House Capuchin 3

Food Tests – These are in reverse chronological order. Iow I’m adding newest at the top! This is a WiP, too, so not only are things going to get added, some of it may be very rough or have “extras”.

German Renaissance cookery is a new field for most of us. I’ve done Central European, a lot. We did French last year, and Slavic the year before, Roman Empire before that, and lots of English, of course. We were actually contemplating Norse cookery this year, but the best research there is in a $50 book, so when Louisa suggested German Renn we jumped at it.

Books and links…. need to make a page for those, too! Sabina de Welserin and Rumpoldt mostly.

The list so far 

• 7/21 – Fermented sauerkraut – in process
• 7/21 – Egg bread
• 7/15 – Sugar-preserved raspberry, strawberry and blueberry – Source – A James Townsend and Sons video citing Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook, American Cookery.
• 6/23 – scalded milk cheese
• 6/16 – Pork Roast with onions and caraway.
• 6/16 – Spätzle – (traditional German)
• 6/16 Beet Sauce (redacted from Rumpolt) – Source – Beet Sauce – Rumpolt – Ein New Kochbuch. Marx Rumpolt. 1581, Transcribed by Dr. Thomas Gloning; Translated by Gwen Catrin von Berlin.
• 6/16 Apples with Sweet Cicely
• 6/2 – Apple puffs – created out of 3 recipes from Das Kochbuch de Sabina Welserin plus a fruit fritter recipe from Spruce Eats.
  • Apple puffs, Cherry puffs and cakes with both.
  • 101 To make apple puffs – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin
  • 165 To bake sour cherry puffs – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin
  • 166 To bake puffed apples – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin
• 5/19 – Chicken with Lemons – Sabina de Welserin
• 5/19 – Pumpernickle
• 5/19 – Fennel cooked in wine (a dish we’ve made before.)
• 5/19 – A Madez Krawt – from MI 128, fol. 325V-326R
  • Eaten warm on 5/19
  • Cold on 5/20
  • Hot on 5/20 with ham
• 4/21 – A traditional German dish of sausage and noodles.

7/21-7/28?/19

Fermented sauerkraut is all over the German recipes. None of us had done this. We found a simple set of very clear instructions and started in with James and Anja on Sunday.

How To Make Sauerkraut | Easy And Homemade – Easy to make homemade sauerkraut. – https://www.hiddenspringshomestead.com/how-to-make-sauerkraut-easy-homemade/?fbclid=IwAR1yTf58jziyMZKi1XeY4flu6pf4a-DnhcWv6H7prqyfJo2ABgyIfsMw7vM

• PREP TIME – 25 minutes
• FERMENTING TIME – 7 days
• TOTAL TIME – 7 days – 25 minutes
• YIELD: 1 QUART

Ingredients

• 1 Regular Size Cabbage Head
• 1 TBSP Canning Salt
• Clean Mason Jar
• For Brine: 4 cups water and 1 additional TBSP Canning Salt

Instructions

• Remove rough outer leaves and set them aside for later
• Wash cabbage head under cold running water and drain
• Quarter cabbage into wedges and remove hard core (set core aside for later)
• Thinly slice wedges, length wise, into 1/4″ stripes. (These don’t have to be perfect)
• Put chopped cabbage into large bowl and sprinkle with 1 TBSP Canning Salt – Mix well
• Let salted cabbage sit for 15 minutes
• Next start mashing /crushing cabbage to force juices to flow out of it. It will become very limp and change color. Do this for about 7 minutes
• Now take clean jar and firmly pack mashed cabbage in to remove as many air bubbles as possible
• Continue to pack jar leaving a 1″ headspace.
• Once all mashed cabbage is out of bowl, gently pour salt brine into jar completely covering cabbage
• Pour brine to finish filling jar
• Now tear a piece of cabbage leaf a bit larger than opening of jar
• Stuff it down and tuck under edges to completely submerge cabbage. (If left exposed, it will need to be thrown out
• Now cut a cabbage stalk a bit longer than 1 inch and place it on top of the leaf
• Wipe rim clean and put on plastic lid – fingertight only
• (Lid will press down on stalk. Anything exposed will need to be thrown out after fermentation process is done)
• Store jars where they can sit for 1 week. You will want to put a dish under them to catch the juices as it bubbles out
• After 1 week, smell and taste sauerkraut. If it tastes good – it’s done. If not, submerge it back under brine, put lid back on and check again in a few days.
• The longer it ferments, the better it tastes.

