PGC2019: Meisterin Christian Baier's Apple and Raisin Pies

Category: An item of food or drink your persona may have grown, prepared, consumed, or known of.  Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Persona period inspiration and use:

• The Kochbuch of Sabina Welserin contains many recipes for fruit pies, and this seemed a good choice for sweet treat for a picnic lunch at an event.  I decided on an apple pie as it was too early in the season for most of the other fruits.  The book includes numerous apple pie recipes, and, looking for something a little different, I came across a description (but not recipe) for an apple and raisin pie from Philippine Welser that appealed.
• Philippine Welser, wife of Archduke Ferdinand II of Further Austria, and a member of the same family as Sabina, edited and published her own recipe collection, De re coquinaria, in 1545.  This has not been published in English, but some recipes are included or described in Bach.

Design, Materials and Construction: 

Recipe: Sabina Welser has a recipe (number 14) in which apples are sliced, “floated” in fat until brown, layered in a pie with spices and raisins, and baked with a crust on top.  For the convenience of the picnic, I was making small individual pies, which made layering fiddly, so I choose a simpler recipe described by Bach as “chopped apples, precooked in fat with raisins, sugar, fat, and cinnamon”.  I chopped some apples and, along with some raisins, sautéed these gently in butter (my preferred choice of fat for a vegetarian friendly pie), and mixed in sugar and cinnamon to taste.  This was baked in a pie with a double (top and bottom) crust.

I completely forgot to take a photograph of these pies (although they did look just like the Genovese Tarts).  They were delicious.

Reference:

• Bach, V.  The kitchen, food, and cooking in Reformation Germany.  Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland, 2016. 
• Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin, 1553, http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html

PGC2019: Meisterin Christian Baier's Genovese Tart

Category: An item of food or drink your persona may have grown, prepared, consumed, or known of.  "Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

Persona period inspiration and use: 

This recipe comes from Sabina Welserin’s cookbook, Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin (1553). The Welser were international mercantile bankers and venture capitalists, members, with the Fugger and the Hochstetter families, of the mercantile patriciate of Augsburg.  These recipes, compiled for a rich urban German household, seem suitable for a noble Saxon women like Christian, although she probably would not have baked them herself. The recipe collection was not originally intended for publication or circulation; it may have been possibly written by the Sabina herself, but was more probably written by her kitchen professionals on her behalf.

I made these pies to take for a picnic lunch at an event; they are ideal for this purpose as they taste good hot or cold, and (as the pies have a top crust) they travel well.  For picnics I tend to make small finger-food-sized pies for convenience, but when cooking a feast these pies work equally well as individual or ‘family’ sized pies.  They are a good protein dish for vegetarians, and also a useful pie for those who don’t eat eggs.

Design, Materials and Construction: 

• Recipe 30: To make Genovese tart.  Take eighteen ounces of chard or spinach, three ounces of grated cheese, two and one half ounces of olive oil and the fresh cheese from six ounces of curdled milk. And blanch the herbs and chop them small and stir it all together and make a good covered tart with it.
  
• The Kochbuch has a number of recipes for pastry, or you could substitute your own recipe.  I tend to use less olive oil than the original recipe, to make a less-wet filling, which makes the pie more robust for travel and I prefer the taste.  The flavours of this tart will vary with the greens, or the types of cheeses, you choose (see Bach for a discussion of German cheeses). You can make fresh cheese yourself, or use any type of fresh cheese you prefer.   
• I forgot to take a photograph on the day, so please forgive the tatty-looking leftover pie that made it into my lunch box several days later.
  

Reference:

• Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin, 1553, http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina_Welserin.html
• Bach, V.  The kitchen, food, and cooking in Reformation Germany.  Rowman and Littlefield, Maryland, 2016.
  

PGC2019: THL Joana de Bairros’ Moorish Chicken

Joana de Bairros enters a delicious chicken dish in the category Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?

 

"There is one Portuguese cookbook from period called Um tratado da cozinha portuguesa do século XV or Livro de cozinha da Infanta D. Maria de Portugal which can be found, with an English translation at http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/tratado.html. This collection of recipes was written in the late 15th century and then taken to Italy with Maria, the grand daughter of Manuel I of Portugal, when she married Alessandro Farnese. It ended up in Naples. (See reference to this in At the First Table:Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain by Jodi Campbell).

I was having a friend of over for dinner so decided to cook the Moorish Chicken recipe from this book as I have tried it before and it is delicious.

Outra receita de galinha mourisca
Façam em pedaçosuma galinha bem gorda, e levem-na ao fogo brando, com duas colheres de sopa degordura, algumas fatias de toucinho, bastante coentro, um punhadinho de salsa,umas folhinhas de hortelã, sal e uma cebola bem grande. Abafem-na e deixem-na dourar, mexendo-a devez em quando. Em seguida cubram essagalinha com água, e assim que levante fervura acabem de temperá-la com sal,vinagre, cravo-da-índia, açafrão, pimenta-do-reino e gengibre. Logo que agalinha esteja cozida, derramem dentro 4 gemas batidas. Tomem uma travessa funda, forrada com fatiasde pão e derramem por cima a galinha.

Another recipe for moorish chicken - literal translation
Cut a very fat chicken into pieces, and cook it over low heat, with two soup spoons of fat, a few slices of bacon, lots of cilantro, a bit of parsley, a few mint leaves, salt and a very large onion. Cover it (abafar means smother) and let it brown, stirring once in a while. Next cover that chicken in water, and as soon as it reaches a boil finish seasoning it with salt, vinegar, cloves, saffron, black pepper and ginger. When the chicken is cooked, add 4 beaten egg yolks. Take a deep serving tray, lined with bread slices and put the chicken over top.

My redaction to feed 4   

500gm chicken breast
1T olive oil
100gm bacon
¼ cup of coriander
2T parsley
1T mint
Pinch of salt
2 cups of chicken stock
1T white wine vinegar
1 t salt
1t each of cloves, pepper and ginger
A pinch of saffron
4 egg yolks
1 loaf of bread.

1. Cut chicken and bacon in to chunks (I used chicken breasts as I wanted it to cook quickly) '
2. Roughly cut the herbs and dice the onion. (I didn’t add coriander the first time as my guest did not like it so included more parsley. I did up it in in a later attempt at this recipe and it added a nice flavor)
3. Heat up the oil in a thick based casserole dish on the stove top
4. Brown chicken and bacon
5. Add in herbs, salt and onion
6. Put the lid on the casserole dish and cook at medium heat for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to stop the chicken from sticking.
7. Add in the stock (I used stock rather than just water as I was using breast meat which doesn’t have the flavor of chicken drums)
8. When the stock boils add in the vinegar, salt and spices. Leave to cook for 5 minutes
9. Separate the egg yolks and whisk together
10. Pour the egg yolks into the casserole and mix up the sauce thoroughly. If you do not the egg will cook in lumps rather than being spread through sauce.
11. Slice a loaf of good bread up. Either serve the chicken in a deep dish with bread underneath or serve the chicken to the table in a pot with a loaf of bread so guests can assemble their own. The bread is very delicious when soaked in the sauce!"

PGC2019: Signora Onorata Elisabetta Foscari’s cena con amici

The Honorable Lady Elisabetta Foscari details her recent intimate Italian dinner for friends in her entry in the category Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?  In her words:

"I chose to cook a dinner party for some friends using recipes from Scappi.  Below are the pdfs of my write up of the meal.

Introduction and Course one: cena1

Course 2: cena2

Course 3 and Reference list: cena3"