An excellent sweet 'mango' chutney - sans mangos

No photos today, just a quick recipe before I forget how to make this amazing condiment.

A couple of weeks ago, a branch from an apple tree broke because the apples on it were too heavy.  Unfortunately, the apples weren't ripe yet.  Then I remembered about this Victorian recipe I read for mango chutney, only it didn't have a single mango in it.  Instead, it had unripe apples.  Perfect!

Based loosely on recipe 392 of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, I had to make a few changes.  I have a tender place in my heart for anyone who applies garlic by the quarter pound, I must admit that some of the other ingredient quantities were a bit unusual to the modern taste.  So changes were made to method and quantities but without Mrs B's little book, I wouldn't have thought to make such a scrummy chutney.

Here's a little note that Mrs Beeton gives regarding her version of the recipe:

This recipe was given by a native to an English Lady, who had long been a resident in India, and who, since her return to her native country, has become quite celebrated amongst her friends for the excellence of this Eastern relish.

Sweet "Mango" Chutney

All ingredients are approximate

3 large onions
drizzle olive oil
2 Tbs mustard seed
1 Tbs powdered ginger
4 dry chilies lightly crushed (seeds included)
a large handful of garlic
At least 6 unripe apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks less than 1 inch cubed.
1 cup raisins
2 cups apple cider vinegar or equivalent
1 to 2 cups of sugar
boiling water
2 Tbs salt

• Chop the onions into about 1/2 inch chunks, in a large heavy bottom pot, fry onions on medium-low with olive oil until transparent
• add mustard seed, ginger, chili and garlic to the onions, stir well, cook about one min
• add apples, raisons and vinegar to the onion mix, bring to boil and then turn off heat
• Mix 1 cup of sugar with 1 cup of boiling water to make a syrup.  Mix until sugar is dissolved
• Add syrup and salt to the apples.  Mix well and bring back to a boil.  Taste and add more sugar as necessary.  Boil on high for about 5 to 15 min or until enough liquid has evaporated.  Mixture will thicken as it cools.
• Place into washed (and if you like, sterilized) jars, seal with lid as per normal.  Because of the spices, salt and sugar, I didn't heat process these jars.  Mrs B never did, she just tightly wrapped the mouth of the jars with sheep bladders.  But as sheep bladders are hard to come by these days, so it's up to you to know how to safely can your food.  If you have any doubt, keep it in the fridge.

Affordable: Apples would have gone to waste as they fell off the tree far too early to ripen on their own.  Onions are from the garden.  That leaves the spices, raisins and sugar - so... totally guessing, let's pretend it's about $2 for this.  It made 6 and a half 8 oz jars full, which makes it 30 cents per jar.  This tastes almost identical to an English apple chutney I bought from the store once upon a time, which cost $8 for the same size.  That's a savings of $7.70 cents.  NICE!

To make it Vegan Friendly, you need to replace the sugar with a vegan friendly sweetener, and to be careful not to harm any worms that are probably living in your apples, thus causing them to fall before they were fully ripe.  

Baked Samosas with chickpea and leftover rice filling

My current culinary quest - to learn to cook and love Indian food.  Today's experiment: Samosa!

I found this recipe in Everyday Indian by Bal Arneson.  A very enjoyable author who has a great selection of Indian-Canadian dishes with a Pacific coast twist.  I have a couple of books by her and I like how she isn't afraid to meld indian flavour with West Coast ingredients.  

Some of my modifications were to half the salt, change up the fats, and completely alter the ratio of the filling to match the collection of leftovers in my fridge.  Basically I took some leftover rice, leftover chickpeas, leftover fresh cranberries, replaced some of the whole wheat flour with white... &c. and used her recipe as a guide.  

stuffing the samosa

I'm not going to post my recipe here because it's a book well worth reading.  Your local library should have it, and if they don't have it, they should and you should tell them that they should.

The red sauce is Pataks mango chutney, which turned out to be a bit sweet for this meal.  The dark dot is tamarind chutney (recipe from the same book as the samosa).  Tamarind chutney is extremely flavourful, and impressively spicy.  