Notes – Any cabbage that is not completely submerged by salt brine will need to go into the compost

TO MAKE A 2% SALT BRINE:

If you didn’t have enough salt brine to completely cover cabbage you will need to make one – In a bowl, dissolve 1 TBSP Canning Salt in 4 Cups non-chlorinated water

7/8-7/14

We set up a sugar-preserved raspberry jar on Monday (7/8), then strawberries on Friday, adding to the previous jar and starting a 2nd.

Rasperries were done the previous week.

Blueberries didn’t “syrup”. Hmm….

Only July 3rd a lot of cookery happened. A batch of strawberries preserved in sugar got made. We never got a picture of them until Sunday (7th) so I’ve included a pic from a previous batch.

Souce – Descriptions only. It’s “commonly known” that fruits were preserved in honey, and then in sugar, later. The layered berry method has a good description here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNTpZkiiqUs, A James Townsend and Sons video citing Amelia Simmons’ 1796 cookbook, American Cookery.

6/30 – Setting up the cheeses to sit and age until needed happened in the very early week. More recipe research happened.

6/23 – Two scalded milk cheeses got done on Tuesday and wrapped in rum-soaked fig leaves.

One cheese went to the Queen’s Tea at AnTir/West War. The other was unwrapped and eaten for the 7/21 potluck, but had a spot of mold.

6/16 – Potluck Day

Pork Roast with onions and caraway.

This is a recipe we’ve been using for quite some time and several feasts.

Essentially it’s a pork loin roast, cooked in a crockpot with 1 cup of water (or white wine, this was a sweet white) a good shake of caraway seed (you can see approximate amounts in the pic) 2 onions, peeled, 1/4’d and sliced and a shake of salt. Cover and cook on low for 4 hours (use a thermometer, crocks cook differently!) or 2 1/2 on high…. approximately….

6/16 – Potluck Day – Spätzle – (traditional German)

Our german “consultant” says that we need a potato ricer, that the grater method is awful. She’s not kidding!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3 eggs
• butter for finishing

Method

1. In a large bowl mix together the flour and salt. Add the water, milk and eggs to a measuring cup and whisk together well.
2. Pour into the bowl with the flour and immediately start vigorously stirring the batter with a wooden spoon until there are no more lumps and you start seeing bubbles forming. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.
3. When ready to make the Spätzle bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat and add a knob of butter to it.
4. Place a coarse metal grater (or a special Spätzle maker if you own one) over the pot. Add about 1/3 cup of batter on top of the grater and gently stroke over it with the back of a spoon. Remove the grater and let the Spätzle cook until they come to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon and drop into the hot pan. Proceed the same way with the remaining batter, adding more butter to the pan as needed. {doing it with a grater was a pain)

Giano Balestriere – I can’t confirm spätzle specifically, but there is a late 1400s recipe that involves an egg-based dough pulled into pieces and boiled (in milk, though). That comes reasonably close, and variations must have existed. Most pasta recipes that survive from period Germany are for knife-cut noodles.

“Take good white flour and make dough with egg whites. Have boiling milk ready in a pan and pull the dough into little pieces, throwing them in as the milk boils. It must be salted beforehand. Also add fat. See that it stays worm-shaped. Do not oversalt it. Serve it.” – Dorotheenkloster MS#150, After Bach, Volker: The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany

Beet Sauce (redacted from Rumpolt)

Ingredients

• 3 beets, trimmed & peeled
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup vinegar
• 1 1×3 inch horseradish root, peeled and grated (last inch was cut and added to beets)
• ¼ cup Muscat
• ¼ cup Tbsp. cider vinegar
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• ¼ tsp whole coriander
• ¼ tsp whole aniseed
• 1 tsp whole caraway
• pinch of sea salt
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• pinch of sea salt

Tools

• Saucepan
• Peeler
• Microplane
• Masher
• Knife
• Stirring spoon
• Glass canning jar

Directions

1. Place the beets in a medium saucepan and cover with water and first amount of vinegar.
2. Peel and grate horseradish.
3. Cut last inch and add to beets.
4. Bring to a boil and then cover and cook until tender, about 20 minutes.
5. Put grated horseradish in jar and add wine and vinegar, spices, salt and sugar and let stand.
6. Drain beets and mash in the pot.
7. Then add the beets to the jar and stir well.
8. Refrigerate overnight so all the flavors have a chance to blend well and stir again before each use.

Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Source – Beet Sauce – Rumpolt

Ein New Kochbuch. Marx Rumpolt. 1581, Transcribed by Dr. Thomas Gloning; Translated by Gwen Catrin von Berlin.

Rote Ruben eyngemacht mit klein geschnittenen Merrettich/ Aniss/Coriander/ und ein wenig Kuemel/ sonderlich wenn die Ruben geschnitten/ gesotten mit halb Wein und halb Essig.

 Red beets preserved with small cut horseradish/ anise/ coriander/ and a little caraway/ special if the beets are cut/ marinated in half wine and half vinegar.

Bohemian Beet and Horseradish Relish – Červená řepa s křenem  BY KYTKA MARCH 27, 2018 – This recipe helped with being able to see what I was trying to do with the Rumpoldt recipe

Ingredients

• 3 beets, scrubbed and trimmed
• 1 6 to 8 inch horseradish root, peeled and grated
• 2 Tbsp. vinegar (Yes, you can use apple cider vinegar to make it healthier)
• 1 tsp. sugar, brown sugar or honey
• inch of sea salt

Directions

10. Place the beets in a medium saucepan and cover completely with cold water.
11. Bring to a boil and then cover and cook until tender, about 35 minutes.
12. Drain and set aside to cool.
13. As it is draining, peel and grate your horseradish.
14. When the beets have cooled, grate them into a bowl, or better yet, pulse in your food processor, realizing it will look like a bloody mess all over the place and there will be a lot of clean up!
15. Then add the beets, grated horseradish, vinegar, brown sugar or honey, and a pinch of salt to a large plate or mixing bowl and blend the rich goodness all together.
16. Work together until well combined and voila! You now have Bohemian beet and horseradish relish.
17. Transfer the delicious and colorful concoction to a glass container.
18. Refrigerate overnight so all the the flavors have a chance to blend well.

The best part is that you can store it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

This is quite loud! It’s good, but you have to use it in similar amounts to mustard or some other spicy sauce. Don’t eat a whole heaping teaspoonful! …and we’ve been putting it on sandwiches and rolls.

6/16 Apples with Sweet Cicely

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 pounds cooking apples
• honey or other sweetener to taste, about ¼ cup honey
• 2 cups water
• 2 teaspoons minced sweet cicely

Core and chop apples. Put into a crockpot and add honey. Cook overnight. Use a potato masher to roughly mash down. Stir the sweet cicely into the apples and cool in the pan. Serve warm or cold with whipped cream.

These were good, but “green” tasting. I think maybe adding a few mint leaves will help.

Source – Descriptions only, but this is a standard treatment of apples, just with the added herb.

6/2 – Apple puffs – created out of 3 recipes from Das Kochbuch de Sabina Welserin plus a fruit fritter recipe from Spruce Eats. 

These are interesting. They’re pretty easy to put together, and not particularly expensive. The hard part was deciding when they were done, so we fried them at several levels, when they “rose” (not done), when they “rose” and were flipped and given that long again (apple still chewy, but very good), given until they began to brown (apple was quite cooked), and then to quite brown (too eggy, they got tough) It seems like the best level was just as they begin to brown, flip them and then let them start to brown again.

Yes, the dough is *very* eggy* and the fritter recipe had salt in it, which was a bad idea. Frying them in butter they don’t need any at all.

We’ll try another batch in the future that is 1 egg and add some extra water to thin it, so see whether the eggy dough is better or not.

They’re tasty hot and still tasty when just warm. We’ll have some for breakfast and let you know how they are, cold.

…and they were better cold than warm!

Apple puffs

• 1 cup sifted flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 sticks butter
• 2-3 apples depending on size. Or 1 can pitted pie cherries (not bing/sweets!)

