How to Avoid My Blathering

So far, all of you have been very kind and not told me to “Shaddap”, because I know I can get rather long winded, especially when my “Obsession” button has been pressed. To reward you for your patience, I have here a guest poster, a dear friend who I have known a goodly number of years and yet not long enough, if you get my drift.

She’s part of the same medieval society I am (SCA, Kingdom of the West, Principality of Cynagua, if you missed that earlier), but she hails from Silver Desert (Reno area). Hanging out with her is always a treat, and when she told me she’d been playing with some of the Transylvanian recipes, I fixed her with my most baleful stare until she promised to let me post her notes. She has a much broader array of interest than mine, as she fights in armor, does equestrian work, and messes around with anything that catches her interest, such as what medieval travelers ate. In fact, long before I became quite so medieval-cooking obsessed, I took an earlier version of her Food for Traveling class, so that may have influenced me unfairly. So….here’s Mistress Siobhan ni Seaghdha!

I have done some research into travel within the SCA period and occasionally teach an Arts and Sciences class on it. I try to provide samples of food for my students. Since this lovely book had just come out this year, I thought to see what dishes might be either mentioned as food for travelers or might use ingredients which I knew were used by travelers. Recipes # 102 and 103 mention bringing cold lamb for the traveling lord. Shrug. Nothing there that is unusual. I had purchased dried salted stockfish and dried salted pork at the local Asian market. Both were sliced very thin and I thought to try some recipes with them.

#267 Carp with dry oily sauce or dry carp – seemed to offer something unusual to tempt (or horrify) my students. All the ingredients show up on other references to food the medieval traveler ate.

If the dry carp is too salty, slice it into little, finger length and width pieces, wash it in warm water, leave it in water while you are preparing its sauce. Slice some onion and apples, wash the fish, pour wine onto it, slice it, add some grapes and raisins: pour some tree oil, cook it together. When serving it, slice some bread underneath it.

As I only wanted a ‘tasting’ amount to take with me to the class, I took one slice of dried fillet of ‘stockfish’ (no idea what the fish really was – the only English on the package was stockfish). I soaked it in warm water, rinsed it and put it in clean water over night in the refrigerator. I chopped a small red onion and a small apple. I poured the water out, cut my fish into small pieces and poured a red wine (the merlot was open so….) onto it. Onion, apple, raisins, and fish went into the pot with a tablespoon or so of olive oil (tree oil). It was cooked until the onion and apple softened.

Husband Taste Tester Does Not Like Fish. He tasted with trepidation and said it was ‘ok’. The students at the class liked the oily sauce and were uncertain about the fish. The wine masked any fishy taste but the result was chewy. The general consensus was that the texture was a bit ‘off putting’ but the dish was OK.

#150 Dry pork with garlic or onion.

When your prince or lord has lots of pigs and needs something for a journey, do it like so. I’ve already told you how to wash the pig, but take out its organs in a different way, instead, slice open its spine, take out its brains, stitch it together, add some salt, let it stand in it for three to four hours, smoke it. Once done, take it down. When cooking, do it like so: slice it, wash it in three to four warm waters, boil it until tender. When serving it, peel some garlic, chop it, take a strong vinegar, should this vinegar be too powerful, add some broth from boiling the meat. Take out the meat and add some garlic sauce. You can also use horseradish for this pork, or onions.

Honestly, I started at the ‘already smoked and we are on the journey’ stage of this process.

I took two slices of the dried pork from the Asian store and soaked them in warm water, rinsed and soaked in warm water again. I sliced it up and simmered for an hour. I chopped 5 elephant garlic cloves and added enough vinegar to barely cover the garlic. It was incredibly strong so I added broth. Still too strong (needs an even milder garlic?) . I could not imagine anyone eating this sauce on the pork. I decided that the sauce was intended to be cooked so I heated it in a pot until the garlic was soft. The flavor was much improved. The Husband Taste Tester declared it ‘OK’. The students liked it but again, the pork bits were chewy. A second effort using smoked pork (such as hocks or some such meat) is on the list to see if that changes the result significantly.

What shall we have for dinner tonight?

I am trying out different dishes that the Husband Taste Tester might eat.

#24 beef with salted cabbage.

Do the same with the meat; add some bacon, slice some cabbage, After the meat is tender, serve it.

#7, Choked Roast Beef, indicates to wash the beef, put it on a skewer and roast it, when it is half done, beat it and slice it. Since I only wanted to try to make a small amount (might consider using any left over pot roast next time) , I chose to use 1lb of sliced round roast used for Carne Asada. I often use this for making stir fry and the beef will cook up tender. I browned the slices and let them cool slightly then sliced the stripes of beef into bite size portions and put them into salty water in a large pan with a tight lid that has a steam vent. I dropped 4 slices of uncooked smoked bacon into the water with the beef and set it to cook slowly for 2 hours. I drained off the broth into a bowl and cut the bacon into small pieces. I added a 1 lb jar of picked red cabbage (our illustrious editor indicated in the notes that sauerkraut was what was likely meant by salted cabbage) and put the lid back on so as to warm the dish slowly.

I ended up not adding any broth back – the dish did not seem dry. My taste tester thought it could use some salt but otherwise was tasty.

This dish is much like one we have been making when camping for decades. Ground beef, onions, add red cabbage and serve on dark bread with a dollop of sour cream. I must admit that we ate our Beef With Salted Cabbage for dinner with bread and sour cream – and again for lunch two days later.

Whoo hoo, three new recipes!

A few things I’ve noticed, because I’ve seen a lot of these recipes. The dry carp with the oily sauce? That oily sauce is really quite close to the oily sauce I used with the octopus! And my octopus was chewy too…dried fish-stuff isn’t ever going to rehydrate all the way. But it’s a lot easier to eat than when it’s solidly dried!

When Siobhan and I were talking about the second recipe, she came to the conclusion (which I think is justified) that using larger pieces of meat (or fish) might give better results. What she was using were thin little cutlets. I also want to use this opportunity to mention something really important. When Siobhan wanted to do this, she just did it. She used what she had on hand to test the recipe. This is awesome. Trust me, as an obsessive it’s really quite easy to get tied up in details and never getting to the good stuff…which is answering the question “Is this tasty?”.

The third recipe is a wonderful example of searching other recipes to fill in the blanks of what you’re working on. And in this case, it sounds wonderfully tasty. By the bye, dark bread is definitely a thing in the Transylvanian cookbook…they often call for it specifically as opposed to white bread. And sour cream? Used by the gallon elsewhere. So her modern been-eating it adaptation is pretty darned close to the period one.

And…look, I’m blathering again…