G is for Gingerbread. Very Very Old Gingerbread

 

Spoiler Alert: here's how it turned out!

Ok, it's not the gingerbread that's old, it's the recipe. this is an adaptation of an adaptation of a 14th or 15th century gingerbread recipe.

to find out what possessed me to do this, check out this post.

RECIPE FIRST, ESSAY SECOND

2-3 slices of bread to make 1 cup soft breadcrumbs

1/4 cup honey

1 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp red sandlewood

1/4 tsp ground white pepper

pinch of nutmeg

pinch of cardamom

1) cut the crusts from 2-3 slices of bread. chop/tear the bread into small pieces.

2) put honey in small saucepan and bring to a boil. I did this on medium heat.

3) add breadcrumbs to the honey, lower the heat, and stir and squish until the crumbs are “dissolved.” 

4) remove from heat and stir in the spices.

5) dump out onto a kneading surface and let cool until safe to handle.

6) knead until the constancy of marzipan (or playdough). 

6.5) if making as a dessert, divide into several bite size balls and roll those in sugar. 

7) cool completely.

i’ve got to admit, when i first read this recipe i was a little confused and not terribly enthused. honestly i think that’s part of what stalled this project for so long. i was afraid i would go to the trouble of making this and find it super gross, thus wasting both time and food. to be fair, the recipe does not seem very “normal” as far as modern baking of gingerbread goes. for instance, there’s no flour. and also, oh hey yeah, there’s no BAKING. however, this year for me has become a sort of Finally Do This Thing or Archive It adventure. so here we are.

Oh look, it's mise en place! thanks Food Network.

I used Oroweat 12 Grain for the breadcrumbs.
3 slices wound up being overkill, but I just added the leftover crumbs (and the crusts) to my breadcrumb bag. I make meatloaf fairly regularly, so they won't go to waste.

Honey is really impressive when it boils, which I should have remembered from watching the Great British Bake Off.

I decided this looked "dissolved" enough for the breadcrumbs.
This part of the process was really more squishing than stirring.

Adding the spices gave this a really pretty color and a lovely smell. Warning that the kneading portion was an extremely sticky undertaking. I thought adding flour would mess things up, so I just went with it. If I make this again, I might try buttering my hands?

And this is how it turned out. The recipe I had actually has you making the gingerbread as part of another dish, but also suggests what you can do to make it more of a dessert. So I decided to go half and half on that and just happened to have some cute multi colored sugar sprinkles to roll the dessert balls in.

I’m happy to share the fact that my fears were not reality. this actually turned out pretty tasty. sweet and full of nice bitey warming spices (suck it, oliver cromwell). based on how it turned out, i feel like our closest modern equivalent might be a cake pop?

(although what this recipe personally reminds me most of is a bizarre snack I used to make for myself when I was a kid. I would take a slice of white bread and tear off the crusts. then I would pour sugar into the middle of the bread and squish the whole thing together until it resembled a large dough ball. it was sweet and delicious and not even remotely good for me, i’m sure. a snack only undertaken when under the unwatchful eye of an inattentive babysitter. sorry mom.) 

so where did this recipe come from? welp, i have a cookbook called Ye Bors Hede Boke of Cookry (which is super fun if you’ve ever been interested in cooking medieval english recipes) and it adapted a gingerbread recipe from a 14th or 15th manuscript, BL MS Sloane 221. interestingly this recipe doesn’t have its own page, but is a footnote to another recipe, a savory chicken dish that calls for the inclusion of gingerbread. i’m debating with myself whether or not i have the gumption to go ahead and make _that_ recipe now that i have some period appropriate gingerbread to hand.

i did some adapting on the recipe because, well, a of all) i’ve yet to encounter the recipe i don’t want to tweak a bit (shrug). but secondly, two of the ingredients called for were not already in my kitchen, and buying spices online winds up being kind of a commitment, due to the amounts. 

The ingredients in question were red sandlewood and long pepper. after reading about them a bit, I decided I was up for getting the red sandlewood (used mostly for color, and also an ingredient in the gingerbread chicken dish that I’m probably totally going to make), but not the long pepper (it’s described as a slightly spicier form of pepper when compared to black and white pepper and i’m unfortunately not into that kind of spice). consulting my dear friend professor google, i decided to approximate the long pepper with what i normally use, white pepper, plus some bonus spices.

overall I'm very glad I did this. it was tasty, and it was super satisfying to finally start this project. not sure i would necessarily make it again? but hey, if I'm ever stuck for a dessert and only have bread and spices, I guess I now have a useful trick up my sleeve.

G is for Gingerbread

Early in the pandemic, 2020 to be specific, my husband and I found ourselves watching a lot more television than we used to. Cheering ourselves up with Christmas programing in December, one night we stumbled on a documentary called Gingerbread Journeys (2015). I’m a foodie and he’s a history geek, so we decided to give it a try. It’s a super deep dive on the topic and we learned a lot. A whole lot.

Afterward, it occurred to me that I had at least one not-modern gingerbread recipe in my pile of cookbooks. I wondered if I had enough different recipes, specifically from different time periods, to make for an interesting baking project. It turned out the answer to that was a big ol’ “yes,” thanks both to The Joy of Cooking and a book I have with recipes based on 13th and 14th century sources.

