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Further messing around with Sent Sovi
One of the reasons I've been meaning to start playing with this source (in addition to scouting out recipes for next weekend's 14th c. cooks play-date) is that it has a startlingly high proportion of vegetable-centered dishes (for a medieval cookbook). Today I tried out the stuffed eggplant recipe and accompanied it with the stuffed octopus/squid dish, for reasons that shall become apparent.
Aubergines
If you want to make aubergines, boil them with salt and water. First, however, one cuts them into three or four parts lengthwise. When it has boiled a lot, take them out; choose those that you find are not as well boiled and press them firmly between two wooden plates. And then take those that are more cooked, and onion, parsley, mint, and marjoram, and chop it all together on a plate. Put eggs and grated cheese on a plate; then take raisins and cooked garlic. Grind it all together and mix in good spices. Then stuff each one [of the aubergine slices] with this [mixture]. Take an onion, and put it on the bottom of a casserole dish. The head of the aubergine goes at the bottom and the tail at the top. Take almond milk made with good broth, a litte oil, and a little grease, and pour it over top. And it goes in the oven.
To Stuff Octopus
If you want to stuff octopus or squid, take the octopus and wash it well, boil it, cut off the arms, and take out what is inside. Chop [the arms] all together with parsley, mint, marjoram and other good herbs. You can chop another kind of fish if the tentacles are not enough. Put in the best spices that you can find. Make sure that the octopus is cleaned well. Put in the stuffing, and put in raisins and scalded garlic and fried onion. Then make almond milk with the broth that has boiled the fish, and put it in a bowl or a casserole together with the octopus, in the milk you can put a little verjuice and good spices, the best you might have, and oil. You can cook it in the oven or on an iron trivet with live coals beneath.
The parallels between the two dishes struck me as working well for a dual experiment: both involve a pre-cooked object stuffed with a mixture that is based on onions, garlic, parsley, mint, marjoram (and other good herbs), and raisins -- plus other non-shared ingredients -- baked in a casserole with broth-based almond milk, oil, and (based on the footnotes) verjuice.
The experiment
To prepare the squid:
Take four small squid and clean them, reserving the body and tentacles. Cook very briefly in a fish broth (I used a broth made from a bonito shavings packet that you get in the Japanese groceries section). Mince the tentacles.
Make almond milk with the hot fish broth, using 1 cup broth to 0.5 cup ground blanched almonds. (Blend several times then strain through a jelly bag.)
To prepare the eggplant:
I had a mixed bag of several eggplant types, a couple of large globe and a couple of the thinner Japanese type. The thin ones I quartered lengthwise; the globes I sliced in four parallel slices. I boiled them in salted water until they looked cooked.
In doing the "pressing between plates" method of extracting excess water, it became apparent that there was a 1:1 correlation between slices that would hold up to being stuffed and those that had skin on them. (Since the instructions didn't call for skinning, I left the skin on.) So the "middles slices" of the globe eggplants went into the mixing bowl for the stuffing and all the rest was set aside to stuff.
To prepare the common stuffing:
I cut a few corners on specific instructions for convenience, e.g., sauteing the garlic rather than boiling it, since I was sauteing the onions anyway.
Take two medium onions. Cut one in half across the equator and save the bottom to go in the casserole dish. (Actually, I tossed it in with the eggplant to boil, since I intended to eat it.) Mince the other 1.5 onions. Mince 3-4 cloves garlic. Saute all in ca. 2 Tbsp olive oil.
Add ca. 1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley and 1 tsp each dried mint and dried marjoram. (This is descriptive, not prescriptive, and based on what I had around.) Add a dash of pepper and a pinch of saffron (for "good spices", based on items appearing regularly in other dishes). Add ca. 0.25 cup raisins. Mix well.
To prepare the specific stuffings:
Take ca. 0.25 cup of the common stuffing and add the minced tentacles. Stuff the squid bodies with this and arrange in a baking dish.
