Month: March 2019

This is a fun medieval recipe. I sliced up our turnips and parsley root and added purchased carrots and radishes (2# total). Here they are in the pot.

I added a sliced up cabbage and water, boiled it and then added 3 cut up pears. I boiled it a little longer and then strained them. They went into a shallow dish sprinkled with salt, vinegar, ginger and saffron. Here it is at this point.

This was covered and sat out overnight for 12 hours. This morning I strained it and added currants. I boiled Chardonnay, vinegar and honey and added Dijon mustard, anise seeds, cinnamon, fennel seeds, pepper and a little sugar. The fruit and vegetable mixture was packed into sterilized quart jars, and the hot liquid was poured in. Lids and rings were placed. Here are the resulting 3 quarts of mixed pickles.

I will let them sit and be ready for the new GOT season!

First I had to figure out how to poach a whole chicken. I found this recipe on thespruceeats site. While the chicken was poaching I prepared the 2# of spinach for the Jowtes. Here is the chicken just poached and the destemmed spinach.

Spinach, leeks and chives were boiled and then the spinach was drained and puréed. A paste of ground almonds, water and rice flour was added with some of the leftover spinach water. Salt and pepper were the only seasonings. It was simmered again and made a thick green soup.

For the chicken dish, rice was simmered with chicken stock. Ground almonds were soaked in chicken broth too. The rice was drained after cooking and the soaked almonds and poached minced chicken were added. Again only salt and pepper was added.

Here is my meal assembled. The chicken and rice were classic comfort food. The green soup was boring but healthy.

With this we were able to sustain ourselves through a rewatch of Season7 Episode 6. Only one more episode to rewatch and then the new season will start. I have been running around collecting weird meats for the new season. Stay tuned!

The first step was finding the right roast. The recipe called for a pork loin bone on the joint. Our local grocery store butcher, food co-op butcher and independent butcher shop could not help us, but the Whole Foods butcher in Bellingham did. He even chined the joint ( whatever that means). Here is the hard to find roast.

The recipe called for cooking it in foil with red wine and spices (caraway seeds, garlic, ground coriander, salt and pepper) but the wine leaked out so I put it in a roasting bag. Not very medieval but neither is foil. Here it is after cooking in the bag for 2 hours and then with the bag open on top for 1/2 hour.

While it was roasting I made the Pasties. I made a shortctust pastry using my British Baking Show cookbook and put it in the fridge. Cleaning and chopping 1# of mushrooms took a while. They were mixed with a little oil, Swiss cheese, salt, pepper and dried mustard. I then rolled the pastry, cut it into circles and put them in a muffin tin.

The filling was put in the crust and the remaining crust went on top. They were cooked for just 15 minutes. Here they are out of the oven.

Here is the roast partially carved in the oven staying warm while I made the sauce.

I added a cup of our chicken stock and simmered it with the wine taken from the roasting bag. Tom thought it was too thin so we thickened it with corn starch. Here is the sauce after straining it.

And here is my meal. It took a awhile but was totally work it. The port and sauce were yummy. And I loved the Pasties (Tom wouldn’t try one because of the mushrooms).

and it went very well with Season 7, episode 5.

This was last night’s dinner accompanied by GOT season 7 episodes 3&4. I started by roasting one of our chickens at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. Then I cut the skin and bones away, making bite sized bits of the meat. I added our chicken stock and simmered it for 25 minutes. I then strained the stock off and added saffron, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, cinnamon and ginger. I boiled this for a bit and then mixed it all back together. Chopped hard boiled egg whites went on the perimeter and 6 egg yolks crowned the center. Here it is ready to serve:

While the chicken was roasting I chopped up a cabbage and an onion and sliced 2 leeks. I added a quart of our chicken stock, salt, coriander, cinnamon, saffron and a tiny bit of sugar. While the chicken simmered, I simmered this for 20 minutes. Here it is ready to serve:

And here is my dinner all ready to eat with a glass of Chardonnay.

The spices are different. We like the chicken but Tom avoided the egg bits. This is a recipe I will make again. Tom would not try the cabbage soup. For me it was OK, kind of boring. I don’t think I will make it again but it seems perfect for a mid-March meal. And it all went well with episodes 3 and 4.

As I was making this I was pondering medieval cooking. I was thinking that if these recipes were amazing we would still be eating them. Instead they fell into obscurity for good reasons. But I still think it is fun to eat meals similar to what our ancestors ate.