1. Mix flour, sugar, eggs and water.
2. Core apples and slice very thin. Chop pieces that don’t slice.
3. Melt butter and turn to high, so that a drop of water “spits” when it hits the butter
4. Dip apples in batter and drop into pan. Fry separately.
5. When the slices are gone(or if you’re using cherries) mix the bits into the batter and fry like a fritter. Cherries should be 3-5 to a clump.
6. Each pan takes about 5 aves before it floats and another 5 before it should be flipped…then 10 more and pull out with a slotted spoon. …. (How period of me…but I didn’t have a stopwatch. These are *fast* and do not need to brown to be done. An Ave is between 15 and 20 seconds.)
7. Sugar the tops with toast sugar, if you have it, or regular sugar. Confectioner’s melts too fast. (1 pt cinnamon, 3 pts nutmeg, 20 sugar and add a ¼ vanilla bean to the container, let sit for at least a week,)

Original

101 To make apple puffs – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin

Then put flour in a bowl and put some fresh spring water therein. It should not be too thin. And beat the batter very carefully, thin it after that with eggs, and when you put the thin apple strips in the pan of butter, then shake the pan well, then they rise up.

165 To bake sour cherry puffs – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin

Take hot water, lay fat the size of a walnut into it, and when the fat is melted, then make a batter with flour, it should be thick. Beat it until it bubbles, after that thin it with egg whites. If you like, you can also put a few egg yolks into it. Tie four sour cherries together, dip them in the batter and fry them. Shake the pan, then they will rise. The fat must be very hot.

166 To bake puffed apples – Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin

Take milk with a little water in it and heat it well, until you can still just stand to dip a finger into it. Make a firm batter with flour, beat it until it bubbles, lay eggs in warm water and thin the batter with them. Cut the apples in circles and as thin as possible, draw them through the batter and coat them with it. Shake the pan, then they will rise. And the fat should be very hot, then they will be good and rise nicely.

5/19 – A couple of interesting recipes showed up in feast research. One is for “pickled chicken”, which made Anja laugh and say, “Oh, I *gotta* do that one!”. It’s not so much pickled as sweet and sour, but it’s funny, still, considering how many pickles she does. 🙂

The other chicken, that got done for the potluck as a test, is a chicken roasted with mace and cinnamon and lemon zest. Anja decided to “steam roast” it in a crockpot, since the original was cooked in a bladder. Cooking bags might have been an option, too.

Translations are hard to come by, apparently, and google translate does an horrible job….I thought it was bad in Czech and Russian!

Chicken with Lemons

Ingredients

• Whole chicken
• Salt
• Mace
• Cinnamon
• Lemon or lemon zest.
• Sprinkle of beef bouillon

Method

1. Take a whole chicken and wash it.
2. Salt the inside and sprinkle in and out with mace and cinnamon.
3. Put it into a crockpot that barely fits it, so it’s standing on end with 1/2 cup of water and let cook on high, basting regularly inside and out to get the mace, cinnamon and salt all over it. Move the bird occasionally so that it doesn’t stick to the pot.
4. When it is up to 155F, baste one more time and sprinkle it with lemon zest.
5. When it reaches 165, turn off the pot, take off the lid and let it stand for 10 minutes before you lift it out, then serve.

Anja’s note – Aside from the jets of cinnamon that inundated the interior of the bird and overwhelmed the other flavors, I wasn’t quite happy with this one. The overwhelming cinnamon made some of the meat bitter, and the taste, overall, wasn’t much different than any baked chicken. It also took 7 hours to completely come up to temperature in the crockpot. You couldn’t taste the lemon at all.

The other thing was that my thrifty Czech peasant soul was very unhappy at having to toss the drippings and carcass rather than making soup, but the stuff left in the crock was horrible-tasting, so I didn’t even try.

We’ll try this dish again, with a better mix of spices and add some lemon juice to the whole. We might also try it as chicken parts, rather than a whole bird, pretty much starting at the point where in the original you take it out of the bladder and add the lemon.

201 How to prepare a capon with lemons – From Das Kuchbuch de Sabina Welserin

First take a capon, which should have been stabbed two days before, in this way it becomes tender. When it is cold, let it freeze and pluck it beforehand, When it is not cold, it should not be plucked before it is needed. Afterwards wash it clean and put it in a thoroughly clean ox bladder and tie it up well with raffia, so that no water can get inside. And salt the capon inside and put some mace and cinnamon thereon, after that put it into a pot and fill it with water and let it cook until it is done. Afterwards take the capon of the bladder along with the broth. And remove the wings, thighs and heart and lay it in a dish and cut two lemons into very thin slices and put them all over the capon and pour over it the capon broth which was in the bladder. If there is not enough, one can also pour a good meat broth over it. And set it over the heat and cover it with a bowl and let it cook, not too long, or else the broth will become bitter from the lemons. When it is ready, one should serve it. It is a good dish.

