Northumbrian Delights

Before we set off for Northumberland, I had high hopes of combining our holiday with a kind of gastro-tour of the region, seeking out traditional foods.  While that was a tad ambitious for a family break, we did eat very well from a selection of farm shops, tea rooms and cosy pubs, and I even managed to sample a few traditional dishes along the way.

Pan Haggerty

I got to try this delicacy in the in the Copper Kettle in Bamburgh.  The tea room is in a lovely cottage built in the early 18th century as accommodation for the labourers in the castle.  So far, so historic.  Pan Haggerty is a traditional Northumbrian dish of potatoes, onion and cheese, normally layered and baked in the oven.  In this case, I had a Pan Haggerty pie, with the filling being more of a mash consistency.  How much you enjoy a cheesy mash pie served with potatoes on the side probably depends on how much you love your carbs.  Potatoes happen to be my favourite food, so I loved it.  If I was being critical I might say that the pastry on the bottom was a little tough, but on the plus side it would mean your filling wouldn't  fall out of your pie and onto the beach if you decided to eat al fresco.  Delicious and, although it was pretty hearty, I did manage a slice of cake afterwards.  Would have been rude not to.  

Crab Sandwiches

Being by the sea, crab sandwiches were a big thing in the area.  Craster is a little harbour, famous for it's traditional smokehouse.  We didn't actually make it into the smokehouse shop, as the toddler developed an irrational fear of the place and was sick in car park (clearly professional travel writers and restaurant reviewers are wise enough to leave the kids at home).  Before this debacle, we did make it into the Jolly Fisherman - the best place in town for a crab sandwich.  I've eaten dressed crab before in Scotland, but strangely never in a sandwich, so I'm going to qualify this as a regional dish.  I can't fault it - sweet crab and tangy sharp dressing enveloped in brown bread.  On the side, some truly delicious beef dripping chips on the side and a view of the sea.  

Fish & Chips

Ok, so fish & chips are ubiquitous rather than unique, but this has been a British staple for over 100 years.  As essential a part of a seaside holiday now as it was then.  I'm not snobby, and very fond of the combination of crispy batter with soft fish below.  And a few more chips too.....

Cocoa-nut Soup

Azure waters lap golden shores. Shadows from the lacy fronds of the coconut tree dance on the bleached sands under the blistering sun.  A coconut falls with a tiny thud, which reverberates around the world.  A journey, a foreign land, ........and a soup pot?

 Image courtesy of Exsodus / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Forgive my tropical musings, it's been a wet summer.  On my first flick through Eliza Acton's 'Modern Cookery for Private Families', the recipe for Cocoa-nut soup caught my eye.  It certainly had novelty value for me.  I've eaten plenty of coconut in desserts and Thai food, but never in beef soup.  I was also surprised about the wide availability of coconuts in 1845 - this was a book aimed at the domestic market rather than professional chefs.  Coconuts still seem pretty exotic to me after all! 

Coca-nut Soup

• Pare the dark rind from a very fresh cocoa-nut, and grate it down small on an exceeingly clean, bright grater;

Eliza Acton gives no instructions on how to open the coconut.  Apparently everyone knew how to do it back then.  I certainly didn't.  After consulting google, I moved through various techiques from tapping round the coconut with a knife to the more effective, if less professional looking, 'putting the coconut in a bag and hitting it really, really hard with a hammer' method. 
 

•  Weigh it, and allow tow ounces for each quart of soup. 

After all that work, only a very small amount of coconut actually went into the soup.  It seemed a bit of a waste of effort, but did leave me with plenty of left over coconut to play with.

• Simmer it gently for one hour in the stock, which should then be strained closely from it, and thickened for table.

I used a good quality bought stock, but Eliza Acton has several different reciepes in the book.

• Veal stock, gravy soup, or broth, 5 pints; grated cocoa-nut, 5 oz.; 1 hour.  Flour of rice, 5 oz.; mace 1/2teaspoonful; little cayenne and salt; mixed with 1/4 pint cream: 10 minutes.

My only substitutions were to use cornflour rather than rice flour for thickening, and mace rather than nutmeg.  As mace and nutmeg come from the same plant, I don't think this changed the flavour too much.

