#cookery

[scavengedluxury]

'Sainsbury's food guides no. 14: Fruit and nuts' by Wendy Godfrey, 1984. From the Sainsbury Archive.

[mysharona1987]

Anthony Bourdain Goes to Gaza

CNN didn’t want him to air this. He fought for it.

[thesilicontribesman]

The Iron Age Kitchen, The Scottish Crannog Centre, Loch Tay, Scotland

[saxifrage-wreath]

Have been trying out the odd recipe lately from the US Navy cookbook from WW2 (available free as pdf on internet archive). Recipes need reducing somewhat as amounts given are to feed 100 hungry sailors, but I’m managing to guesstimate them okay.

Tried the Mac and cheese last weekend and tonight was baked beef hash. Both simple, tasty, and comforting dishes.

[sgiandubh]

For chocolate craving souls: Woman of the Year's brownies

Nope. Not that woman of the year - this woman of the year:

Simply because I am about to share with you Katharine Hepburn's brownie recipe.

Very easy and so perfect, that two days ago I doubled the quantities - as I almost always do. I found this recipe on the New York Times' fabled cooking website about ten years ago and never looked for another brownie avatar. Ever.

For an 8x8 baking pan, you will need: 1/2 cup (70 gr) cocoa - preferably either Van Houten or Ghirardelli, unsweetened; 1 stick (115 gr) butter - Irish, if at all possible, because this simple recipe deserves the best sourced ingredients to truly shine; 2 eggs; 1 cup (200 grams) sugar; 1/4 cup (30 grams) flour; 1 cup (130 grams) roughly chopped walnuts; 1 tsp vanilla extract; pinch of salt.

Notes: I always substitute the vanilla extract with a hefty swig of alcohol - whisky, brandy/cognac, Bailey's (a bit too sweet, though) and for the best results, Kahlúa. While not entirely kid friendly, it deepens the chocolatey flavor profile, allowing for a finer, moister texture and the spirits evaporate during the baking process, anyways. Likewise, walnuts can be replaced with chopped almonds, pecans or even pistachios, if you feel adventurous. However, all the rest remains strictly the same.

Preheat the oven to 325 Fahrenheit (160 Celsius).

In a small saucepan, melt the butter (low heat), progressively incorporating the cocoa powder. Stir until smooth, remove from heat and allow to cool for a couple of minutes, but not more. Transfer to a large plastic or ceramic bowl (no metal, it fouls the taste). Whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla extract/alcohol.

In a separate bowl, stir in the sugar, the flour, the nuts, the salt. Add the cocoa mix and stir until just combined. Do not overmix!

Pour into greased 8x8 pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes max. The brownies should remain gooey, but not jiggly in the center . Let cool. Cut into bars.

You are welcome.

PS: Yes, SC always gave me Tracy/Hepburn vibes, too.

[grandmawitch]

𝔗𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔪𝔶𝔱𝔢 𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔟𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔭𝔬𝔯𝔨𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔲𝔱 𝔥𝔦𝔱 𝔦𝔫 𝔞 𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔭𝔬𝔱𝔱𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢𝔱𝔬 𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔟𝔯𝔬𝔱𝔥, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔮𝔲𝔞𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔱𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔚𝔶𝔫𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔢 𝔞𝔩𝔩 𝔟𝔬𝔦𝔩𝔢 𝔱𝔬𝔤𝔢𝔡𝔦𝔡𝔯𝔢 𝔱𝔦𝔩 𝔥𝔦𝔱 𝔟𝔢 𝔶𝔫𝔬𝔤𝔥; 𝔞𝔫𝔡 þ𝔢𝔫 𝔱𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔥𝔦𝔱 𝔣𝔯𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔢 𝔨𝔢𝔩𝔢 𝔞 𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔢𝔩, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔠𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯-𝔱𝔬 𝔯𝔬𝔴 𝔶𝔬𝔩𝔨𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔢𝔶𝔯𝔢𝔫, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔭𝔬𝔲𝔲𝔡𝔯𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔤𝔶𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔲𝔢𝔯𝔢, 𝔰𝔲𝔤𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔞𝔩𝔱, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔪𝔶𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔡 𝔡𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔰, 𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔶𝔫𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔠𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔫𝔠𝔢; 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔠𝔬𝔣𝔣𝔶𝔫𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔣𝔢𝔶𝔯𝔢 𝔭𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔡𝔬 𝔦𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯-𝔶𝔫𝔫𝔢, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔨𝔢𝔲𝔯𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔩𝔢𝔱𝔢 𝔟𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔶𝔫𝔬𝔤𝔥. --From Pleyn Delit by Constance B. Hieatt & Sharon Butler 

SO, it’s been ages since I’ve taken the time to actually write out a new recipe.  I’d say I haven’t had the time but since I left the regular workforce five years ago, I’ve technically had more time?  But when you’re home all day there’s so much to do—keeping house, making meals, watching an endless stream of movies (heehee)...there’s always something to pop in the oven or wipe down or put away.  I love it, actually, especially compared to commuting 1.5 hours one way—but I think I need to carve out time to do more things that are creatively fulfilling?  I deleted tiktok off my phone to remove that temptation and yesterday I made a pretty labor-intensive pie for the first time in forever.  A new pie!  Not one I’ve made a thousand times!  I wish I’d taken more pictures throughout the process, but it took most of the day and after a while I was just gettin’ through it. 

