Saturday, January 07, 2006

A Potage of Roysons

I'm going to a picnic with the Medieval Guild tomorrow. They said to bring a plate of something sort of medieval, so I'm going to be experimental and try a real old-time recipe, courtesy of www.godecookery.com. Here goes:

.Cxxxvj. A potage of Roysons. Take Raysonys, & do a-way þe kyrnellys; & take a part of Applys, do a-way þe corys, & þe pare, bray hem in a mortere, & temper hem with Almande Mylke, melle hem with flowre of Rys, þat it be clene chargeaunt, & straw vppe-on pouder of Galygale of Gyngere, serue it forth.

Stage 1: Almond Milk
Apparently medieval cooks didn't like using cow's milk in their recipes. It went off, or got diluted by the street seller and well, frankly, you didn't know where it had been. The solution was to grind up almonds and steep them in water and use that instead. Currently, I have a pot of just boiled water making the acquaintance of a packet of ground almonds from the supermarket bakery department and they seem to be hitting it off (ie its now white and milky looking with some almond particles in there). In about 5 minutes I have to strain the relationship and see what comes out (GodeCookery recommend the services of a blender but that I just don't have).
...
As promised, smells like almonds, looks like very off-white skim milk. I think if I leave it to sit, it'll separate out.
(The next morning.) Nope, it didn't separate. It's definitely cloudy, but the almond is still mostly in solution.

Stage 2: Stew Your Apple
Pretty basic really, although I had to change to a bigger pot when I realised how much you get out of 5 apples. Which cooks down quite a lot actually. I've never actually stewed apples before. Simmer, bubble, toil and trouble. (It helps if you don't overboil the pot.)

Stage 3: Putting It All Together
The initial pile of stuff all dumped in together looks quite unappealing, all congealed and icky looking, but smells wonderfully of ginger. After some cooking, the milk has absorbed into the apple and the mixture is thicker and looks more appetising. Still smells nice. And on getting it as thick as it's ever going to be, I think I'll transfer it to a serving dish and leave it to settle.



Stage 4: The Eating
I thought it was really nice - stewed apple with some extra zing, although only one other person tried it. :-( Maybe bringing some plastic spoons or something would have increased the uptake... The picnic was fun, too.







6 comments:

theamazingcatherine said...

You finished your sideless surcoat! Oh, well done. It looks lovely.

Oh, by the way, I finally got around to checking my exam results: A for poetry, A- for Phonetics. Thought you'd want to know.

Stephanie said...

Very very cool!

Although I'm thinking about replacing the side panels. That particular design was an experiment in "Is it possible to make a dress out of a 1.5x1.5m square" and while the answer is technically yes, I think an extra half metre of fabric would have made the sides drape better.

Anonymous said...

My favourite mediæval cooking instruction:

"Smite to gobbets!"

theamazingcatherine said...

That's a pretty cool instruction. I shall have to remember it.

Stephanie said...

I've spent the last couple of days debugging, which is a slow and frustrating process. However, I am pleased to announce that I've moved from access violations, to runs without crashing but returns the wrong result through to access violations again. But they're in a different part of the program, so at least I'm making progress. :-)

Stephanie said...

Well and so. I've moved from access violations, through frustrating inability to produce identical results, and am now back in the comforting (and disturbing) world of access violations. Sigh. I wish this damn thing would just work.

Stephanie