The taste test

On tasting the soup, what surprised me most was that it was not  at all sweet.  I'm mostly used to coconut in desserts and cakes, so although the sweetness comes from added sugar not from the cocont, I think of coconut as having a 'sweet' taste. Even in savory thai dishes, the coconut milk gives a sweetness to counteract the chile.  The coconut certainly didn't clash with the beef, but added a warmth along with the spices.  A good soup for a Scottish summer, even if it doesn't quite catch on down at the beach.

A Pudding Fit for a King (well, the chancellor at least)

Mrs Beeton was a bestseller in her time.  While her critics say she didn't write most the recipes, and that Eliza Acton was the first to include a list of ingredients, she is  the best known cookery writer of the period.  She certainly knew what her audience wanted, and could be considered as the first celebrity chef.

In view of the current economic situation, and thinking that the chancellor may need some sustenance in these troubled time, I picked this pudding for my first Mrs B recipe.

Cabinet or Chancellor's Pudding

Ingredients - 1 1/2 oz candied peel, 4 oz of currants, 4 dozen sultanas, a few slices of Savoy cake, sponge cake, a French roll, 4 eggs, 1 pint milk, grated lemon-rind, 1/4 nutmeg, 3 table-spoonfuls of sugar.

Melt some butter to a paste, and with it, well grease the mould or basin in which the pudding is to be boiled, taking care that it is buttered in ever part.  Grease the mould, thoroughly.  This is important, as you want to be able to turn out your pudding once it's done to present to your guests, not dig it out the mould.

Cut the peel into thin slices, and place these in a fanciful device at the bottom of the mould, and fill in the spaces between with currants and sultanas; then add a few slices of sponge cake or French roll; drop a few drops of melted butter on these, and between each layer sprinkle a few currents.  Proceed in this manner til the mould is nearly full; Simply build up the fruit and cake it layers

then flavour the milk with nutmeg and grated lemon-rind; add the sugar, and stir to this the eggs, which should be well beaten.  Beat this mixture for a few minutes; then strain it into the mould, which should be quite full; This is your basic custard to go over the cake.

tie a piece of buttered paper over it, and let it stand for 2 hours; then tie it down with a cloth, put it into boiling water, and let it boil slowly for 1 hour.  I used a plastic pudding basin with a lid.  I trust Mrs B would recommend the same if they'd only been invented, as it's much easier.  Just don't fill it too full, or the lid might ping off when your pudding expands.

In taking it up, let it stand for a minute or two before the cloth is removed; then quickly turn it out of the mould or basin, and serve with the sweet sauce separately.  Miraculously, my pudding turned out! The 'fanciful device' was a little worse for wear, but otherwise perfect.  I served it with a little jam sauce.

The pudding was absolutely delicious.  I was a bit worried, as I'd had a nibble of the cake while building up the pudding, and it was pretty nasty.  So, a real Cinderella story for the supermarket sponge. I'd also been expecting it to be quite stodgy, but it was very light, more like a baked custard than a heavy pudding.  The fruit was soft from soaking up the liquid, not at all chewy.  Couldn't taste the lemon, but Mrs B does suggest you could substitute essence of vanilla or bitter almonds, or make it richer with cream.  I loved it just the way it was.  Mrs B says seasonable at any time and I agree.  I don't know why it ever went out of fashion.

A Medieval Feast II - Compost

When faced with turnips, parsnip and cabbage, I'd probably just end up making a big pot of soup.  So would have most people in the middle ages too (or pottage as they called it back in the day, or frumenty with cereal, or a luxury mortrew).  Clearly this wouldn't cut ye olde mustard if you were cooking for the king .  It's time to pimp that root veg.

Compost (composed, rather than decomposing) is a kind of spicy pickle of root veg.  Bear in mind that all these spices were being shipped from the furthest corners of the world, and you realise this wasn't an everyday dish.

