Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Lentils with Vinegar and Herbs

Recipe Source: Anonymous. The Book of Sent SovÍ. Joan Santanach, ed. Robin Vogelzang, trans. Barcino-Tamesis, Barcelona, 2008 p. 195.

A lot of people have this odd impression that medieval food consists entirely of meat. This is erroneous. A lot of the recipes that we have do involve meat, but that's because the food consumed by the vast majority of peasants didn't get written down. Furthermore, in Christian areas there were days and even weeks at a time when the consumption of meat was strictly prohibited. Even the wealthy were expected to go vegetarian (or vegan, depending on your time and place) at certain times of the year. For that reason, we do have vegetarian and vegan options that can be documented to the medieval era. And very often these recipes are not for vegetarian items that are pretending to be meat (I'm looking at you, seitans and TVP). When I eat vegetarian food I want it to be food that was intended to be meatless, not a meat substitute, and it looks like even our medieval ancestors at least sometimes felt the same way.

I made this dish, which comes to us from medieval Catalonia, for a dinner party at a medieval re-creation event up in Maine this past July. I only made one change, and that was to omit the mint. My husband is allergic to mint so it's been banned from the house. To be quite honest I don't miss it here. I'm not sure what type of lentils they would have been likely to use in medieval Catalonia. (I should know this, all things considered, but I don't.) I used the very quick-cooking red lentils because I have a lot of them on hand and would like to have less of them on hand, and because they're quick-cooking. The result was a dish that was surprisingly tasty – even the carnivores liked it.

Lentils with Vinegar and Herbs (serves 12; approx. $0.43/serving)

4 cups red lentils, rinsed

Water

¼ cup bread crumbs

¾ cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ bunch parsley

¾ bunch fresh sage

3 small onions, finely chopped

10 garlic cloves, crushed

1 pinch kosher salt

Equipment:

• Saucepan
• Colander
• Large sauté pan
• Small bowl

1. Combine the bread crumbs and vinegar in the small bowl. Set aside.
2. Put the lentils in a saucepan with water to cover generously. Bring to a boil.
3. Boil until the lentils are tender, skimming as needed. Drain and set aside.
4. Finely chop the herbs together. Set aside.
5. Heat the oil gently in the sauté pan – medium heat would be the most I'd use here.
6. Add the onions, garlic and salt. Lower the heat and cook gently until the onions are softened. This will vary depending on how small you've cut the onions, so it's in your own best interests to cut them nice and small.
7. Add the lentils and breadcrumb mixture.
8. Add the herbs. If additional water is needed, add it here.
9. Cook until the herbs are nice and fragrant, then remove from heat.
10. Serve.

Recipe: Khushknanaj

Recipe Source: al-Baghdādī, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn al-Karīm al-Kātib. Kitāb al-Tabīkh, also known as A Baghdad Cookery Book. A. J. Arberry, trans. 1939 edition, re-published in Medieval Arab Cookery. Prospect Books, Devon, 2001 p. 86.

I've tried to make a treat called khushknānaj before, but I didn't post it. I was obviously missing something in that recipe, because the "confection" I got could have been used to replace cobblestones down by Faneuil Hall. When I was planning the menu for the big feast up in Maine I needed desserts, and I tend to prefer medieval Middle Eastern desserts to medieval European desserts. I decided to give it another try, this time using a different recipe. For those of you keeping track, this one dates to the thirteenth century AD. I was kind of nervous about it – I really didn't have enough of the other two desserts to get by. Something in this one caught my eye, though, and suggested a way to avoid making something that could be used to pave downtown streets. The recipe for the dough, not unlike the other one, called for flour and oil. However, there was another instruction: "Leave to rise."

Wait a minute. Rise? There's got to be something missing here. I'm not sure how, but maybe it's one of those things where part of the recipe was understood. You know, the way some chefs write "muffin method" instead of listing instructions. If the dough was supposed to rise, there needed to be something else besides flour and oil. Now, I don't personally know enough about bread chemistry to develop my own risen bread recipe, so I turned to my usual source: King Arthur Flour. What I did was probably akin to bibliomancy: I opened the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion to a random page. My intent was to then flip through the book until I found something suitable. However, the page I opened to was page 232, which presented a recipe called "Beautiful Burger Buns." Interesting, I thought to myself. Furthermore, the introductory notes to the recipe were, "Soft, vaguely sweet and golden yellow…" I decided that this was the recipe I would use as a dough for my khushknānaj. I had to make some small changes here to make the recipe work. I quadrupled the recipe, and I used the sesame oil called for by al-Baghdādī instead of the butter called for in the burger buns. I used active dry yeast instead of instant, which I proofed before using. I omitted the optional onion and onion powder for reasons that are probably quite obvious to you.

