Yes you lucky people....nothing for ages the 2 in one day!
Cooking today was nice and relaxed, lots of great people to talk to (as well as the camera crew) who were interested and kept popping back through the day to see how we got on.
Did we make a lot? No not really...Robin and Jorge made the chicken dish they tried last time, Marc H made the chicken and honey dish Pynade and I made...
¶Longe Fretoure.
¶Take Milke, an make fayre croddes þer-of, in þe maner of a chese al tendyr; þan take owt þe whey as clene as þou may, & putte it on a bolle; þan take olkys of Eyroun & Ale, & menge floure, & cast þer-to, a gode quantyte, & draw it þorw a straynoure in-to a fayre vesselle; þan take a panne with fayre grece, & hete it on þe fyre, but lat it nowt boyle, & þan ley þin creme a-brode; þan take a knyff, & kytte a quantyte þer-of fro þe borde in-to þe panne, & efte a-noþer, & let it frye; & whan it is brownne, take it vppe in-to a fayre dyssche, and caste Sugre y-now þer-on, & serue forth.
Just for a try I made 2 batches one with the curds and one with the whey, mostly because it looke slightly ambiguous as to wether you added the flour and egg to the curd or whey.....passing the recipe around for people to read it was almost 50:50 as to which people thought we should use so it seemed worth and experiment.
This is the final results with the whey variety on the left and the curd on the right
As it turned out the whey ones tasted much nicer....not that there was anything wrong with the curd ones, but the slighly acid/cheesy edge to them just seemed to jar with our tastebuds.
Marcs dish that he made..
¶Pynade.
¶Take Hony & gode pouder Gyngere, & Galyngale, & Canelle, Pouder pepir, & graynys of parys, & boyle y-fere; þan take kyrnelys of Pynotys & caste þer-to; & take chyconys y-soþe, & hew hem in grece, & caste þer-to, & lat seþe y-fere; & þen lat droppe þer-of on a knyf; & if it cleuyth & wexyth hard, it ys y-now; & þen putte it on a chargere tyl it be cold, & mace lechys, & serue with oþer metys; & if þou wolt make it in spycery, þen putte non chykonys þer-to.
turned out well and I'm off to go and try some now.......if they've left any in the bowl.
1 comment:
Having also made the pynade with chicken before (which is referred to here as "chicken brittle") I'm now pretty convinced that the addition of chicken is a copyist error. There are multiple versions of this dish in various cookbooks (2 in Forme of Cury, 1 in Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books), and only one of them calls for chicken (oddly, the Forme of Cury recipes use almonds instead of pine nuts).
The times I've made it with chicken - carefully following the recipe - it just doesn't turn out right, and is waaaay to sweet. When using only the nuts though, it makes an interestingly spicy brittle candy.
The real clincher for me though is the last line of the recipe you quoted. In effect it's saying "If you want candy, leave out the chicken." I can easily imagine some scribe copying a recipe book, getting distracted and accidentally inserting the instructions for cooking chicken into this recipe. Then that final line is added later to fix things.
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