Compost

Take rote of parsel. pasternak of rasenns. scrape hem waisthe hem clene. Take root of parsley (I just used parsley leaf), parsnip (pasternak of rasenns  got a 'Qu' from Mr Pegge, but pasternak is parsnip) and scrape and wash them clean

take rapes & caboches ypared and icorne.  Cut up turnips and cabbages

take an erthen panne with clene water & set it on the fire. Take an earthen pan with clean water and set it on the fire. Or  in my case, take a cooking pot and put it on the gas hob.

cast all þise þerinne.   Put all the veggies in.

whan þey buth boiled cast þerto peers & parboile hem wel. When they've boiled, put in pears and boil them.  I've heard in medieval times they had some large, hard pears called warden that needed cooking.  My pears were so soft and juicy, so I felt mixing them in with the still hot veggies would be enough. 

take þise thynges up & lat it kele on a fair cloth, do þerto salt whan it is colde in a vessel take vineger & powdour & safroun & do þerto. & lat alle þise thinges lye þerin al nyzt oþer al day. When they've cooled add salt, vinegar, powder douce, and saffron, and leave all day.

take wyne greke and hony clarified togider lumbarde mustard & raisouns corance al hool. & grynde powdour of canel powdour douce. & aneys hole. & fenell seed.  Take greek wine and honey clarified together, (lumbard?) mustard and whole raisens.  Grind cinnamon powder, powdour douce and whole anise (I used star anise) and fennel seed.  I did the grinding by hand in a pestle and mortar, which was a bit too much like hard work for me. 

 take alle þise thynges & cast togyder in a pot of erthe. and take þerof whan þou wilt & serue forth.  Put everything in a bowl together and serve it forth

The recipes in the Forme of Cury have no ingredient measures or cooking times, but nearly all have instructions to 'serve it forth '- as if that was the part of the recipe you're likely to struggle with.

Having served it forth, and even eaten it, what did I think? Well, it was interesting.  There was a sharpness from the vinegar, and different spices in every mouthful.   There are no instructions to reheat before cooking, so the first day we had it cold.  I'm not used to cold root veg, and not sure I want to be.  The next day I heated some up, which made the root veg nicer, but then the vinegar didn't work as well as for a cold pickle.  All in all, I think I'll stick with the soup.  But maybe that's just the peasant in me.

A Medieval Feast - Chykens in Hocchee

Where to start for my first venture into historic cooking?  Well the beginning seemed a good place.  

The Forme of Cury is was written in 1390 by King Richard II's chef, making it the oldest known cookbook in English.  While the original was written on velum (calf's skin), I got a shiny new copy from Amazon.  However, the recipes inside are still in meadieval English.  Oh dear.  

 

The text has had the "benefit" of an editor (Samuel Pegge), but his notes and translations through the book are pretty variable in their usefulness.  Some words he doesn't translate at all, some more obvious words are translated [peeres = pears], and there are quite a few times he has noted 'Qu.', which I'm guessing just means 'question?'.  His foreword is totally unreadable, but he did write it in 1791, so maybe it was just the style of the time.   

I found that between reading the recipes out loud (this was before standardised spelling, so things were written as they sound) and Samuel Pegge's notes, and getting my husband who has studied middle english to help translate, I could start to make sense of it all.  The recipes have no quantities or cooking times, so give me plenty of creative licence to do what I fancy.

Chykens in Hocchee

(a little note, þ=th)

Take Chykenns and scald hem. Take chickens and scald them. I didn't feel the need to scald my chickens. They were from a supermarket, so I didn't need to finish plucking them myself.
take parsel and sawge withoute eny oþere eres. take garlec an grapes and stoppe the Chikenns ful and seeþ hem in gode broth. so þat þey may esely be boyled þerinne. Take parsley, sage, garlic and grapes and stuff the chickens full. Boil them in a good broth. I just used stock, but I suppose they hadn't invented stock cubes in the middle ages.
messe hem and cast þerto powdour dowce. Send them and put on 'powdor douce'.

Powdor douce seems to have been sprinkled over everything like some kind of medieval ketchup.  Being so ubiquitous, they didn't include the ingredients with this recipe.  I found a recipe in a little Medieval cookbook (by English Heritage) which used cinnamon, grated nutmeg, black pepper and sugar. The recipe is sourced from Mrs Groundes-Peace's Old Cooker Notebook - I love her name.  So much I might even change mine.

So, how did it all taste?

The chicken was very soft and tender from poaching, but didn't have a lot of flavour by itself, so it really needed the extra spice from the powdor douce.  Even though it sounded more like something you'd put in a Christmas cake and not with chicken, it worked well and reminded me of middle eastern cooking.  The stuffing was very good - the grapes soft and mellow, with just a touch of sweetness, and the garlic also  mellowed by the slow cooking inside the chicken.  

I may not be a convert from roast to poached chicken, but I would make the grape & garlic stuffing again, and I might even go for some more powdor douce.  At least at Christmas.........