I'm very excited to find out what else I can stuff in these triangles.

Affordable Cooking:  The filling today was purely leftovers and spices.  Since the chickpeas I used were cooked from dry (about 1/4 cup when dry), it brings the price down quite a lot.  Even if I was starting with ingredients bought specifically for this meal, I estimate it would be between fifty cents to two dollars for eight samosas.  

Bento:  This looks like the type of food that will travel well.  I'm definitely trying this in bento.

Even though it's my first time eating samosas, I'm filing this under comfort food.  It's just that good.

Allergy friendly:  I don't know how well it would be with different flour, but just about everything else can be changed up, from oils in the dough, to filling.  

Health:  Yes!  Arneson talks about this as the health 'lunch to go' food that she often cooks for her daughter, a highschool student.  Chickpeas, spices,  whole wheat flour, are all good things and in good ratios.  I can't find any fault with the healthy aspect of this recipe... except it's yummy and makes you want to eat a lot of them.

Vegetarian and vegans:  The original recipe looks vegan friendly, but I added some ghee when I made mine (to replace some of the flavour lost from cutting down on the salt).  But even still, it's vegetarian friendly fare.

Homemade pepperoni - my first dried sausage adventure

For the holidays I received this wonderful book called In the Charcuterie by Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller.  It's full of beautiful photos and well worth a gander.  Most of the book is about working with fresh meat, how to create beautiful finished dishes like roasts and instruction on how to debone and create different cuts of meat from a carcass.

The section on curing sausages is short but empowering.  The authors give a general recipe on how it's done, including different casing sizes, drying environments and all the necessary and sufficient conditions to be a success.  For example, lamb casings or thin hog casings are more forgiving and don't need as specific an environment to ferment and dry in than great big fat bung casings.  Which means, that if I turn the heat off in my room for two weeks, in the middle of winter, I can cure and dry my own sausages.

I followed the recipe for pepperoni except that I used smaller hog casings and changed the drying time/conditions accordingly.  But this book is friendly towards that kind of change.  Basically they take the attitude that people have been curing sausage like this for a few thousand years, without refrigeration or fancy electrical curing chambers. What's more, they didn't have shops to buy specific fermenting cultures from, instead they used things like a splash of wine in the mix.  This stance is quite different from the usual 'you must do this specifically and buy all this fancy stuff, or everyone dies' approach to curing meat.

Feeling empowered by the book, I gathered together my spices, curing salt, and garlic.  I used 7 lb of old goat, 1 lb of pork and 2 pounds of pork fat.

Mixed it in with the cubes of meat and stuck in the fridge overnight.  

Laundry rack transformed
into sausage hanger

I have this antique meat grinder that I found at a yard sale, so I thought I would give it a try.  It works marvelously well, just like the books say they should.  When I tried my modern grinder that I bought from BigBoxMart (I'm not proud of that), I could see that all the problem's I've had making sausages in the past were not me, it was the tool being completely useless.  This made me giddy with joy to have a meat grinder that works effortlessly, although, it was a bit small and can only process 1 tablespoon at a time - I am going to keep an eye out this year for a much larger one.


After stuffing the sausages, making sure all the air is removed (both of which I need more practice with as I'll show you later), then it's time to hang them to dry.  Ideally the temperature will be between 65 and 70F, and be constant for the two weeks.  I choose 68 degrees because, well it's cold enough thank you.  Each room has a thermostat so it was easy to keep my room a steady temp.  As the humidity was dry that week, I lightly misted the sausages with fresh water a few times a day for the first three days.

I was a bit disappointed because none of the friendly white mould formed on the outside of the sausages.  This mould is suppose to help keep things safe and prevent bad microbes from settling in.  Next time I think I'll pick up a piece of sausage from the local Salumeria and put it in the same room as my hanging sausage, the mould should migrate just fine.

After a week, we started testing them, yummy, but still a bit raw texture in the middle.  Left them another week, and much better.