I started with the pie crust dough—foolishly I thought I’d get it done early and get to the rest later (wrong! I started between 3 & 4 PM and didn’t leave the kitchen until 9) 

Medieval Pie Crust 

𝔗𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔣𝔦𝔫𝔢 𝔣𝔩𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔠𝔲𝔯𝔱𝔢𝔰𝔶 𝔬𝔣 𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔰𝔥𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔰𝔴𝔢𝔱𝔢 𝔟𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔞 𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔩𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔣𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔫 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔶𝔬𝔩𝔨𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔴𝔬 𝔢𝔤𝔤𝔢𝔰 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔪𝔞𝔨𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔰 𝔶𝔢 𝔪𝔞𝔦𝔢. --A Proper New Booke of Cookery 

3 cups flour 

½ cup butter (1 stick)  

1 tsp kosher salt 

2 egg yolks, lightly beaten (save the whites for brushing!!) 

½ cup cold water 

Pinch of saffron 

Crumble the saffron into the water and set aside.  Rub the butter into the flour with your fingers until there are only crumb-sized pieces of butter left (you might also use a pastry cutter for this but it is not necessary), then add the salt, egg yolks, and the saffron water.  Mix until entirely incorporated and the dough has become smooth.  You may need to add more water very gradually until it comes together.  If it’s too sticky, more flour. 

Divide the dough into two even portions and, on a floured surface, roll them very thin.  Thinner than that.  THIN, I TELL YOU! (I hate this part) 

Line a lightly buttered pie plate with one of your dough circles, pressing it along all the edges.  Then use a fork to poke holes all over the bottom of the pastry shell.  Place this aside while you start on your filling.  Place your other rolled out dough in the freezer on a baking sheet if you plan on cutting out intricate designs—if you don’t, just pop it in the fridge. 

*Note: You might also use lard in place of butter here, which is what I usually do when making meat pies, but I felt like having a buttery flakey crust. 

So, the filling—as indicated above, I had a medieval pork pie in mind.  BUT I’ve made historically accurate pork pies so many times that frankly it’s gotten boring.  Last week I was feeling very inspired to try making classic French dishes after listening to Ina Garten’s memoir and the Pork Bourguignon was fresh in my mind.  I wanted to make a pie, I wanted to eat that again—it just made sense. SO, to turn Pork Bourguignon into a vaguely medieval meat pie: 

Ingredients: 

3-4 strips thick cut bacon, diced 

2 lbs of nice fatty pork butt, cut into 1-2 inch bitesized-ish pieces 

2 Tbsp butter 

2 Tbsp flour 

1 enormous sweet onion, chopped bigly—I like big chunks of onion but you can dice it if you prefer 

8 oz button mushrooms, diced (I remove the stems. Texture issue. But they are perfectly edible.) 

2 large stalks of celery, diced 

2 cups (ish) of carrots, sliced, carrots are so wildly sized—I let my heart determine how many carrots looks like enough 

A handful of golden potatoes, chopped.  Perhaps about a cup and a half- two cups here as well 

4 fat cloves of garlic, minced (or more) 

½ Tbsp dried thyme 

1 tsp smoked paprika 

Fresh ground pepper 

1 tsp kosher salt (to start) 

½ cup red wine 

1 Tbsp tomato paste 

1-2 cups chicken broth (or vegetable, whatever you prefer) 

¼ cup heavy cream 

Preheat your oven to 350F.  

In a large dutch oven pot over medium high heat, cook the bacon completely, then remove and set aside in a large bowl.  In the bacon grease, sear the pork on each side—2 minutes or so per side if it’s immediately sizzling when you place the meat in the pot.  You may need to do it in batches, don’t crowd the pieces.  Once seared on each side, remove from the pot and set it aside in the bowl with the bacon. 

To the pot with the juices from the meat, melt 2 Tbsp of butter.  When the butter has melted and has stopped foaming, stir in the 2 Tbsp of flour to make your roux.  Stir and cook the roux until it turns a deep brown color somewhere between a dark amber and a milk chocolate.  Do not walk away from the roux and don’t stop stirring, if the roux burns, you’ll have to clean it out and start over! 

Once your roux is a lovely shade of brown, turn the heat down to medium/low and add the onions.  Give them about a minute or two head start, stirring them to coat them in the roux then follow with the mushrooms.  Cook these together, stirring often, until the onions become translucent and the mushrooms are releasing their moisture. 

