Eden

Interesting how the gingerbrede recipe has changed over time. In the medieval rendition the bread crumbs are boiled in the honey for a bit, though the spices are added off the fire:Gingerbrede - English 14th c. from the Book of Goud Kokery To make gingerbrede. Take goode honey & clarifie it on the fere, & take fayre paynemayn or wastel brede & grate it, & caste it into the boylenge hony, & stere it well togyder faste with a sklyse that it bren not to the vessell. & thanne take it doun and put therin ginger, longe pepper & saundres, & tempere it vp with thin handes; & than put hem to a flatt boyste & strawe theron suger, & pick therin clowes rounde aboute by the egge and in the mydes, yf it plece you, &c. I think that would be fun. We could take turns picking a recipe of the month for people to play with?

I don't know about the 17th c. version, but the medieval gingerbread which runs along the same lines is actually cooked after everything is mixed together. The "Locusts" are not. Otherwise yes they're very similar. I also made (though they were not as successful) little braided semolina breads drizzled with spiced honey. The interesting thing in that recipe is that lavendar was one of the spices in the honey mix. (lavendar is called for in several Al-Andalus recipes including sausage ) but once it was ground up & mixed in with the various other spices you really couldn't pick out the lavendar taste, there was just this underlying headiness in the flavor. Dafâir/Braids They were sprinkled with pearl sugar, and, as you can see from the little yellow flecks, contain a TON of saffron in the bread itself. the saffron was just a bit too intense IMO, and while lovely when fresh from the oven they took on a rubbery texture when they cooled. The original text deep fried them and I was trying a baked variation to see if they could be served cold...

That's probably what put it in my head Per 'Ice Cream! the Whole Scoop' Butter Pecan is made by adding either "butter crunch candy" plus pecans OR candied pecans, to a vanilla base made with brown sugar and a teensy bit of butter. I wonder what the butter does to the mix in terms of texture etc since we work so hard to avoid "buttering" in making ice-cream. from the same source "Butter Crunch Ice cream" (a generic name for Butter Brickle?) is made by mixing "butter crunch candy" into either a plain vanilla or caramel ice-cream base. I don't know - caramel seems like too intense a base & vanilla too plain. My taste memory says it was somewhere between them. More like the vanilla made with brown sugar & maybe even a bit of butter as above...

So here's the recipe I'm in the midst of playing with. My first draft I didn't soak the bread crumbs very long and I used regular honey. Round two will be closer to the text, and probably have a better consistency, but I can tell you after taking the draft version to a potluck tonight that the name actually derives from how people fall upon the plate and devour them like locusts! I'll post the recipe once I've refined it a little bit more... From an anonymous andalusian cookbook of the 13th century Translated by Charles Perry, Webbed here. Preparation of Juraydât , Small Locusts* Take bread from white semolina, take it outside and put it in the sun until it dries. Grind it and sieve it, soak it in oil and leave it a day and a night. Throw on thickened honey, after scattering on it, and knead it with pepper and enough spices to make it into round hazelnuts [or meatballs], God willing. *Evidently the little lumps of breadcrumbs, honey and spices looked like locusts to people. (CP) edited for typo in link.

butter-brickle=buttery ice cream with bits of toffee-like candy. I've no idea what specific candy qualifies as "brickle" (haven't had this in ages) but it's in the toffee family. edited to add that "brickle" might be trying to sound like "brittle" as in "peanut brittle" butter brickle was definatley not peanuty though.

all this talk of ice-cream both online & around the house, has reminded me of my childhood favorite: butter-brickle. Anyone have a good recipe?

Thank you kindly. I'm looking forward to trying it. the citrus sauce recipe looks like it has potential for other dishes as well.

how about letting us know which issue of F&W? I'm also interested in this recipe, and trust my librarians to help me track down old magazine issues... (give them chocolate occasionally & they'll do anything for you )

Eww! I hate that stuff. When I was young we lived in a place where I got fresh goat milk all the time After we moved I didn't have any for ages, and I remember bugging my mom to buy me a carton at the store thinking it was the same - when she finally broke down (it was WAY expensive comparatively) and got me some I was appalled! I thought the carton must have gone bad or something If you have access inyour area to the fresh stuff get it - otherwise give the carton stuff a miss! However, there's a brand of goat butter (Meyenbauer?) that whole foods & some other stores around here carry that is really quite good, no goatiness, just butteriness. a bit pricey, but there are just some dishes which really require true butter... The sheep butter I've had (Pappilon from France) was excellent also. You do have to be careful. the previous brand of goat butter I bought at a store was unfortunately more like a buttery goat cheese - way too much goat flavor to use as butter. And goat yoghurt is basically interchangable with regular yogurt & makes a nice sub, if you take the time to drain it a little first, for sour cream... Oh we made a coconut icecream for a friend a few weeks back now mixing CocoLoco and RiceDream 50/50. Dairyfree coconuty ice-cream goodness. Try it - I guarantee it will make you say "who needs cows"

Ooh a new book to read on roman food. somehow I missed this one. one tiny quibble. Most of what we're discussing is roman literature, which would certainly have it's various agendas, but we've also mentioned De Re coquinaria(apicius), which I certainly wont say is agenda-free (no cookbook is) but is at least a different type...