This may seem a little strange to you, and the true historical purist may be a little put off by my little leap based on three words. However, the recipe worked. It was the most popular dessert that night. The little almond-filled rolls transported well, kept well at room temperature and delighted most of the people who ate them.

Khushknānaj (makes 32; approx. $0.38/ea.)

4 cups water

4 ounces sesame oil

4 eggs

55 ounces flour

40 ounces sugar, divided

4 teaspoons salt

4 tablespoons active dry yeast

1 pound almonds

2 ounces rosewater (you can probably get away with more, but not everyone loves rosewater as much as I do so I toned it down for polite company.)

Equipment:

• Stand mixer
• At least 2 large bowls, one of which can certainly be the one from your stand mixer
• Food processor
• Baking sheets

1. Combine the yeast with 1 cup sugar and the water. Set aside until very frothy.
2. Divide the flour between 2 large bowls, one of which can be your food processor bowl.
3. Add 2 ounces sesame oil to each bowl along with 2 eggs each and 2 teaspoons salt each. Mix well.
4. Add ½ the yeasted water mixture to each bowl (i.e., 2 cups per bowl.) Mix well and knead until the dough is soft and smooth. Cover and set aside in a warmish place (my kitchen in July certainly counted) for at least an hour, or until visibly risen.
5. Meanwhile, combine the remaining 32 ounces sugar with the almonds and rosewater in the food processor. Process until finely ground and well combined.
6. Divide the dough into 32 pieces, roughly equal.
7. Stuff some of the almond mixture into the middle of a piece of the dough, then cover the hole with the dough. Repeat with all of the dough and set aside another 30 minutes or so.
8. Preheat your oven to 375 ̊.
9. Bake your little cookies 12- 15 minutes, or until golden and delicious. Cool completely before serving.

Recipe: Alexandrian Sauce

Recipe Source: Anonymous.  The Treasure of Useful Advice for the Composition of a Varied Table.  Thirteenth century AD, probably Egyptian.  Published by Lilia Zaouali in Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, M. B. DeBevoise trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007 p. 130

Just to make it clear, this recipe is for a sauce whose origins are in Alexandria, not a sauce made from Alexandrians, okay? That would be a very different website and probably would involve law enforcement in some way.

So, the main course for the big medieval feast we prepared up in Maine was roast beef with two sauces. This is not the way it was intended. I intended to serve three sauces. Unfortunately for me, I left one at home: the Alexandrian sauce. The two sauces I brought were certainly adequate and delicious, so I don't know that we needed this sauce, but I was kind of looking forward to it. I said a lot of bad words in the privacy of my tent that night.

So this recipe didn't get tasted that night, but I did sample a little of this in my kitchen before packing it up and putting it in the wrong place. This is a really simple sauce – really, really simple. I made the first version of the recipe. For the hot spices I used ground ginger and pepper. I probably could have included something else here too, but my brain was pretty fried by this point. In flavor it kind of reminded me of my husband's Lemon Sunshine Sauce. It would have been fine on roast beef, but I definitely think that this would go better on chicken or possibly even some kind of vegetable. It would probably make a decent salad dressing if you were so inclined. If you're not trying to be historically accurate, some kind of crushed red pepper would go really nicely here.

Alexandrian Sauce (makes about 1 cup; approx. $0.22/ounce)

4 ounces olive oil

8 ounces lemon juice

1 tablespoon black pepper

1 tablespoon ground ginger

Equipment:

• Whisk
• Small bowl

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl.
2. Whisk well to emulsify.
3. Re-whisk just before serving to ensure that the liquid and the oil have not separated.

Recipe: Melons with Vinegar

Recipe Source: Anthimus. On The Observance of Foods. Mark Grant, trans. Prospect Books, Devon, 1996 p. 71

Planning meals for camping can be tough. All right, it doesn't have to be. You can just eat baked beans or beef stew from a can, heated over a tiki torch, if that's what you have to do. I myself have consumed hot dogs cooked on sticks over a fire. We've been going to this one camp in Maine every summer since we started dating, and I can assure you that we don't eat that way there. (For one thing, the site doesn't allow fire pits.) The dinner has gotten a bit bigger every year and I'd say we feed between thirty and fifty people at this shindig – and it's almost all with stuff we can fit into two coolers. Other people contribute, of course, which makes it even more fun. Since we're camping with a bunch of medieval history enthusiasts, I've tried for the past couple of years to make as many of the dishes documentably medieval as I can.