Look how beautiful and red that meat is.  This tastes amazing!

But wait, not all of them look like that.  Some of them look like this:

Sort of yellow/brown inside.  Not appetizing at all.  Though they smell okay, I'm not happy with them, so they get tossed out.  I don't know why they look like this, but I have suspicions.  Maybe, I didn't get all the air out of the casings - I admit, I did have problems with this - or stuff them full enough.  Or possibly the outside casings dried too quickly leaving the moisture inside to rot the meat instead of fermenting and drying it.  I don't think this second one is what happened because I would expect a bad meat smell, where there is no real change in smell from lovely red insides and ugly brown ones.  Only about a quarter of them turned ugly, so three quarters good, that's great for a first attempt.

What I've learned from ugly brown insides is that I need more practice making cured sausage.  How exciting.  I wonder what flavour to make next.

Cooking with Allergies:  There is a lot of room to adjust for allergies when making your own sausage.  If you have problems with meat and mould, this is probably not the recipe for you.  However, spices, wine and other allergies issues can easily be accommodated.  In the book there is a recipe for your basic cured sausage with specifies the ratios of meat, salt, curing salt and fat.  Page 232 gives you everything you need to know about this, and you can play with your spices and herbs from there.

The recipes in this book do not include commercial starter or filler which can be a source of allergies.  HOWEVER, it does include nitrates (curing salt #2).  Some people are sensitive to this.  There isn't any mention on not using curing salts (nitrates/nitrites).  From the research I've done, omitting nitrates/nitrites from whole muscle cured meats like bacon is possible, just increases the risk of spoilage. However, omitting it from dried sausages is not a good idea for a person with a Western immune system.  If you want to omit the curing salt #2 from your dried and cured sausages, do your research first!  And know that in the West our bodies are no longer trained to handle a strong bacterial load (both good and bad).

Affordable?  Pork cost about $3 a pound, pork fat $1, the goat roughly $4 a pound.  The goat was old and angry, so the meat isn't much good for roasting or much else.  This used all the little scraps of meat that would often go to waste in butchery.  That's about 7 percent of hanging weight that would usually be lost.  So do we count the cost of the goat since it's salvaged material?  I think I will because it makes a fair comparison for later on when I run out of angry goat.

Meat was $33, but it was (mostly) grown on the farm and raised organically.  Spices, garlic, wine, casings, let's round it up to $2.  Take into account that although I started with 10 lbs of sausages, they lose about 30% of their weight so I ended with 7lbs.

$35 for 7 lbs of artisan cured sausage that I know exactly what went into it, is $5 a pound.  I don't think that's bad at all, though I can't remember off the top of my head what the going rate is in the shops, but I wouldn't be surprised to pay between 2 to 4 dollars an oz for artisan sausage.

Then again, I do need to knock off a quarter of the finished amount for my learning mistakes.  So really, this batch was almost $7 a pound.  But I expect to get better at this and have less waste in future.

Healthy?  Yes.  In small amounts.  There are some medical studies kicking about these days that say you should have less than 1 oz of cured meats a day.  I suppose if you are on a fully Western diet full of wonderfully creative preservatives and manufactured salts like MSG, adding cured meats to your diet would increase the stress that salt puts on your body.

However, that said, people have been eating this sort of sausage for several thousand years, and up until the last 120 years or so, the amount of salt used, and nitrate/nitrites used were considerably higher.  This kind of food was a staple in the diet, and the diseases attributed to cured meats only started appearing in the last hundred years.   My interpretation of this is that perhaps cured meats is simply a scape goat for a greater problem in the Western diet.

But even still, the flavour of this is so intense, it makes a better condiment than main dish.  I know everything that went into my sausage, so compared to big factory made peperoni, I feel this is healthier.

Safety?  Since I have no artificial colours or aesthetic ingredients added to the meat, I can tell right away if there is something wrong with the appearance or smell.  Because they are made in small batches, it is easy to do quality control.  Though large scale, factory production of cured meats don't fulfill these conditions, they are usually safe.  But when they go wrong, they go wrong on a big scale.  There has been a few issues with cured meat production in Canada over the last few years, with deaths.  I feel safer doing things at home, however, I arm myself with the knowledge needed to create safe food.