Add in the celery, carrots, potatoes—stir to incorporate.  Allow this to cook for a minute then add in the garlic, thyme, paprika, salt & pepper.  After a minute or two, when the garlic and herbs are smelling delicious, stir in the red wine to deglaze the pot, scraping any stuck on bits off the bottom.  Allow the wine to boil and reduce by about half then stir in the tomato paste. 

Once it is all incorporated, add the bacon and pork back into the pot and stir in the broth.  As much as is needed for everything in the pot to be half submerged, you don’t want it to be too soupy, but you also don’t want it to get too dry during the braising.  This would be a great place to have a photo.  Let’s just say half submerged.  

Put the lid on and pop it into the oven for an hour.  Check on it at this point, if it’s looking too dry you can add more broth.  If it’s looking too much like soup, leave the lid askew a bit to let some of the liquid evaporate.  Return to the oven for another hour, checking on it now and then to stir and mind the liquid level. 

Remove the pot from the oven and check the internal temperature of the pork—it should be at least 145F and will continue to cook in the pie. 

Allow your filling to cool slightly, stir in the heavy cream, taste to see if your filling is salty enough—potatoes soak up salt crazy style—then fill your prepared pie shell.  Cover with the top crust, cutting a few holes for venting steam.  Crimp the edges (better than I have done here) and bush it all over with egg whites for browning. 

Place your pie in the oven for 30 minutes at 350F.  After 30 minutes, check to see how it is browning—if it’s getting too dark, tent the pie with foil before returning it to the oven for 10-15 minutes.  If it’s still looking quite light, turn the heat up to 400F and return to the oven for 10 minutes. 

Remove from the oven and allow the pie to cool slightly to set up a bit before serving. 

[lexi-the-twilight-dragon]

So about six months ago I said I'd make an Animorphs cake...

Behold

(photos slightly edited so as to not doxx me)

I made Elfangor and the Mustang separately (in order to make the tail actually curl like that) aaaaaaand the sizes did not match. I promise Elfangor has a face that I put a lot of effort in it's just hidden by the windshield.

[u-mspcoll]

Recipe of the month: Ella Hall's Sweet Pickled Apples (1920s-1940s)

Like April's Corn Bread, this month’s recipe is drawn from Ella Hall’s manuscript cookbook, which will be available to purchase as a facsimile from the University of Michigan Press in June. One of the first recipes that caught my attention when I read through this book was “Sweet Pickled Apples,” credited to "Mrs. Rhea on Ann St." As Dr. Jessica Kenyatta Walker notes in her forward to the new facsimile, Ella Hall’s notebook functions not just as a collection of recipes, but almost as a kind of neighborhood rolodex. 

For many years, Mrs. Hall ran the Fifth Ave. house as a boardinghouse for Black students at the University of Michigan. These lightly pickled apples might well be one of the dishes that students enjoyed at Mrs. Hall’s table. 

1 quart good vinegar 3 lbs sugar A little ground cloves A little gound cinnamon Seven pounds of sweet apples Boil vinegar, sugar and spices for 10 minutes then add apples and boil until tender. If too much vinegar, take apples up and boil vinegar a little longer, then pour over apples. 

Ella Hall's recipe only lists vinegar as the sole liquid in the ingredient list. In doing an internet search of modern pickled apple recipes, I found that the vinegar is most often mixed with an equal portion of water, as in these “Quick Pickled Apples” from Food52. I began to think that Mrs. Hall had probably just left water off her ingredient list because she knew it would be equal in amount to the vinegar and her notebook was just to jog her memory. 

However, when I did a search of historical recipes for “sweet pickled apples” in Hathi Trust, I was surprised to find that recipes from The Orange Judd Cook Book (1914) and The Modern Priscilla Cook Book (1924) are very specific in their ingredient list and instructions, and they do not include water! Now, this is a limited sample, of course, and another near contemporary cookbook, The Barton Cook Book (1913), does include water. But I ultimately decided to prepare Mrs. Hall’s recipe as written, although I did substantially cut it down in size since 7 lbs  would be a couple dozen apples!  

I used apple cider vinegar to complement the taste of apples and regular granulated sugar. I also ended up only using 3 apples instead of 5 because the ones I had on hand were super-sized Pink Ladies and I could tell as I was slicing them that the volume of sliced apples was already going to be exceed the volume of vinegar. I decided to follow The Orange Judd Cook Book’s lead and leave the peels on.

After boiling the vinegar, sugar, and spices for 10 minutes, I added the apple slices and simmered for about another 5 minutes. The results were delicious! The apples don’t taste “pickle-y” at all. Instead, the vinegar adds a nice, tart undertone that complements the sweetness of the apples. If you choose one recipe to prepare for yourself from this monthly recipe series, make Mrs. Hall’s Sweet Pickled Apples. It is definitely going into my own recipe notebook. 

Reduced Recipe for Sweet Pickled Apples 

1 cup vinegar

1 ⅔ cup sugar

¼ tsp ground gloves

½ tsp ground cinnamon

5 apples 

Read more!

(from curator Juli McLoone)