Medieval food, contrary to what I certainly believed in my youth, did not consist entirely of gruel. People had taste buds then just as they have taste buds now, and a look at any of the medieval cookbooks available in translation will show you a treasure trove of delicious delicacies from centuries long gone by. The problem I have lies in finding recipes that a) can be made ahead and brought into camp, b) can be re-heated in primitive facilities, c) can tolerate life in an overstuffed cooler rather than in a proper refrigerator, and d) are interesting enough to be worth the effort. That's a little more challenging… And that's why this recipe appealed to me so much.

Anthimus was a Byzantine physician exiled to the court of the Ostrogoths in the beginning of the 6^th century AD. He was sent from there to be the ambassador to the Frankish court, which seemed (to him, at least) to be even more barbaric than the Ostrogothic court. This book, which is really just a really long letter, is intended to show the Frankish king which foods are healthy and how to prepare them (sometimes.) I've seen this described (including on the back of my copy) as the first French cookery book. I'm not sure about that – after all, the author was Greek and picked up quite a bit in Italy – but it was at least written for people who became French.

So what about this recipe appealed to me, besides it being a very early-period dish? Well, it has three ingredients. That's a good start. If I left the melons whole until I got there, it would be very easy to transport and wouldn't need refrigeration. It was colorful and it was easy. Really, it doesn't get much better than that, whether you're re-creating a medieval recipe or pulling something together for the family trip to the Adirondacks.

I'm not sure when watermelons made it up to Western Europe, but I strongly suspect that they were not the "melons" intended by Dr. Anthimus. In all honesty, I did purchase cantaloupes and Tuscan melons. Unfortunately transportation was less kind to them than I would have hoped, and some of them went spectacularly bad before the party. Someone else had brought some watermelon, and to stretch the dish out to its original proportions I added it to the mix. It did make the dish prettier, didn't it?

Melons with Vinegar (serves about 50; approx. cost per serving not available)

1 mini-watermelon, cut into chunks

3 cantaloupes, cut into chunks

½ cup white wine vinegar

½ cup water

Equipment:

• Small bowl

1. Arrange the melon chunks in an attractive way on the platter. (I had help in this from Nikki and Andrew.)
2. Combine the vinegar and water in the small bowl. Mix very well to ensure that the vinegar is well diluted.
3. Sprinkle the diluted vinegar over the melons.
4. Serve.

Recipe: Sweet Zucchini Pickle

Recipe Source: Hoffman, Susanna. The Olive and the Caper. Workman Press, New York, 2004 pp. 72-3.

Before I planned my menu for the big camping trip up in Maine I asked for suggestions. Only one person had any requests: she said she liked my salads and my pickled salads. This, while not even vaguely resembling a medieval recipe, looked tasty and like it would travel well. I decided to include it in my meal and people really liked it. It was pretty easy to come up with, it definitely traveled well, and it provided more vegetables for people to choose from. It was a little sweet for my tastes, personally (hence the catchy name), but most people really liked it.

I didn't make a lot of changes to this recipe because there weren't a lot of changes to make. I did add a little bit of cubeb to the mix, as well as a little bit of ground coriander just to make it fit in a little better with some of the other dishes I was serving. I also had to use apple cider vinegar because I was out of white wine vinegar and at 3 AM your options are a little limited. Like I said, this went over pretty well. Be sure to make this the day before you intend to serve it. Hoffman says that it will last up to two months in the refrigerator, but you'd likely eat it well before then.

Sweet Zucchini Pickle (serves about 20; approx. $0.42/serving)

3 pounds zucchini, sliced to ¼" thick

2 onions, quartered and sliced to 1/8" thick

2 teaspoons kosher salt

½ teaspoon (approx.) fresh ground cubeb

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon dry mustard powder

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

1 ½ teaspoons ground turmeric

½ teaspoon whole cloves

1 ½ cups brown sugar, packed

1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar

Equipment:

• Large seal-able plastic bowl
• Large saucepan
• Colander

1. Combine the onions and the zucchini slices in the colander with the salt and let stand ½ hour.
2. Combine the cubeb, coriander, mustard powder, mustard seeds, turmeric, cloves, sugar and vinegar in the saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat, then remove from heat.
3. Add the zucchini and onions to the pot and set aside to cool.
4. Transfer to the sealable bowl. Cover and seal.
5. Refrigerate at least overnight before serving.

