COFFIN TWO

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Sandie

There were six people in the workshop and all wanted to learn how to make coffins. It does seem to be a popular form of pie-making these days. This day we would go a step beyond the normal and make a coffins and a ‘subteltie’ or eye-catching centerpiece.

– A castle with a keep, three towers and a center.

First thing that needed to be done was make the fillings for the coffins. Veronica made the mushroom and onion filling while Matt added bread crumbs and spices to beef to make a forced meat mixture.

Nancy made two fillings. Both needed constant watchfulness and stirring. A rice filing hung over the fire, made with milk, could easily scorch, while the spinach sweating in a large spider over coals had to be carefully tended. Kate was done with her venison sausage filling, and she and Matt started on the Orange Fool. Veronica put the finishing touches on the mushrooms and onions.

Kate lends a hand to Nancy and places the spinach in a cloth-lined bowl to remove the last vestige of moisture.

Susan made a paste of shredded chicken breast, eggs and cream then picked all the meat off of the boiled quail. This would all go in her coffin with wild mushrooms, dates, fresh figs, and spices.

Kevin took the receipt for Cucumber a la Forced. He cut a small piece off the end of the cucumber and using a marrow spoon he removed all the seeds. Next he made a forced meat of bread cubes, eggs, melted butter and many fresh spices. This forced meat was stuffed into the center of the cucumber and the little end also. Susan made a leer for her quail coffin over the fire with a roux. Leers are like our modern gravies, made for pouring in the coffins and enjoying as a side. One of the interesting things about this roux is most of us put the butter in the pan add the flour and mix it together. Early receipts call for mixing the flour and butter together in your hand and then put it into the liquid, a very different concept for us.

Now back to Kevin and the cucumber. The small end needed to be sewn back on. I did a brief demonstration for him and he was on his way to resembling three forced cucumbers. Susan watched the surgery.

Veronica beat the egg whites for the Orange Fool. This was folded into the juice, sugar, and rinds, and thickened on the hearth by Matt.

Nancy grated the mozzarella for the spinach filling and mixed it with parmesan, whole eggs and spices. Kate was done with her venison sausage filling and she and Matt, working as a team, strained the orange peels from the sauce for the Orange Fool.

With all the fillings ready to go, we made our coffins. Everyone took turns pouring the hot water crust liquid into their flour. You must stir it with a spoon first and wait until you can touch it. When that time comes, you need to work fast to get the flour to mix with the liquid.

Once the flour will keep its shape as a ball, out on the work surface it goes. Ten minutes of kneading and then 10 minutes of rest and you have a ball that feels much like play dough. Using a coffin form, Susan starts on her large coffin.

Coffin forms are mentioned in early 19th century cookbooks. I have not seen any evidence, of their existence, in the previous centuries, however, they do make the work easier, and I’ll keep looking for proof.

Turning the form upside down helps to raise a nice tall coffin. Then in went the quail mixture.

Nancy used a smaller form for her spinach filling and a tall one for the rice. Kate’s venison would go in a taller form. The spinach would be the center and the rest would become part of the castle towers.

Veronica and Matt made the flanking towers.

Susan rolled out hot water crust to make the top for her coffin; she did a wonderful edge on the side. Kevin mentioned that she is an excellent pie maker. This edge showed off her skills. Kevin was pretty good with a basting brush, and applied the egg wash all over the coffin.

Matt really gets down making his tower tall, it would become the castle keep. Kevin does the honors of positioning the quail coffin into the back side of the beehive oven.

With the center, towers, and castle keep filled, the tops were placed on and the embattlements cut out. Then they were stuck together to form a castle Richard II would be proud.

Into the beehive they went, and after an hour they came out.

While the coffins cooked, Kevin simmered his forced cucumber in chicken stock. In the kettle, the leers that were made were kept warm.

With flags flying on the castle towers, Matt take it to the table. The tops was cut off to reveal, rice pudding, venison sausage, beef forced meat, mushroom and onions and a center of spinach. All worthy of a medieval feast.

We think of creating “subteltie” as being only in the medieval times, however, even Mrs. Beeton, in 1890, did a game pie with a stuffed pheasant on top.

Susan’s quail pie baked perfectly and was exceptionally good with the fruit, giving it an enjoyable tang .