 

Pumpernickle –

Loren was fighting with a pumpernickle/rye recipe. He kept complaining that the dough was too dry.Once he was back he got the pumpernickel baked. He says that he thinks that the recipe wasn’t quite right (and it got tough on the bottom) because he was using a convection oven, rather than a regular one. He’s going to try the next one at 350F instead of 400. It was *really* tasty, though! …and that’s a *nice* crumb! The crows got the crusts and they were quite appreciative. 🙂

On Thursday 5/16 the Madez Kraut got worked on. Chopping and turnip done.

On 5/19 Harvested greens went into the Madez Kraut.

A Madez Krawt – from MI 128, fol. 325V-326R

Ingredients

• Small head of cabbage
• 1 turnip
• 1 leek
• A double handful of turnip greens (plus other greens)
• 1 cup wine
• 2 Tbsp ground yellow mustard
• 1 Tbsp honey
• a good shake of ground cumin
• fennel greens (an 1/2 handful)

Method

1. Peel and chop turnip.
2. Put in a large pot and boil until soft.
3. Chop cabbage and other greens
4. Add to the pot and when cooked, drain and let cool.
5. Heat the wine to boiling to drive off the alcohol.
6. Take off the heat.
7. Add honey and stir until mixed.
8. Add mustard and cumin and stir well.
9. Pour over vegetables, toss and let cool.
10. Serve cold.

Anja’s Note – We actually ate this warm. We tried it later, on Monday, cold. It’s an interesting flavor combination, rather a sweet and sour. It needed salt, though, and I actually prefer cabbage to be buttered. We are talking about trying this again with just turnips and the greens to see how it does. BTW the “Madez” which google translates as “Canned” my grandmother’s german neighbor would have called, “keeper cabbage”. This one wouldn’t keep, though, so I’m not sure what up with that.

A madez krawt – Wildu make a move, So seud white herb hawbter and nym czway tail seniff and ain third tail honey and the same prue make by another with wine and a kumy and anis enough and put daz underneath a soaked and therefore give it cold. So magstu piessen can do synonymous, just daz you dye dye * boiled scholt with the wurcz and with the draw, and even then give it so cold.
* M. Lexer: Mhd. Handwörterbuch: bie ჳ en-blat stn. leaf of the white turnip

“Made” cabbage – If you want to make canned cabbage, then cook white cabbage heads. Take two parts of mustard and one part of honey, mix this liquid with wine, season enough with cumin and anise, put the boiled cabbage in it and serve it cold. In this way you can also prepare white turnips, but you should cook the turnips with leaves and roots. Serve it cold as well .

On the day after this was served at the potluck, some of the leftover kraut got ham added and heated. That was *very* good!

April Potluck

A traditional German dish

• 2 quarts Water
•  1 Tbsp salt
• 1 kielbasa (easiest sausage of the right style to find) or better still real german sausage.
• Bag of egg noodles
• 2 stick butter
• Several cloves of garlic (more if you really like it) minced or at least chopped.

• 

  1 Tbsp caraway

Method

1. Start water boiling in a large pot with salt.
2. While that’s getting started cut the sausage in 1/2 inch “coins”. Cut each coin into 1/4’s and set aside.
3. When the water boils add the noodles, cover and turn off the heat.
4. In a medium frying pan melt 1 stick of  butter with the caraway.
5. When the noodles are tender, 10 minutes or so, strain the water from the noodles.

6. 

   Put the noodles into a large bowl, then pour the melted butter over and toss.

7. Cover with a towel or something to keep in the heat.
8. Melt the 2nd stick of butter and then add the garlic. Simmer for 1 minute, cover and turn to low.
9. After 10 minutes add the cut kielbasa, turn the heat back up and heat through, tossing constantly.
10. Pour over the noodles and serve hot.

In ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created & published 7/24/19 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 7/24/19