Take the rest of the common stuffing, add 25 g grated parmesan cheese and one egg. Mix well. Take the eggplant slices and roll lengthwise around a core of stuffing. Place your half-onion in the center of a circular baking dish and place the eggplant rolls around it, with the narrow ends leaning on the onion. (I have no idea why I'm doing this, just that it fits the directions in the recipe.)
I put both items in the same dish, with the squid alternating with a couple of "rays" of eggplant, radiating out from the center. Take 0.5 cup of the almond milk and mix with 1 Tbsp vinegar (because I didn't have verjuice on hand) and pour in the bottom of the dish.
Bake at 350 for half an hour or until the eggplant stuffing is "set" (which is probably more than half an hour, but it was 10 pm and I wanted my dinner, dammit).
Taste
Everything was delicious. Possibly a little on the bland side -- I was focusing more on the mechanics than on the balance of flavors. It could also probably use more cheese, but then, everything goes better with more cheese and this may be a personal bias.
Mechanics
The squid stuffed very nicely -- although I'd want to use larger ones next time, purely to increase the ease of stuffing. (I told the fishmonger "four squid" and he seems to have picked the four smallest in the tray.) They were very esthetic and easy to handle.
The eggplant, on the other hand ... I wish we had a better notion of what was intended. The narrow eggplant didn't really "stuff" -- I just spread the stuffing on them and hoped for the best. The larger "slices" could be folded into a bit of a half-tube that would hold its shape if you stuck them next to each other in the baking dish. While one approach might be to use hollowed-out half-eggplants instead (to create better containers), this is really in conflict with the recipe's instructions to wring them out between plates to remove excess water. It's possible that they were meant to be rolled around the stuffing in the other direction (i.e., using the length of the slice as the circumference of the roll), except that the recipe has that very specific bit about putting the "head" at the bottom (where the onion is) and the "tail" at the top. It's difficult to interpret this any way except involving a longitudinal axis.
I was able to remove the eggplant "rolls" to a plate without mishap by virtue of using two implements, but they don't hold their shape well at all without encouragement (and further cooking of the stuffing probably wouldn't have made any difference). They aren't very pretty looking. Delicious, but ugly.
Summary
The squid was a definite winner -- hampered by having a smaller potential audience. The eggplant was tasty but ... needs work.
Aubergines
If you want to make aubergines, boil them with salt and water. First, however, one cuts them into three or four parts lengthwise. When it has boiled a lot, take them out; choose those that you find are not as well boiled and press them firmly between two wooden plates. And then take those that are more cooked, and onion, parsley, mint, and marjoram, and chop it all together on a plate. Put eggs and grated cheese on a plate; then take raisins and cooked garlic. Grind it all together and mix in good spices. Then stuff each one [of the aubergine slices] with this [mixture]. Take an onion, and put it on the bottom of a casserole dish. The head of the aubergine goes at the bottom and the tail at the top. Take almond milk made with good broth, a litte oil, and a little grease, and pour it over top. And it goes in the oven.
To Stuff Octopus
If you want to stuff octopus or squid, take the octopus and wash it well, boil it, cut off the arms, and take out what is inside. Chop [the arms] all together with parsley, mint, marjoram and other good herbs. You can chop another kind of fish if the tentacles are not enough. Put in the best spices that you can find. Make sure that the octopus is cleaned well. Put in the stuffing, and put in raisins and scalded garlic and fried onion. Then make almond milk with the broth that has boiled the fish, and put it in a bowl or a casserole together with the octopus, in the milk you can put a little verjuice and good spices, the best you might have, and oil. You can cook it in the oven or on an iron trivet with live coals beneath.
The parallels between the two dishes struck me as working well for a dual experiment: both involve a pre-cooked object stuffed with a mixture that is based on onions, garlic, parsley, mint, marjoram (and other good herbs), and raisins -- plus other non-shared ingredients -- baked in a casserole with broth-based almond milk, oil, and (based on the footnotes) verjuice.
The experiment
To prepare the squid:
Take four small squid and clean them, reserving the body and tentacles. Cook very briefly in a fish broth (I used a broth made from a bonito shavings packet that you get in the Japanese groceries section). Mince the tentacles.