So I thought I’d undertake The Gingerbread Project. And then, lo, many years passed. It’s a little hard to undertake a big project at Christmas, when so many other things are already going on. Also, my household is not a great match for large baking undertakings, as there are only two of us and one of us (hi) is diabetic.

But this year is kind of a “put languishing projects to rest” year for me. And it occurred to me that one gingerbread recipe per month is not a terribly intense undertaking. Plus, hey, regularly occurring obvious deadline, FTW. At least, I hope so. Stay tuned.

E is for Eggplant. Really.

Hey there. Hi. Busy spring spent producing MANOS - The Hands of Felt. Ate my brain.

And now we're back.

So, eggplant. Yeah, I have to admit, my past with regards to eggplant is not the greatest.

WARNING: DO NOT BE EATING WHILE YOU READ THIS.

In fact, the first time I encountered eggplant, I managed about three bites before I threw up on my plate. At the table, yes. (I've mentioned I have texture issues? Yeah, well, this stuff was pretty darn slimy.) I don't think my parents ever made it again.

But...I should be able to improve upon this as an adult, yes? I mean, look at The Eggplant. It's so darn pretty. There must be something I can do to it that won't set me off.

So what do I know about eggplant? Not much. I had it in my head it is related to nightshade, which Wikipedia confirms (all hail). Incidentally, this means it's also related to tomatoes, which connects some texture dots for me.

According to many (many) hours of watching Food Network, the most important thing to do to the eggplant is salt it to keep it from being bitter. So I'll be sure to pay attention to that.

And Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver has some lovely descriptions of pink stripey eggplants that sound really neat. I may venture to Whole Paycheck and see if they have something like that.

Despite jumping in pretty underinformed here, I actually already have in mind what I want to attempt: grilled, moussaka, and baba ganoush.

So we'll see how that goes. And hope for no vomiting.

E is for Excuses, Excuses

Hey everybody.

Sorry that I've not updated or launched into Plant Eggplant. When I got home from the holidays, my cat was sick. So I've been preoccupied with taking care of him. Fortunately he has stabilized, so I have some attention free for other things again.

Thanks for your patience,
Raej

H is for Holiday Cooking

I've traveled to see family for the last seven years, so my December holidays find me doing very little personal baking, but plenty of cooking in other people's kitchens.

Like yesterday, when I was urgently requested to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. They were completely gone within 8 minutes of hitting the plate.

Or take today, when we made five dozen cookies. I'm hoping they last for awhile. A long while.

And then tomorrow I am to whip up some Toasted Ravioli. I'll be using the easy method, which would feel like cheating except

a) my sister doesn't have a pasta maker or a food processor
b) you can buy frozen Toasted Ravioli in the store here, so i'm actually being much less lazy than i _could_ be.

I think Christmas Day I'll be in charge of green beans (casserole style) and gravy. Let's start praying to the gravy god now, shall we? No lumps, no lumps, no lumps.....

Anyway, whether your Christmas finds you up to your elbows in flour and giblets, or being decorative while others do the heavy cooking, I hope you have a happy one!

~ Raej

S is for Sixth

Hi everybody!

Just wanted to say: Thanks for voting for me in the Iron Foodie Challenge.

I got sixth. Not bad for a relative beginner. It comes with no further prize except a warm and fuzzy feeling. Mmmmm!

I is for Iron Foodie, Prequel 3

or E is for Easy Toasted Ravioli

Before I launched into my Iron Foodie recipe, I decided to do a Proof of Concept pre-run (Mythbusters fan, yes).

I'd found plenty of easy-ish looking Toasted Ravioli recipes out on the interwebs, but I had no idea whether or not they would wind up tasting like the real thing.

Hey, what better time to take on a completely untried recipe than Thanksgiving? Oh, just about any time, I would normally say. Since I, however, am an experienced member of The School of Turkey Basting, I wind up with a fair amount of free time in the kitchen on Feast Day. So I jumped in.

What I Did:

1 egg
2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
1 cup stuffing cubes
1 pumpkin cookie, stale
frying oil
1 package of Spinach and Cheese Ravioli
1 jar of Vodka sauce

1) Use a fork to mix together egg and cream in a shallow bowl.

2) Put the stuffing cubes and cookie into food processor and mix until the cubes are crumbs. Place in a bowl or on a small plate.

3) Fill a skillet with oil for frying (I like to go about 1/2 inch deep. You do what suits you) and warm over medium heat.

4) Dip ravioli in the egg mixture, shake off excess.

5) Dip eggy ravioli in crumbs, shake off excess.

6) Place ravioli in hot oil. Fry 3-4 minutes per side.

7) Pour sauce into a small sauce pain and warm over low heat.

8) Put fried raviolis on a paper towel-lined plate.

9) Serve ravioli with sauce. Eat. Enjoy!

How Did it Go?
Great! I put this out as an appetizer and people devoured and praised it, despite not having ever heard of it before. (Not a lot of St. Louisians on hand here in Seattle.) So, concept proved as far as I was concerned.

What Would I Change?
- I started heating the oil a little late, so the first couple of ravioli weren't as crispy as I would have liked. I wound up adjusting this for my Iron Foodie recipe.
- The cookie crumbs wound up a little too big. They tasted ok, but it threw the texture off a little. (To me. Pretty sure my friends didn't notice/care.)