I went a little crazy cooking this meal yesterday getting ready for watching the season premiere again for Season 7 of GOT.  I wanted to make the “Pike in galantine” and “Haddock in tasty sauce” recipes from The Medieval Cookbook.  But we do not have Northern Pike nor Haddock in our local grocery store.  So I googled around trying to find substitutes.  In my googling, cod in a reasonable substitute for Haddock and Atlantic Salmon is a reasonable substitute for Pike.  Not sure how accurate this is, but these were the fish I could get easily.

So I poached the front end of an Atlantic salmon in salt water with parsley, wine and vinegar.  Here is it poaching.

This recipe requires brown bread so I had started some “Barley bread” from the same cookbook.  After the salmon poached and sat in the hot water off the heat to cook more, I poached the cod.  Here it is:

As a side dish, I made “Leeks and sops in wine” from the cookbook.  I sliced all the leeks up beforehand to be ready when they needed to cook.  I added the olive oil, salt and a bottle of white wine so it would all be ready.

I forgot to take a photo of the barley bread before I started hacking it up.  I needed three slices to go into the pike/salmon recipe.  Two of these recipes called for brown ale.  So I had purchased Moose Drowl brown ale and got to drink the leftovers while I cooked.

I made the tasty sauce that goes with the haddock/cod.  I fried a diced onion in lard.  Half went to the salmon recipes and the other half went into the tasty sauce with white pepper, white breadcrumbs and brown ale.  This was put in the blender and then back in the pan for more warming.  Here is the sauce and it actually was tasty!

The pike/salmon recipe had a blended mixture of wetted brown bread, onions, cinnamon and white paper added to it.  I did not use the optional gelatine.  So here in my meal all assembled.  The cooked leek mixture is served over toasted bread.  The salmon dish is more of a soup but it was surprisingly tasty.  I have the barley bread and some leftover brown ale to drink.

And here is Tom’s dinner.  He has the leeks, the barley bread and the poached and then broiled cod with the taste sauce.  He had hard cider with his dinner.

And with this we rewatched the first two episodes of Season 7 (I had wanted to only watch one, but it is hard to stop at one).  I thought my salmon soup was quite good, better than I thought.  The leeks were OK, nothing amazing.  I thought the barley bread was a little dense and moist but Tom liked it.  Tom is not a fan of fish so he was not thrilled with the cod, thought it was boring despite the tasty sauce.  But he thought the leeks added some pizzazz to the meal.  The episodes were amazing, of course.  It is amazing how much you can forget in a year and a half.

I have decided to revive my Feast of Ice and Fire blog.  I have added some recent medieval cooking and plan on adding more frequently as we finish rewatch Season 7 and especially have some intense and weird cooking planned for Season 8 starting in April.  So go over there and follow along, if you wish.

I made these pasties for last night’s dinner. I used the recipe from The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black. To make the shortcrust pastry I used my kindle Bake It Better Pies & Tarts from The Great British Bake Off. I used the leftover chicken from the Pho. Here they are after baking:

And here is one on my plate with some well roasted carrots.

We watched the Season 5 Game of Thrones finale and are on track to have rewatched all episode before April 14.

My mom got me a great medieval cookbook for Christmas.

And we have been watching one season of Game of Thrones each month in anticipation of the new season starting in April. We are on season 5. So I decided to combine the two last Sunday.

I made two pottages for dinner. I made Buknade, a chicken, herb and egg one. And a pea pottage. Here they are cooking,

And here they are served

Tom did not try them. I thought they were good. Comforting but not spicy.

I also made a medieval custard.

There are saffron strands in it but no sweetener. I added our blueberries on top.

It was nice but again Tom was not a fan. But it felt medieval to me which was perfect for two episodes of GOT.

 

We have been rewatching the entire GOT series in anticipation of the new season starting in April.  For some of these episodes I have been making some medieval meals so I decided to add them to this blog.

As the new season gets closer I will get more serious about medieval cooking and with the last season, each episode will have a complete medieval meal.  So stay tuned!

For our last Halloween evening I made some Game of Thrones food.  Here is Honeyed Chicken

and here is Turnips in Butter.

Here is my GOT dinner.  I used our chicken, thyme, mint, turnips and peas.  I accompanied dinner with season 3 episodes.

We had a great Halloween.