It may work, don't know, let's find out.

I had some daikon in the back of the fridge that needed eating up, so I decided to make some fermented pickles.  Sliced it thin, mixed it with one chili pepper, also sliced thin, and added one generous teaspoon of sea salt per pound of veg.  Weighed it down and added water to make certain everything was submerged.

It's only been fermenting for three days now, but it is quite tasty.  I'm going to leave it a week or two, tasting it probably again in a week.  I really want the chilies to mellow and the daikon to spice up.  But who knows what will happen... it's all up to the invisible beasties now.

Affordable (they were all leftovers from the back of the fridge that were going to be tossed), healthy, vegan friendly and all that jaz.

Fermented Hot Sauce Recipe from Dried Chilis and Excessive Amounts of Garlic

I adore those long, thin red spicy peppers that go so well in stir fry.  The garden centre calls them Super Hots, the grocery store Thai chilis, the grocery store in the garden center calls them chilis, and nothing else.  I call them yummy.

Every year I grow a few and buy a few, and it's always a few extra.  So they get threaded and hung to dry.  Dried chilis are great...except after a year or two of storage, they tend to loose their colour and pazaz.  So I decided to try a little experiment.

Fermented Hot Sauce with Garlic

For each 1/2 cup of dried chilis
1 clove head of garlic and
1 Tbs of salt
water

• Roughly chop up the chilis, or not.
• Peel the garlic and roughly chop it up or not
• Combine salt, garlic and chilli in a small jar.  Add water to cover.
• Use something to press down on the chilli mix so that every part of it is submerged.  I cut out a circle out of plastic container and then filled a small mason jar with water to use as a weight.
• Leave on the counter for at least a week... I um, forgot about it and it was there for over a month.  If anything, I think the longer ferment was good for it.  Check it every couple of days (or not if you forget) to make certain everything is submerged and to scrape off any mould that forms.  If the mould is black, toss the whole thing, otherwise, it should be fine.  The spices, garlic and salt are strong enough to kill just about anything bad, but if it develops an off smell, don't eat it.
• When it's time, place the chilis, garlic and brine in the blender or blitzer.  Blend or blitz till it's a lovely puree.  You may want to add a pinch of sugar or a few drops or honey.  A few drops of apple cider (or other natural) vinegar also go good in this.
• Store in the fridge, eat within... I have no idea how long, but it will probably last a year.  You can store it at room temperature, but it may go mouldy after a month or so.

Roughly chopped
This is a fresh one I found in the back of the fridge
so I decided to toss it in with the others

chilis and garlic kept submerged in the brine

Very hot sauce with strong garlic taste.  yum.

Affordable:  Yep, the chillies were getting too old and destined for the compost, garlic was from the garden.  The only thing I paid for was the salt.  But to buy these ingredients in the store are usually cheaper than buying a good quality hot sauce.

Vegan-Friendly: Yes....unless you add honey at the blending stage.

Healthy and allergies:  By making your own hot sauce, you can avoid any additives or ingredients that you may be allergic to.  Also the probiotics from eating a live food, are good for you too.

I could do the same old song and dance about this being a good Transitional food, but you know it all by now.  Encourages self-reliance, and stuff, so forth.

Homemade Tikka Paste and Chicken Tika recipe

I am very fond of curry.  Though, I must admit, not too spicy.  But that's the great thing about homemade curry, you can make it as are-you-certain-this-is-curry-mild or as call-the-fire-department-hot as you like.  If you don't like chicken in your tika, try lamb, or shrimp.  If you don't like coconut then omit, or try a Tablespoon of Kechk powder instead.  There are so many choices, and it's hard to do wrong when it comes to curry.