Recipe: Horseradish Sauce

Recipe Source: de Nola, Ruperto.  Libro de Cozina.  1529 edition, translated by Vincent F. Cuenca.  Self-published by the translator in 2001, pp. 58-9

I promised you a while ago that I would post this recipe. It's from the same recipe as the sage sauce I posted a little while ago. Both recipes are recommended variations on a parsley sauce, and all three are vastly different sauces. The thing is, horseradish isn't something I really grew up with. It made an appearance once a year with the Easter ham and only the men in the family showed any interest in eating it. I don't remember it even being offered to us kids. This sauce, though, has got me craving horseradish in the worst way. And if you have friends who think that medieval food lacked heat, make them this sauce.

I made this in exactly the same way as I made the sage sauce, so I'm not going to re-post my thought processes behind the redaction. If you missed the previous post, please click the link above – I don't want to bore everyone by posting the exact same thing again. I'm serious, though. I thought the sage sauce would be my favorite of the two, and I loved it, but the horseradish sauce is really the way to go here!

Horseradish Sauce (makes about enough sauce for 15 servings; approx. $0.20/serving)

Approx. 1 ½ ounces grated fresh horseradish root

4 ounces fresh breadcrumbs

2/3 cup white wine vinegar

2 ounces honey

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Equipment:

• Small bowl
• Mini-prep food processor

1. Combine the breadcrumbs and the vinegar in the small bowl and let soak at least 10 minutes.
2. Combine all ingredients in the mini-prep and grind to a liquid consistency.
3. Serve with meat. I served this alongside beef, but if you like ham this would be a great accompaniment.

Recipe: Uncooked Khabis

Recipe Source: al-Warrāq, Ibn Sayyār. Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens. Nawal Nasrallah, trans. Brill, Leiden, 2007 p. 391

This was another dessert that I made for that gathering of medieval enthusiasts up in Maine in July. I was a little leery of using coconut here. I'm not usually a big fan of coconut, but I'm getting better about that thanks to the cuisine of southern India. (Coconut doesn't have to be unpleasant and overpowering, and I'm learning to accept that.) I left it in because it's a redaction of a medieval recipe, and I have to say that I'm glad I did. It definitely added something to the dish and was in no way overpowering. I will admit that I used grated coconut from the store rather than grating my own coconut; I do not own a coconut grater, I have no desire to own a coconut grater, and don't think that I use enough coconut to make purchasing a coconut grater worthwhile. I didn't have time to skin the almonds, which certainly affects the color of the finished dish. I did color the almonds for the decoration called for in the recipe, using the official colors of our local group. The yellow didn't show up so great in the dim light I served under and the blue looked kind of black, but I knew it was there. This went over very well, and I have to say that anything that kept me from heating up my kitchen that week was most welcome!

Uncooked Khabīs (serves about 45; approx. $0.59/serving)

1 pound almonds

8 ounces grated coconut (unsweetened, of course)

3 pounds sugar

1 ½ grams saffron

1 cup almond oil

Yellow and blue food coloring

45 whole almonds

Equipment:

• Food processor
• Large bowl
• 2 small bowls
• Long roasting pan or tray

1. Divide the 45 almonds roughly in half between the two small bowls.
2. Soak one bowl of almonds in blue food coloring and one in yellow while you continue the recipe, or even longer.
3. Combine the almonds, coconut and saffron in the food processor and process until very fine.
4. Set aside ¼ pound of sugar. Pour the rest into a large bowl with the almond-coconut mixture.
5. Mix very well.
6. Add the almond oil and keep mixing. Mix until everything is "moist enough to gather in one mass." This will take a long time, and I did wind up adding a little more almond oil, but it will come out right in the end.
7. Spread the mixture evenly into the long tray and sprinkle with the reserved ¼ pound sugar.
8. Space the almonds in alternating colors evenly across the surface of the tray.
9. Serve.

Recipe: Sage Sauce

Recipe Source: de Nola, Ruperto.  Libro de Cozina.  1529 edition, translated by Vincent F. Cuenca.  Self-published by the translator in 2001, pp. 58-9

My husband and I recently attended a gathering of medieval history enthusiasts. We go to this event every year. It is up in Maine and is a favorite summer tradition. It's one of very few dog-friendly events, so we bring the dog and everyone has a good time. We also cook a huge meal for this event, and all are usually welcome. We bring our Big Green Egg and my husband makes something nice and meaty. This year he made a huge amount of roasted beef and I served two sauces alongside, among other things. This was one of the sauces.