Everyone around the table thought the spinach tasted much like spanakopita. The venison sausage was terrific, the rice pudding slightly sweet and creamy, the mushrooms and onions delightful and the ground cloves in the forced meat was a wonderful surprise. The forced cucumbers were interesting ranging in ratings from, “glad I had it once” to “it’s not bad.”

Everyone loved the Orange Fool. It was such a popular dessert in the 1800s that Hanna Glasse had at least four receipts for it. Topped with a bit of blueberry sauce it was a perfect ending to the meal.

Another coffin workshop behind me, and so glad to have shared the day with such wonderful and interesting friends.

Sandie

“Food . . . can look beautiful, taste exquisite, smell wonderful, make people feel good, bring them together . . . At its most basic, it is fuel for a hungry machine . . . “

Rosamond Richardson, English cookery author

SAVORY AND SWEET WORKSHOP

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Sandie

The fire was going in the bake oven and hearth. Nancy started right in with the pumpkin corn bread. She first scaled the corn meal. This bread description is in the travels of Peter Kalm, a Finnish-Swedish Naturalist, who traveled through Colonial North America, 1748-1751.
“The pumpkin is roasted then boiled with a little water, and a good deal of milk, and stirred about whilst is boiling. Sometimes the pulp is stamped and kneaded into dough, with maize four or other flour; of this they make cakes.” “Occasionally people make bread of different kinds of pumpkins and maize mixed. This bread is very fine and sweet. Usually the maize flour is scalded first and the pumpkins cooked, and then both are kneaded together.”

Denise and Genie start chopping the meat for the Scotch eggs and the Oxford sausage. For the Scotch eggs we uses a combination of lamb and beef suet. The Oxford Sausage was made from veal and beef suet. Traditionally, Oxford sausages are noted for the addition of veal, in contrast to many traditional British sausages, which contain only pork, and their high level of spice seasoning. References to the “Oxford” style of sausage date back to at least the early 18th century. The first published is by John Nott in The Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary, 1723.
When first produced, Oxford sausage did not have a casing, but was hand-formed and flour-coated before frying.

Cathy had asked at previous workshops if we could do vermicelli one day. She got her wish. After making the dough she used the noodle roller on half and then tried Hanna Glasses suggestion of rolling the dough and slicing it thin.

We placed it on the screened porch to dry for a while before immersing in the boiling water.
Lewis Fresnaye, a refugee from the French Revolution, manufactured vermicelli in Philadelphia during the 1795 – 1805. Pasta was a popular and expensive upper-class food and eaten as a side dish. He gave out several receipts with his pasta. This one is prepared like a pudding, meaning it was baked after it was boiled.

As always there is a lot of conversation going on while we work. Nancy told us about her chickens with the feathered feet. As luck would have it I found quail eggs at the farmers market and thought they would make a nice size Scotch egg of the workshop. Denise boiled the eggs and then plunged them in ice water to cool.

Allan showed up to see how we were all make out and fed the fire and took a group picture of us. Then back to work, now that the noodles were made Natalie and Cathy proceed to making the pie shell and the filling for the Vermicelli Pudding using Amelia Simmons’s Royal Paste #9 receipt. And the Turkey looked on.

Natalie heated the milk, lemon peels, cinnamon and sugar over the fire then added the egg yolks and whites for the pasta. She layered the vermicelli with marrow and poured the pudding mixture over it.
With the bread rising and the Oxford sausage waiting to be fried, Genie and Nancy work on John Nott’s Spinach Toast receipt.

Wilted spinach, marrow, sautéed apples, butter, cream, currants and spices were mixed with egg yolks and the juice of one orange. With the bread toasted from the bake oven the spinach mixture was spread on.

The finally topping was whipped eggs whites. This would go into the oven for about 15 minutes. There seemed to be spinach mixture left over and Denise thought we should make it into a crust less quiche. And so she did.

It is believed that Maids of a Honor go back to Henry VIII, King of England, who came across Anne Boleyn and her Maids of Honor, eating the little cakes from a silver dish and demanded that the receipt be kept a secret. Years passed and the Tudor Dynasty gave way to the House of Stuart. Certainly by the early 18th century the recipe had been disclosed and the tasty little cakes became one of fashion in Richmond. I love these delectable little cakes.
You first start out with a pie crust in little patty shells then add marmalade and cover with a cake batter. As you can see the girls set up an assembly line.There was batter left over so we made a cake.