Increasingly these days, there is a problems with curry.  A Lot of curry pastes sold in stores, contain soy, or nuts, or other potential allergens.  Vegans have a similar problem, as often these jar pastes will contain animal products like butter.  Thank goodness it's easy to make your own curry paste, especially if you have a food processor at home, but you can also do it by hand, just give yourself more time.

When I'm making my own curry paste, I like to put it together the day before I cook a curry, that way, the flavours blend together better and, in my opinion, make a nicer curry.  But other people like to make it up fresh each time, so it's really a matter of personal taste.  

Tikka Paste

1 super hot chile
4 cloves of garlic
half an inch of fresh ginger
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbs smoked paprika
2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs oil
one small tin tomato paste
1 tsp ajwain (whole)
1 tsp fennel (whole)

• In a dry fry pan, toast the ajwain and fennel on medium high until they start to change colour and smell fantastic.  Remove from heat, allow to cool a bit then grind to a fine powder.
• Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or blender and blitz until well blended.  Add more oil if needed.  
• Keep in an sealed container in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

Chicken Tikka

2 to 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 large sweet onion
1 chile fresh or dry (optional)
1/2 inch fresh ginger
olive oil
1/2 cup tikka paste
1 can diced tomatoes
water

• Slice the chicken into 3/4 inch strips (or cubes if you like), put to one side
• Finely slice the onion, chili (optional) and ginger.  In a heavy bottom pot (my favourite is the cast iron, stove friendly dutch oven) heat a few glugs of oil and fry on medium heat, the onions, chili and ginger until onions start to turn golden.  
• Add the curry paste, give it a stir, then add the chicken.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the chicken is seared on the outside.
• Add the tomatoes and then fill the tin about 3/4 full with water, and add that.  mix well and bring to a boil.

Two choices here

1. simmer on the stove with the lid on, for about 20 minutes, string often to make certain nothing burns on the bottom.  OR...
2. Put the lid on the pot and put it in the oven, at 325 F for at least half an hour, and up to 2 hours.

• Serve with rice and optional a dab of yogurt on top.

This recipe is (heavily) modified from Jamie Oliver's book Food Revolution.  He has a nice selection of easy to make curry pastes, from super-spicy Vindaloo, to a nice everyday Korma paste.  Each of these pastes lasts one to two weeks in the fridge, and in my mind are just as good as any commercial curry paste. If you end up getting that book, I highly recommend the Vegetable Bhajis as a side dish to the chicken tikka, served with a simple salad and a bed of rice.  His Aloo Gobhi recipe is a fantastic vegetarian (omit the butter for a vegan friendly) curry.

Another source of curry recipes is 1000 Indian Recipes by Batra.  There are some fantastic recipes in this book, but I find it a bit difficult to use.  Most recipes include well over a dozen, in some cases up to 3 dozen, ingredients, and often refer you back to other recipes, that require yet other recipes... and so forth.  But for someone truly enamoured with Indian cooking, it's a fantastic reference.  The flat breads are especially yummy and even nicer when adapted to use sourdough yeast.

Affordable?  Yep.  If you have the tikka as a main, then you only need about 1 chicken breast per person, however, if you keep it as a side dish with rice and a vegi dish, then you can feed 2 or 3 people per chicken breast.

This is exceptionally yummy in bento.  Reheat leftover Tikka and pack with fresh rice.  Allow everything to cool before closing the lid.  The spices in the tikka help keep the meat fresh longer at room temp, but of course, always use your common sense if keeping meat at room temp for more than a few hours.

Happy Mead Maker

Where I make mead; pear and rosemary mead; and quince and spice mead.



Mead is a magical elixir made from honey.  Among other things, it's know as the drink of the gods.  It's said to have the power to grant you insight into the unseen realm - which is surely true if you consume enough of any alcoholic drink.

Then again, the bees are said to travel between this world and the next, as messengers to the gods and the dead.  That's one of the reasons why the mythology of bees says we must tell the hive the household news each day.  Imbibing a drink made from the nectar of such supernatural messengers must grant some special powers, if only temporary.