Sun, Do you also have problems with Sheep & Goat milk products or just Cow? I do a fair amount of subbing for dairy intolerant friends using milk from other herbivores... Eden

mmm Ellencho I really want to go make pasta now! Tonight: kebabs: made from local pasture raised beef marinated in EVOO, lemon juice, w/home grown parsley, dried oregano and S&P. Skewered with local peppers & baby tomatoes, portobellos (rubbed in evoo, S&P) & onions cepes (king Boletes): sauteed with garlic & finished with parsley & lemon Locally grown salad mix with flowers & vinaigrette washed down with Kiona Lemburger (nice local table wine) Here are the kebabs: Inspired by all the lovely dinners here, I was planning to actually plate tonights dinner nicely before dining and taking a photo, but the kebabs finished up earlier than expected so you only get a picture of them, because after that we were cooking & eating at the same time, which precluded photography. The best laid plans...

Thanks to Fwed we just got a wonderful book called 'IceCream! The whole Scoop' by Gail Damerow from the library, and my wonderful husband has embarked on experimenting with ice-cream for a while - my life is tragic Since we usually do custard based ice-creams, Bill wanted to break away & try a more traditional non-custard recipe. Experimenting with how low he could go in the fat department he made this first batch with a mix of 2:1 half&half and whole-milk. For flavoring he used only fresh vanilla bean. The resulting flavor was outstanding, pure vanilla & milky goodness. The texture however was very ice-milky (no surprise) and in spite of this left a slight greasy feeling in my mouth afterwards (bill didn't get this). I'd go straight back to the custard method myself, but I believe that higher fat variations of this are yet to come since he's clearly in mad scientist mode... Here it is almost done when I made Bill stop & pull me out a milkshake because I couldn't wait interestingly this stuff wants to melt faster than any ice-cream product I've ever seen. Even when it had hardened it was trying to liquefy more quickly than usual. (and it was NOT hot inside at the time) It was really tasty in spite of the texture issues, especially when he mushed some of the final product up with fresh blackberries later in the evening. And speaking of Blackberries, I read in the same book that you can make frozen yoghurt just by whizzing fresh frozen fruit up with chilled yoghurt in the food processor with a bit of sugar. I tried it this afternoon & Yumm! I used 0% fat greek yoghurt and fructose instead of sugar, (I'm saving myself for later in the month when Bill goes back to custard ice-creams ) with about equal volumes of fresh frozen blackberries to yoghurt. The result is that the berries defrost while freezing the yogurt & while it probably wouldn't freeze well, it makes an excellent in-the-moment treat with just a bit of yoghurt tang, and a nicely smooth texture. (Sorry, no photo)

roasted rack of veal, marinated in herbs & garlic celery root & apple puree green salad with edible flowers + vinaigrette vanilla ice-cream with fresh blackberries

oh and if you want a sugar infusion Chocolati at greenwood and 83rd(?) will happily serve you chocolate in any of various liquid or solid forms (they probably have coffee too).

I have not. I can't recall which name they went under, but several years ago the Indian restaurant there was quite good, unfortunately since then there have been so many bad indian resaurants in that space that I've given up trying however if someone here reccomends them I'll give it another go. I miss having good indian food that delivers to my door! Yanni's Greek on Greenwood down at 74th is supposed to be very nice.

Mmm Olive You! Also for casual, Gorditos on 85th just west of greenwood has great burritos, and the nicest owners in the world. Mori on 85th about 2 blocks west of Greenwood is nice little japanese hole-in-the-wall. My sushi eating friends like the fishy bits, I'm happy with the meaty bits & the tempura-ed ginger ice-cream.

I can't give you an exact time frame, but we've occasionaly kept ours for extremely long periods & they're still good. ("hey honey, what's this jar hidden at the back of the cabinet?") We usually put them up in June/July and give them as gifts at the holidays, and haven't had any problems with degrading after a mere 6 months. When you pull them out, dip them in melted chocolate - SOOO good!

no fears I don't go by Joy-1951 for temps, it just happened to be easy to hand and made an interesting comparison. Given suggestions from 100 - 130 now, I'm going to go with iriee's compromise number of 115 and we'll see how it turns out. edited for typo

One of our local gelaterie makes mojito sorbet fairly regularly & it's divine - go for it!