I do wish I had some of the lovely little patty pans from CW, but they don’t make them anymore. Anyone else making them?

As expected even with the sugar and ale yeast the bread did not rise very much. The cornmeal,whole wheat flour and the pumpkin pulp is all very dense. Nancy added grains from King Arthurs Flour in the one on the right just to make it different texture..

Nancy had a very large roast which she sliced in thick pieces and simmered in broth for the Stewed Beef Steak receipt of Richard Bradley’s The Country Housewife and lady’s Directory, 1732. Once it was tender, she sprinkled flour on it and fried it in oil to be served with a sauce of cider vinegar, butter, lemon peels, anchovies and spices.

Genie cut up pretty little orange slices for garnish on her plate of Oxford sausage. Natalie helps with the plating.The quail eggs were covered with the sausage mixture and fried in the spider by Denise.

Everything was coming together, the vermicelli pudding and bread was done and we were all eager to taste the receipts.

The repast was placed on the table waiting only for the Stew’d Beef Steak to arrive.

Cathy and Natalie put the finishing touches on the plates and the line formed.We sat and toasted each other for a job well done and Allan for keep the fires going.
Starting at the fork we have spinach toast, Scotch eggs, vermicelli pudding, stewed beef with sauce, corn and pumpkin bread and Oxford sausages. I think if someone from the 18th century traveled back to this table, they would feel right at home.

Sandie
“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.” -Cesar Chavez

They Ate That ! #2

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Sandie

To Boil Fish Head

Our second receipt for “They Ate That” was boiled fish head. I found four receipts that looked interesting. Mary Smith, The Complete Housekeeper, had a cod’s head with shoulder, boiled with a simple garnish around it when done. Charles Carter, The Practical Cook, Edward Kidder, Receipts of Pastry and Cookery and Robert Smith, Court Cookery all seemed very similar by using a fagot of herbs, dressing it with various seafood and horseradish, and then garnishes. I decided on “To Boil a Codf Head” by Robert Smith, Court Cookery or The Complete English Cook.

When reading the introduction to Robert Smith’s cookery book, I got the feeling that he had a rather high opinion of himself and was rather insecure. He tells us of all the lofty patrons he serves and of how, when he shared his receipts, they would show up in someone else’s work, and done badly at that. So he wished to publish his cookery book and set the record straight as to what he considered his receipts and how they should be executed. He is not the first person to feel this way, I’m sure. Many early cookbooks were copied almost word for word with little changes. He humbles himself by mentioning that he wanted to omit all extravagancy in using silver scallops-shells and silver skewers, yet “left several valuable ones not unworthy the greatest Prince.”

The cookery book also contains a variety of receipts from friends “to render it more complete.” However, he does not give them credit for any particular receipt. It is possibly the use of lobster and shrimp that makes this fish head worthy of a prince. Our team for the “To Boil a Codf Head” comprised of Vicky, Linda, and Tom. The receipt for the fish seems simple, boil the head, make a sauce and garnish it. However, it is really more complicated than that. There is gravy involved in the sauce, and many steps to put it all together. Our trio cuts onions and starts the garnish and reviews the receipt. While Vickie tends to the simmering fish head and Faith blanches the spinach for the pigeon pear, Ryan, our trusty ALHFAM event planner, snaps pictures. Tom and Vicky remove the fish head and take it to the table. Here it is unwrapped from the cheese cloth and plated. Tom had ready all of the garnishes, lobster, shrimp, parsley, toast points and artfully cut lemons. Linda gets ready to pour on the gravy and the dish is ready to serve. Once again we had many a visitor sampling their wonderful cooking. The fish was cooked perfectly, and the gravy delicious, and the presentation as good as any four-star restaurant. Happy cooking! Sandie

Open Hearth Cooking

17th and 18th century open hearth cooking recipes, life around the colonial table and hearth cooking classes.

Tag Archives: spinach

COFFIN TWO

SAVORY AND SWEET WORKSHOP

They Ate That ! #2