I have read about mead from time to time, in poetry and literature, but always believed it was far too complex for me to try making.  Until recently, none of the local shops carried it, or if they did, it was beyond my price range.  But recently, I've grown more enamoured with the idea of mead.  I have found numerous mentions of mead through my research into medieval and iron age cooking.  Giving my new found courage (and decent level of success) with fermenting and increasing desire to keep bees, I have decided it is time to try mead.

I first tried some mead at a medieval event, it was berry mead and to my taste, it was very sweet.  But good, and surprisingly strong alcohol content.  But still a bit yeasty (I get flushed from yeast) so I imagine it would have been even better with another racking and 6 months more ageing.  Then I discovered some mead in a liquor store.  Two brands from Vancouver Island, actually - although it was all fruit and berry mead, with only one bottle of spiced mead, which was as close as I could get to unflavoured.  So I brought a bottle of spiced mead home and have an oz of it every now and again.  It helps settle my stomach if it's still upset at bedtime - an added benefit.

Deciding that yes, I like mead, it is now time to make some of my own.


Following the instructions from Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, I combined 1 part raw honey with 4 parts room temperature water, mixed very well and left in a wide mouth container, stirring at least three times a day, for about a week until it looks like there is yeast active (small bubbles, froth, taste and smell).  Then it goes in a jug with an air lock to bubble away.  Once it's finished bubbling, I'll taste it and rack it (move it into a different jug with an airlock to aerate the mead and re-activate the yeast).  I don't know how long I'm going to age the mead before bottling, there are some meads that age for years before bottling, others are drunk in a matter of weeks.  I think it will depend on what else is going on in my life and how it tastes to determine when I'm ready to bottle it.  For these first few stages, I have it upstairs at room temperature, but once I rack it, I think it will go downstairs where it is cooler.

The first batch looked good, so why not try some more?

I had a hand full of pears that missed being made into Parry this year, so I thought why not pear and rosemary?  It's a good pairing - ha ha - as I've used this combination as a sauce for pork.

The quince tree only had two quinces.  Quite frankly, I can't seem to like quince very much, it's kind of coy tasting and very strong smelling.  But I don't want to waste them, so I decided to try for a Quince Poudre Douce tasting mead.  Quince, pepper, ginger, cinnamon stick, and some anise (because they look so pretty).

pear and rosemary

 To make flavoured mead, at least according to Sandor Katz, is to slice up your fruit very fine and add them to the mead during the open vessel stage.  Proceed as per normal mead, and strain when you put it in the jug.

quince and spice

The fruit has natural yeast on it, so it will usually start to ferment faster than honey on it's own.  However, certain processing and herbicides in commercial fruit may have adverse effects if you are capturing wild yeast like I did, so please use organic or home grown fruit.


For the fruit mead, I used less honey as the fruit already has plenty of sugar.  I did 1 part honey for 5 parts water.

These are just small batches one gallon, or in the case of the first mead, half a gallon.  These tastes combinations may be completely horrid!  But from what I've read, if the mead tastes terrible, leave it for six months to four years, and it could improve... or else, you may have killed the offending taste buds in the interim.

During the open pot method while I was stirring three times a day, I was amazed with how the smell of the fruit mead changed.  At first the pear and rosemary smelt horridly medical, the rosemary was overpoweringly antiseptic. But after a couple of days, the smell of the herbs subsided and it started smelling strongly of pears left too long in the sun.  By the end of the week, it was quite pleasant smelling, a nice balance of herb and fruit, although it tasted overpoweringly of sweet and yeast at that time.  The quince and spice started out smelling of nothing at all, then after a day it started smelling of sickly sweet quince.  The quince smell grew sweeter and more pungent until it was rank, almost rotten, on the fifth day.   I almost tossed the batch, but instead on the 6th day it suddenly didn't smell revolting any more and started to smell like pepper with a hint of quince.  I didn't taste it when I put it in the jug, but I think it will be okay...

...eventually.

This process is simple, albeit fruit fly generating.  I can't believe I ever imagined it would be difficult.  It is a nice way to use up small amounts of fruit, berries, and other goodies laying around.  I'm looking forward to finding out how these little experiments taste in a few months time.