And with historical sources we also have the problem of transcription error (trust me it happens both by accident & deliberately)Adam that tart looks lovely! By the way does anyone know when the term 'jordan almonds' took on the modern meaning of 'sugared almonds'? The OED doesn't say (does that mean this is an Americanism?) nor does 'The Oxford Companion to Food' or Larousse. Chris, Taillevant and his contemporaries just don't give amounts (with 1 or 2 rare exceptions.) If you want more specific recipes you have to go post 1500, but there are some great dishes waiting if you're willing to work around the vagueness of earlier recipes. An interesting challenge in reverse is the 16th c. Moghul 'Ain-i-akbari' which gives very exact quantities, but absolutely NO instructions on what to do with them. for example: "Harisa: 10 s. meat: 5 s. crushed wheat; 2 s. ghi; 1/2 s. salt; 2 d. cinnamon: this gives five dishes." (s.=ser=2 lb 2 oz, and d.=dam=.7 oz) that's it there's no other info. You can extrapolate from modern Harissa dishes, based on the name, but you just don't know how much it might have changed over time. (Look at gingerbread & blancmange which are so different from their original versions, but still retain the names...) Here's an excellent bibliography of historical cooking sources, though relatively few are in English.

Well to start off then, here's a nice Elizabethan recipe for all the lovely summer fruits available right now: To Make all Maner of Fruite Tartes You must boyle your fruite, whether it be apple, cherrie, peach, damson, peare, mulberie, or codling, in faire water, and when they be boyled inough, put them into a bowle, and burse them with a Ladle, and when they be colde, straine them, and put in red wine, or Claret wine, and so season it with suger, sinamon and ginger. From 'The Good Huswifes Jewell', by Thomas Dawson, 1596. Eden's summary: boil fruit, pull it out of the water, mush it, cool it, put it through a strainer/food-mill, add wine & spices. "Then put this mixture into a tart" is implied though not written out, and of course it's up to you to decide if you then bake that tart or if you put it in a prebaked crust and serve it as is...

By "creditable to an indiviual" do you mean (for example) to yourself as in your modern interpretation of the dish, or to Mr. Vatel the original author as opposed to anonymous historical sources? Re apicius, some of his recipes are wonderful. Dates stuffed with pine-nuts & fried in honey

in addition to the Pliny note about flamingo tongues we also have a quote from Historia Augusta (Elagabalus XX.5-6) that Heliogabalus imitated Apicius by eating camels' heels, and also ate the tongues of peacocks because he'd been told that they would immunize him against pestilence. Martial discussing the flamingo also seems to have gone for tongue 'I have my name from the reddish/coloured feathers, but my tongue is delicious to the gourmets. Suetonius lists flamingo tongue amongst the many delicacies favoured by Vitellius. re actually eating birds tongues, I haven't tried any, and don't particularly(morning crankiness aside) want to, but Little Miss Foodie had duck tongue during her blog last fall & said it was quite good. Coincidentaly, the duck tongues were eaten at Lark!

replying to many comments: So the hummingbirds we saw in Positano (that were the exact same size as the bumblebees!!!) were escapees? They were certainly thriving. FYI no hummingbird recipes in Apicius & I dont' recall any in Medieval European sources either... Probably because they dont' sing outside people's windows at 4am I haven't double-checked for myself, but I'm told there are no larks anywhere in the satyricon (I did check Trimalchios banquet - they're not there). I think we blame this on Monty Python & KingCrimson... Chris (and anyone else) I'm always happy to discuss historical recipes. My main focus is earlier than Vatel, but I love learning about other periods if you want to start a new thread re Dormice, As far as I know, the only extant recipe we have is from Apicius as follows. Dormice: Stuffed dormice with pork filling, and with the meat of whole dormice ground with pepper, pine nuts, silphium, and garum. Sew up and place on a baking tile, and put them in the oven; or cook the stuffed [dormice] in a pan. Translation from Giacosa, Ilaria Gozzini; A Taste of Ancient Rome, University of Chicago Press, 1992. But they're included in Trimalchio's banquet as well: "Dormice seasoned with honey and poppies lay on little bridge-like structures of iron" FYI Dormice are tres cute, but they make irritating noises at night hence their presence at the table? (Hey I've got a good theory going here - think roosters at dawn, then think coq au vin! )