Make almond milk with the hot fish broth, using 1 cup broth to 0.5 cup ground blanched almonds. (Blend several times then strain through a jelly bag.)
To prepare the eggplant:
I had a mixed bag of several eggplant types, a couple of large globe and a couple of the thinner Japanese type. The thin ones I quartered lengthwise; the globes I sliced in four parallel slices. I boiled them in salted water until they looked cooked.
In doing the "pressing between plates" method of extracting excess water, it became apparent that there was a 1:1 correlation between slices that would hold up to being stuffed and those that had skin on them. (Since the instructions didn't call for skinning, I left the skin on.) So the "middles slices" of the globe eggplants went into the mixing bowl for the stuffing and all the rest was set aside to stuff.
To prepare the common stuffing:
I cut a few corners on specific instructions for convenience, e.g., sauteing the garlic rather than boiling it, since I was sauteing the onions anyway.
Take two medium onions. Cut one in half across the equator and save the bottom to go in the casserole dish. (Actually, I tossed it in with the eggplant to boil, since I intended to eat it.) Mince the other 1.5 onions. Mince 3-4 cloves garlic. Saute all in ca. 2 Tbsp olive oil.
Add ca. 1 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley and 1 tsp each dried mint and dried marjoram. (This is descriptive, not prescriptive, and based on what I had around.) Add a dash of pepper and a pinch of saffron (for "good spices", based on items appearing regularly in other dishes). Add ca. 0.25 cup raisins. Mix well.
To prepare the specific stuffings:
Take ca. 0.25 cup of the common stuffing and add the minced tentacles. Stuff the squid bodies with this and arrange in a baking dish.
Take the rest of the common stuffing, add 25 g grated parmesan cheese and one egg. Mix well. Take the eggplant slices and roll lengthwise around a core of stuffing. Place your half-onion in the center of a circular baking dish and place the eggplant rolls around it, with the narrow ends leaning on the onion. (I have no idea why I'm doing this, just that it fits the directions in the recipe.)
I put both items in the same dish, with the squid alternating with a couple of "rays" of eggplant, radiating out from the center. Take 0.5 cup of the almond milk and mix with 1 Tbsp vinegar (because I didn't have verjuice on hand) and pour in the bottom of the dish.
Bake at 350 for half an hour or until the eggplant stuffing is "set" (which is probably more than half an hour, but it was 10 pm and I wanted my dinner, dammit).
Taste
Everything was delicious. Possibly a little on the bland side -- I was focusing more on the mechanics than on the balance of flavors. It could also probably use more cheese, but then, everything goes better with more cheese and this may be a personal bias.
Mechanics
The squid stuffed very nicely -- although I'd want to use larger ones next time, purely to increase the ease of stuffing. (I told the fishmonger "four squid" and he seems to have picked the four smallest in the tray.) They were very esthetic and easy to handle.
The eggplant, on the other hand ... I wish we had a better notion of what was intended. The narrow eggplant didn't really "stuff" -- I just spread the stuffing on them and hoped for the best. The larger "slices" could be folded into a bit of a half-tube that would hold its shape if you stuck them next to each other in the baking dish. While one approach might be to use hollowed-out half-eggplants instead (to create better containers), this is really in conflict with the recipe's instructions to wring them out between plates to remove excess water. It's possible that they were meant to be rolled around the stuffing in the other direction (i.e., using the length of the slice as the circumference of the roll), except that the recipe has that very specific bit about putting the "head" at the bottom (where the onion is) and the "tail" at the top. It's difficult to interpret this any way except involving a longitudinal axis.
I was able to remove the eggplant "rolls" to a plate without mishap by virtue of using two implements, but they don't hold their shape well at all without encouragement (and further cooking of the stuffing probably wouldn't have made any difference). They aren't very pretty looking. Delicious, but ugly.
Summary
The squid was a definite winner -- hampered by having a smaller potential audience. The eggplant was tasty but ... needs work.
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