I think that making mead at home is an affordable way to make a nice sipping alcoholic drink.  Considering it costs about $25 for a 750ml bottle at the local liquor store, as opposed to the $12 starting price for a drinkable plonk (wine),  you don't need much honey to make a bottle of mead.  About 1/2 to 2/3rds of a cup aught to do it, which is about $1.30 per homebrew bottle of mead.  Would be less if you make mead from gleaned fruit and use less honey per water ratio.  Although making mead doesn't take much active time, it does require a lot of waiting, I'm told, to make a good mead.  So perhaps it is worth the extra twenty three dollars not having to take up space and carboy waiting for the mead to age.

Honey has many health benefits and mead also has a long tradition of healing qualities.  I only know some of the cultural mythologies that surround this elixir, but I suspect there are some scientific studies out there for those who care to look.  Of course, like all alcoholic drinks, moderation is key.  A little everyday is said to help your health, however, too much... well, you've all seen the government warnings I'm sure.

Allergies:  Homebrewing something like mead is nice because you can avoid a lot of allergies like sulphites (or was that sulphates?), extra ingredients, and can brew it long enough so that all the yeast is exhausted.  Keep in mind, some people have negative reactions to honey and alcohol.

Medieval Ginger Bread Recipe

It's funny.  When I imagine gingerbread, I think of a sweet, hard cake or cookie like substance, shaped as cute little people, houses, rounds, with icing and colourful candy.  The thing I don't think about when people say the word gingerbread, is... bread.

But that's exactly what gingerbread was in the middle ages: Ginger Bread.  That's two words, not one, to indicate that literally, there is ginger, there is bread and they get combined somehow.

Reading the book Pleyn Delite, by Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, I came across a delicious looking gingerbread recipe from the Middle Ages.  This book contains all sorts of recipes from historical sources, including a lot of the recipes in the original text, and the modern day translation.  What I love best about this book is that the authors actually cooked a lot of these recipes.  I suspect that this is not the norm when translating historic cooking techniques into modern methods.  But these two have done a really good job of it.

I've tasted a few dishes cooked from the Pleyn Delite (which I say in my head as Plain Delight) and loved most of them.  This gingerbread, I didn't love as much.  I found it too crunchy, but I'm in the minority on this one.  Everyone else has gobbled it down, making me fend them off with a fork and a cunning plan to have enough left over for the photograph.

I suspect their plan was to finish it off quickly so that I would be forced to make a second batch if I wanted to take any pictures for the blog.

Before I write the recipe for medieval gingerbread, I feel compelled to confess that not much is changed from the version in Pleyne Delite, except maybe the quantities of the spices and wording.  It's a difficult recipe to improve on.  I would change a bit of the method if given a second chance to make this - which I may just be strong armed into doing.

Medieval Ginger Bread

Bread crumbs - about a 1 lb loaf of bread dried and finely ground
a generous teaspoon of ginger powder
a generous pinch of cinnamon
a dash of ground pepper or a pinch of Poudre Forte
1/2 cup of honey

• In a large pan, bring honey to boil, remove from heat.  Add the spices and stir well.
• Add the bread to the honey a little at a time, return to medium low heat if needed, stirring well after each handful of breadcrumbs.  When the mixture is really thick and hard to stir, turn out onto a layer of parchment paper.  spread it out evenly as best you can, then put another layer of parchment paper on top.  Use your hands or rolling pin to smooth out the gingerbread to make it as even and as thin/thick as you like.  Thinner is better in my opinion. 
• Leave covered to cool for about an hour, cut into shapes.  You want to do this today and not a few days from now, trust me.  It gets more difficult as it ages.

This keeps well at room temperature for several days and travels well in a bento box, just wrap with a bit of parchment paper and you are good to go.

Affordable cooking? - Very much so, provided you use bread that would have gone to the chickens/garbage otherwise.  Not so much if you are buying bread or bread crumbs just for this recipe.  