Both of the sauces we made were great – not at all heavy, very flavorful even in small quantities, and unusual enough that people were excited to try them. They were also both from the same source – the same recipe, really, just with one change. I'll post the second sauce at a later date because it was different enough to merit its own post. I interpreted "white vinegar" to mean "white wine vinegar" because regular distilled white vinegar – the kind you get in the giant industrial-sized tub – isn't very good. I omitted the part where you put two hot rocks into the mix as well – I wasn't entirely certain what the point of that was. I guess that it would cook the stuff just enough, but I thought it was just fine without cooking it.

Sage Sauce (makes enough sauce for about 15 servings; approx. $0.29/serving)

1 1/3 bunches fresh sage, minced

4 ounces fresh breadcrumbs

2/3 cup white wine vinegar

2 ounces honey

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Equipment:

• Small bowl
• Mini-prep food processor

1. Combine the breadcrumbs and the vinegar in the small bowl and let soak at least 10 minutes.
2. Combine all ingredients in the mini-prep and grind to a liquid consistency.
3. Serve with meat. I served this alongside beef, but this would work particularly well with poultry.

Recipe: Carrot Puree

Recipe Source: The Book of Sent Sovi. Joan Santanach, ed. Robin Vogelzang, trans. Barcino-Tamesis, Barcelona, 2008 p. 141

You may be asking yourself, "Has the world gone mad? This is two things Fearless cannot abide: carrots and vegetable puree! How is this possible? Has she received a nasty head wound?" Well, the world has not gone mad. I have not received a nasty head wound, not that I remember anyway. And I continue to despise carrots and vegetable purees. However, I needed to make a vegetable side dish for a large gathering of medieval history enthusiasts. I knew I wanted to use Sent Sovi because I've been dying to use it for a while. I decided on this puree because it was easy to transport, brightly colored, and relatively cheap to make. Besides, I am in a distinct minority when it comes to carrots. I will admit that I did not like this. I tasted a small sample when I finished it and said, "Ick! Carrots!" However, there was nothing left over at the end of the night, and that says something.

The original did not specify goat cheese for this recipe. I decided to use goat cheese because I had it on hand and the original recipe (from the 13^th century!) recommended using goat milk. The original author also recommended using "mutton and salt pork broth, or whatever kind of broth you want." Since I was making this for a camping event, had no mutton broth anyway and cannot consume anything with salt pork, I saw this as license to use Lemony Vegetable Broth. This worked out well.

Carrot Puree (serves about 30; approx. $0.20/serving)

5 pounds carrots, peeled and chopped

2 cups Lemony Vegetable Broth

4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

1 cup goat milk

Equipment:

• Large saucepan
• Immersion blender

1. Put the carrots in the saucepan with water to cover and bring to a boil. Boil until the carrots are reasonably tender.
2. Remove from heat, drain, and return the carrots to the pan.
3. Add the Lemony Vegetable Broth and use the immersion blender to puree to a paste.
4. Add the goat milk and cheese. Reheat thoroughly.
5. Serve. This recipe can be made ahead of time and reheated.

Recipe: Khabis

Recipe Source: al-Warrāq, Ibn Sayyār. Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens. Nawal Nasrallah, trans. Brill, Leiden, 2007 p. 391

I made this dish as a dessert for a large gathering of medieval history enthusiasts up in Maine. I'll admit that I was kind of intimidated to make some of the dessert recipes in this book. Confections aren't really my strong suit – it's too much like chemistry, which I passed in high school mostly because I think the teacher felt sorry for me. Still, once I worked past the idea of making these dishes I found that it was really pretty easy. The khabīs was delicious and quite well received.

I made two major mistakes that I can identify with this dish. (I may have made more – like I said, confections aren't my strong suit, but it tasted great.) The first mistake, which was more laziness than anything else, was that I did not skin the almonds. I was really pressed for time and made a conscious decision to leave the skins on. Removing the skin would have gotten rid of the little brown flecks, which I didn't find as off-putting here as I did in the homemade marzipan. The second mistake was that I did not wait for the khabīs to set before photographing it. Ultimately the texture was much less liquid, much more akin to a very moist modern fudge, than what you see here. And have I mentioned the taste? I would make this again, and again, and again (but I don't need to be eating so many sweets.)

Khabīs (serves 25-30; approx. $0.29/serving)

12 ounces almonds, ground "as fine as flour"

2 ounces rosewater

12 ounces water

36 ounces sugar

4 ounces walnut oil

Equipment:

• Large saucepan

1. Combine the first 4 ingredients in your large saucepan.
2. Add the walnut oil.
3. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture becomes very thick.
4. Remove from heat and transfer to some sort of storage vessel. Allow to cool completely before serving.