauce permeates the birds due to their small size. I can reliably get coturnix quail at Berkeley Bowl at a not-unreasonable price and the recipe works very well with them. Begin by sauteing an onion (used the last of the Leeks of Suggestively Large Proportions) and searing the birds in a skillet, then putting them in the pipkin with wine. My largest pipkin was almost not big enough -- I had to wedge the birds in head-down in a ring and then stuff the onions around them as best I could. They fit better as they cooked and softened up a little, and it meant I could be very economical with cooking liquid, but it wasn't optimum. There's a point near the end of cooking when you add the second set of spices, and there wasn't room to mix things afterwards, so I removed the birds, mixed the spices only with the sauce and onions, added a smidge more wine, then simmered it until ready to serve. But it meant the birds didn't get the full effect of the seasonings. The pot would work perfectly for 4 quail.

Compote of Pears

This is hard to screw up. Make a light syrup of wine, sugar, dates, and spices. Peel, core, and slice pears and add. If you have them, do the same to quinces. (I had some of my own quinces in the freezer that I'd put up a couple years ago, so I added a handful.) Simmer until done. I made this in the pot that doesn't have a lid with the intent that it would reduce a bit in cooking and not be too liquid, which worked out nicely. (In fact, since the starting volume was a bit more than the size of the pot, it meant I could toss in more of the pears as it cooked down and eventually used all the fruit.) I have about half of this left over and the spicing is strong enough to work well cold, so I think I'll save it for Mists Coronet next weekend.

Lyode Soppes (crossed with Darioles)

The basic recipe was for a really plain milk custard (served over bread): milk, sugar, egg yolks. I wanted to do something like this to test the cooking logistics, but wanted something a little more gastronomically interesting, so I borrowed a few additions from some Darioles recipes (basically a baked custard in a pastry shell) and tossed in some sweet spices and dates. The custard was still a little runny when served and I think that more heating could have firmed it up more (since it did set up a bit more when I nuked the leftovers at home). But I took the opportunity to suggest that people serve it over a slice of bread as intended in the original. I'm told it was also delicious when served on the cheesy wafers, although that hits my sweet-savory mental block a bit.

Cheesy Wafers

This one I took from the adaptation in Scully's Early French Cookery. I also used it as an opportunity to use up the egg whites left from the custard, so it was more white-heavy than intended. Previous experiments (at home over gas) had convinced me that there are two secrets to success in using my wafer iron -- a hinged, long-handled aluminum iron that makes about a 4" diameter round wafer. The first is to pre-heat the iron and the cook the wafer primarily with residual heat. The second is grease, grease, and more grease. Re-grease the iron before every wafer. Once you start having batter fail to release, you pretty much have to give up until you've soaked and scrubbed the iron. So the routine is: put the empty iron on the coals and heat, open the iron, quickly brush some melted clarified butter on each side and add a spoonful of batter, close the iron and wait until a slight peek shows that the wafer is releasing easily from both sides, then remove the wafer and repeat from the top. Putting the iron back on the fire while cooking the wafer does help in getting a more crispy golden finish, but also requires more constant attention (and this is the point when I was multi-tasking a little too much, so I mostly went for the passive-heat cooking). These were really really yummy -- especially the crispy ones hot off the iron.

Oak Cakes

I am still failing in devising the perfect oat cake. My more recent experiments have been of the "plain oat flour and water" variety and resulted in some very nutritious cardboard. This time I went for the "plus fat" variety, incorporating some melted butter, which improved the taste immensely but also resulted in a very crumbly texture which made them difficult to manipulate on the griddle. I think the texture problem could be helped by working the dough a lot more before working up the flat rounds. I didn't do much of any kneading on this batch because there were too many other things going on (see comments about excess multi-tasking). This doesn't contradict the fact that making oatcakes is a tedious drawn-out process that needs to have something else going on at the same time or you'll go crazy. The results were quite good when glued together with a chunk of cheese toasted over the fire on a long fork, but since this really needs to be an interactive eat-as-you-go activity, it didn't work well for the potluck buffet style of the meal. Again, a good around-the-fire evening activity, perhaps.



ETA: Almost forgot to mention -- I also participated in the live chess game as a black pawn. I'd just gotten the first two pots simmering and was a little worried about leaving them unattended, but after all, the chess game was the purpose of the event. I got to make one move and do a bit of schtick, but then asked to be subbed out when the first casualty freed up another player because I didn't want the food and fire to go completely unattended.

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

What I'm aiming for is more the "traditional Welsh" oat cake than the cracker-style product that's available commercially. It uses oat flour rather than rolled oats and is intended to be significantly larger -- a good description is "an oat flour tortilla", although it ends up a bit stiffer than a tortilla. So the dough has to be at least a little on the "sticky and elastic" side to be able to maintain its integrity at that size. I'm also sticking to the traditional method of cooking them on a griddle (especially, of course, if making them at events).

When I first started playing with the technique back in college, I got rather good at it, but somehow I've lost the knack. One of these days I'll put my research paper on reconstructing medieval style Welsh oat bread up on my web site. I still have a few literary references to run down to polish it up.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Ooo, that sounds intriuging--I've not seen that sort, and I'm an addict of starch in any form. Though, I confess, I didn't know that oatcakes were commercially available. I tend to do all of my own baking. I found the recipie for the version I use in a bread cook book years ago, though have no idea if the proportions I use bear any resemblance to the recipie at this point. I'm a "some" and "enough" kind of cook...