Cooking for your Vegan friends? - It can be made vegan friendly by replacing the honey with a different liquid sweetener.  

Cooking for Allergies - not many allergies here at first glance, but it's good to be careful about the ingredients of the bread crumbs (commercially made usually contain soy and other problems), spices (sometimes processed with oils or lecithin which can include soy).  Just remember that your ingredients these days, have ingredients lists of their own.  With that in mind, this is a very flexible recipe.  You can choose any kind of bread, be it gluten free, yeast free, whatever you  need.

Medieval cooking: Poudre Douce and Poudre Fort recipes

Here's a couple of recipes I brought back from my trip to the 14th Century.  Poudre Fort and Poudre Douce (or strong powder and sweet powder).  You can use these two powders in just about anything.  The Fort or strong powder, I use for cooking meat, fish, veg, rice, soups, and anywhere else one might use pepper in modern cooking.  The Douce or sweet powder, I use for bread making, just about anything dessert, or even sprinkling on fresh fruit.

Poudre Fort

1 pinch powdered ginger
2 pinches of powdered cinnamon
about 4 to 8 Tbs peppercorns ground fine (at the medieval camp I did this by hand, it wasn't too time consuming)
1/4 tsp sugar (any sugar will do, so long as it's in granular/dry form)

• Pulverize into powder anything that isn't already, and blend well.  Keep in an airtight jar on the counter so it's always on hand when you need it.

Feel free to alter the ratios or add other spices like nutmeg to taste.  This is just the recipe that was passed down to me by an expert medievalist (I'm thinking that's probably not the right word for it, but it will serve till I can think of a better one).

Poudre Douce

1 recipe of Poudre Fort (see above)
1/2 tsp cinnamon (yes, we are doing cinnamon twice)
maybe a pinch of nutmeg or allspice
More Sugar (any dry sugar, powdered, granular, date, palm, beet, &c.) - I tell you how much below.

• Pulverize into powder anything that isn't already.  Mix together all but the (extra) sugar
• Guess about how much spice you have here (by volume) - probably getting close to a 1/4 cup by now.  Add an equal amount of sugar to the other spices.  So, if you have roughly 1/4 cup of spices, then add 1/4 cup of sugar.  If you have 4 Tbs of spices, then add another 4 Tbs of sugar.
• Mix everything together really well, keep in an airtight jar on the counter so you can use it always on hand.

With time and practice, you will develop your own ratios for these spices.  There are many other recipes for these that have developed over the centuries.  Some completely different than the ones shown here.  

However, these are so incredibly delicious, I'm really surprised they aren't more common.

A word of caution for allergies: Some modern spices have Soy and other oils/lecithins used in the processing.  Always check the ingredients on the spice packets if you are cooking for someone with allergies.

Chickened Out on Ginger Beer

I am looking for a drink that is refreshing after a long day working on the farm.  Something that doesn't taste like water and can help replenish electrolytes without being sweet.  Something more affordable than mineral water.

Home brew ginger beer might just fit the bill.

Instead of using commercial made yeasts, I decided to capture my own yeast using a ginger bug.  You put sugar and ginger in a jar, adding more each day and stirring it vigorously.  After a few days to a week, it gets lovely and bubbly.  It's like a sourdough starter in that it captures wild yeast, but it's for making ginger beer, it's called a bug.

Down to Earth Blog has a couple of recipes for Ginger Beer, this one looks the best.  Of course, being the crazy Pastafarian that I am, I decided to adjust the recipe a little... a little too much as it turns out.

I used honey instead of sugar, and being told by many people about how easy it is to have this drink explode, I opened them up several times a day to see if they were fizzy yet.

The flavour did start to transform from sweet to tangy, but developed these weird storm clouds.

It looked really gross, so I chickened out and tossed the whole batch.

Next time (yep, I already started a new bug with the leas from the old one) I will use sugar instead of honey. I figure that I should learn how it is suppose to act before I start changing up the recipe too much.

Anyone else out there made ginger beer?  Got any tips for me?