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Crazy, crazy weather and food
Aug. 16th, 2009 08:44 pmIt was 23C last night at 1am. And then the rain blowing sideways this morning.
I finally started on the replacement for the Little Black Book (that is, my collection of period recipes), and it is proving more work than I thought because I want to update the recipes and put in all the proper references and stuff so I keep having to stop and go and look things up. I have gotten a little A5 folder with dividers and stuff, as it will lie open flat, and I figure I can get some plastic sleeves to protect any pages I might be working with in the kitchen. After some consideration I am organising by country and time period, with a 'cross-cutting' recipes section for things like porray/porreaulx/porriata which are common to many places. At the moment that means I will have English 15th century, English 16th century, Italian 15th century, French 15th century and Spanish 16th century sections. If each section needs any further splitting up it will be by type of dish - meat/vegetable/pies/fritters etc.
I'm also in two minds about how much method to put in. When I'm writing recipes for other people to use I tend to be fairly specific, but when I'm writing them for me I tend to leave methods out, because it is either pretty obvious, or you can get it by reading the original. And then there's the question of translation. I never translate Middle English recipes, certainly not fifteenth century ones, because they seem pretty straightforward (everyone knows what 'nym' means right?). But I'm also not in the habit of putting in translations for the French or Italian ones either. Still, ultimately this collection is for my use, and I would rather leave space for ongoing notes on recipe variations than take up space with unnecessary descriptive bits.
Anyway, I also invented some rather good biscuits today, by combining a recipe from the CWA Cookbook with one from a chocolate cookbook I have (well, one of several chocolate cookbooks I have). I haven't quite decided what they should be called - Chocolate Cinnamon Somethings (Scrolls sounds too much like the things you get from Bakers Delight - Spirals perhaps).
1lb (500gms) self-raising flour
4oz (125gms) butter
2oz (60gms) caster sugar
1/2 cup (125mls) milk
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tblsp butter, melted
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Put the flour, caster sugar and cinnamon into a bowl and mix well. Rub in the butter. Mix into a firm dough with the milk (you may not need all the milk, or you may need a little more - I didn't pay much attention when I was putting it in I'm afraid - so add it slowly). Roll out to about half a cm thick, trying to keep the dough in a roughly rectangular shape.
Brush the melted butter over one side of the rolled out dough. Then sprinkle evenly with brown sugar (again, not paying too much attention to how much I used, but you want a nice even coating. Then sprinkle over the chocolate chips. You don't need too many of these as they can quickly become overwhelming. Take hold of the long side of the rolled out rectangle, and roll it over carefully like a sushi roll until you have a long rolled up tube. Bear in mind that the end you start rolling with will be the middle of the scrolls/spirals so you might like to be more generous with the filling here. Then with a very sharp knife cut into 1cm slices. I find this works best if you start by cutting it in half first, then cut from the middle out to the edges. Each slice will be a little scroll. Lay flat on a baking sheet, either greased or lined with baking paper and bake at 180C for about 15mins or until nicely brown. These do rise a bit, so don't crowd them on the tray.
If you're feeling the need for something slightly healthier, use currants or chopped dates (or a mixture of both) instead of chocolate chips. You could probably be more generous with these than with the chocolate chips too.
Now if you compare what I've just typed here, with the five lines or so I wrote describing this in my recipe notebook, you'll see what I was talking about above.
I finally started on the replacement for the Little Black Book (that is, my collection of period recipes), and it is proving more work than I thought because I want to update the recipes and put in all the proper references and stuff so I keep having to stop and go and look things up. I have gotten a little A5 folder with dividers and stuff, as it will lie open flat, and I figure I can get some plastic sleeves to protect any pages I might be working with in the kitchen. After some consideration I am organising by country and time period, with a 'cross-cutting' recipes section for things like porray/porreaulx/porriata which are common to many places. At the moment that means I will have English 15th century, English 16th century, Italian 15th century, French 15th century and Spanish 16th century sections. If each section needs any further splitting up it will be by type of dish - meat/vegetable/pies/fritters etc.
I'm also in two minds about how much method to put in. When I'm writing recipes for other people to use I tend to be fairly specific, but when I'm writing them for me I tend to leave methods out, because it is either pretty obvious, or you can get it by reading the original. And then there's the question of translation. I never translate Middle English recipes, certainly not fifteenth century ones, because they seem pretty straightforward (everyone knows what 'nym' means right?). But I'm also not in the habit of putting in translations for the French or Italian ones either. Still, ultimately this collection is for my use, and I would rather leave space for ongoing notes on recipe variations than take up space with unnecessary descriptive bits.
Anyway, I also invented some rather good biscuits today, by combining a recipe from the CWA Cookbook with one from a chocolate cookbook I have (well, one of several chocolate cookbooks I have). I haven't quite decided what they should be called - Chocolate Cinnamon Somethings (Scrolls sounds too much like the things you get from Bakers Delight - Spirals perhaps).
1lb (500gms) self-raising flour
4oz (125gms) butter
2oz (60gms) caster sugar
1/2 cup (125mls) milk
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tblsp butter, melted
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
Put the flour, caster sugar and cinnamon into a bowl and mix well. Rub in the butter. Mix into a firm dough with the milk (you may not need all the milk, or you may need a little more - I didn't pay much attention when I was putting it in I'm afraid - so add it slowly). Roll out to about half a cm thick, trying to keep the dough in a roughly rectangular shape.
Brush the melted butter over one side of the rolled out dough. Then sprinkle evenly with brown sugar (again, not paying too much attention to how much I used, but you want a nice even coating. Then sprinkle over the chocolate chips. You don't need too many of these as they can quickly become overwhelming. Take hold of the long side of the rolled out rectangle, and roll it over carefully like a sushi roll until you have a long rolled up tube. Bear in mind that the end you start rolling with will be the middle of the scrolls/spirals so you might like to be more generous with the filling here. Then with a very sharp knife cut into 1cm slices. I find this works best if you start by cutting it in half first, then cut from the middle out to the edges. Each slice will be a little scroll. Lay flat on a baking sheet, either greased or lined with baking paper and bake at 180C for about 15mins or until nicely brown. These do rise a bit, so don't crowd them on the tray.
If you're feeling the need for something slightly healthier, use currants or chopped dates (or a mixture of both) instead of chocolate chips. You could probably be more generous with these than with the chocolate chips too.
Now if you compare what I've just typed here, with the five lines or so I wrote describing this in my recipe notebook, you'll see what I was talking about above.
