Renaissance Marmalade

As most of you know, I belong to a group that does medieval/renaissance re-creation. One of the rituals common in it is the passing of gifts between landed nobles. It can be particularly difficult for the King and Queen, as they may need to give gifts to a large number of people over the course of a reign. 

So, a call was made for artisans to provide a dozen items each that their Majesties could use for largesse. It can be difficult as a cook to help with these things. Most food items have a limited shelf life. Canning was invented in the Napoleonic era, well after the renaissance. Right at the end of the renaissance, we see recipes for marmalades that are recognizable as similar to modern ones. They were not canned, but rather stored in boxes. As a highly concentrated paste of sugar and pectin, they should probably be sterile, as long as they don't get wet.

For the challenge, I decided to make a set of jars of marmalade from a period recipe. I looked at several, then decided on the one by Hugh Platt, published in 1602. I did alter it based on other recipes from around the same time, and in line with modern practice. I did can it with a modern water bath method, for food safety reasons.

It is a supremely simple recipe, with only three ingredients: oranges, sugar, and apples. I used juice oranges, as they were cheaper, and since I wanted to maximize juice/pulp, rather than having pretty supremes. I used granny smith apples, because I wanted the tartness, but next time I will probably try it with a mealier apple, as the apples are supposed to disintegrate, and the granny smiths never did, even after 3 1/2 hours of simmering.

One redactor I read suggested the apples were there to stretch the expensive oranges. That is a possibility, but I think there is a more practical reason: pectin. While the cooks of the day didn't know of the existence of pectin, they did know that certain fruits, cooked down with sugar, would form a thick paste. Quince was known to do this by the Romans, and I'm sure that similar properties were noted with other high pectin fruits like apples and pears.

The original recipe was: TAke ten lemmons or orenges & boyle them with half a dozē pippins, & ſo draw them through a ſtrainer, then take ſo much ſugar as the pulp doth wey, & boyle it as you doe Marmalade of Quinces, and then box it vp. 

Don Avenel's Renaissance Marmalade

12 juicing oranges

approximately 4 3/4 lbs. sugar

6 granny smith apples

Using a vegetable peeler, remove the skin from the oranges, being careful to not get any of the white pith underneath the skin. Fine julienne the peel. Set aside.

Using a sharp knife, remove the white pith from the oranges, and cut out the sections, being careful not to get any of the inner membranes. Remove any seeds. Squeeze all the juice you can from the core, then dispose of the core. Set aside juice and segments.

Peel, core, and slice apples.

Combine orange peel, segments, juice, and apple slices. Weigh mixture. Mine came out to 4 3/4 lbs. In a large stock pot, combine mixture with the same weight of sugar. Stir to dampen sugar. Place over medium low heat. Bring to a simmer. Simmer gently until sugar is dissolved, and peel and apple slices are soft, about 3 1/2 hours. 

Can marmalade using water bath method. Process jars for 10 minutes. Makes 12 half pint jars.

Happy Eating!

A Day Spent Canning: Grapefruit Marmalade, Orange Marmalade, Pumpkin Cranberry Chutney

Yesterday I spent the day canning. One of the things we want to be able to offer for the business is choices of homemade spreads for scones. My plan is to buy fruit whenever it is in season, fresh and relatively cheap. I will then make various jams, jellies, marmalades, curds, etc. to store for later.

If you haven't canned before, you will probably find it easier than you think. It's more logistics than anything. You just need a large pot with some sort of insert to keep your glass from directly contacting the hot bottom. The jars are kept submerged in simmering water to stay sterile until you need them, and the same with the lid rings and seals in a separate pot. When it is time to actually fill the jars, having done your mise en place is really important. That includes having a tool to lift out the jars. I have a magnet on the end of a long plastic rod which is really useful for retrieving seals and lids.

To can something, you pull out a hot jar, dumping the water back into the pot. Fill the jar, leaving adequate airspace at the top (this will vary by the size of the jar, and what you are canning. Clean the rim, and place a seal on top. Screw a ring on, just tight enough to keep the seal in place. The seal needs to be able to allow air bubbles to escape. The sealed jars are returned to the water, and completely submerged. They need to sit in the boiling water for a length of time, which will again vary by the size of the jar and what is in it.

A classmate had given me three large, ripe white grapefruit, so I decided to make marmalade out of them. The recipe I adapted is this one from about.com. I peeled the grapefruit with a sharp vegetable peeler, then went back over the peel with a sharp knife, to eliminate any remaining white pith. I then cut the peels into a fine julienne. I then peeled the remaining pith off the grapefruit, and carefully cut out supremes from the inner membranes. I did squeeze out as much juice as possible from the remaining core.

The cores were wrapped in cheesecloth, and cooked with everything else to help add pectin for jelling. I didn't trust it to jell naturally, however, so added a pouch of liquid pectin. The juice, segments, and zest are cooked with a little water and a whole lot of sugar until it reaches 220 F. It takes a while to get there, a lot of water has to evaporate to allow it to get to that temperature.

Once it got to the required temperature, I added the liquid pectin, and cooked it further. Finally, the cheesecloth bag was removed, and squeezed to get out as much marmalade as possible. The result was canned.

It turned out having a very strong grapefruit taste. Despite the huge amount of sugar, it retains a lot of the grapefruit bitterness. You may need to be a grapefruit fan to like this.

I had a lot of oranges left over from the SCA lunch we did last weekend. I thought was a good idea to use alt east some of them for orange marmalade.  All the orange marmalade recipes I found included lemons. I adapted this one from Sure Jell. It had me cook the fruit with the pectin first, then add the sugar. I realize now that the recipe expects powdered pectin, not liquid. It worked, so no complaints. I think next time I'll do it the same as the above recipe.

I did the same with the peels as above. I removed them from the fruit, cleaned them up with a sharp knife, and julienned them. I sectioned the fruit the same way.

The peels were simmered with a little baking soda in water for a bit, then the fruit and juice added. This was simmered some more, Then measured out. The recipe wants exactly 4 cups of fruit and peel mixture. Luckily for me, that is exactly what I had.

The mixture is brought to a boil, have the pectin added, then brought back to a boil. The sugar is added, and it is once again brought back to a boil. It is cooked for one minute, then removed from the heat, and canned.

It has a nice orange flavor, and the lemons help give it a bit of sharpness.

One trick I figured out with the marmalades. If you do not want all the peel to end up at the top of the jar, while the jars are cooling and the jell is setting, every five or ten minutes give the jars a good shake. As it gets thicker, it gets harder for all the peel to float to the top.

After Thanksgiving, we had a very nice pumpkin that we cut up and froze the meat. We wanted to do something with it. However, the National Center for Home Food Preservation (of course there is a National Center for Home Food Preservation) does not recommend canning pumpkin butter. Pumpkin butter is too low acid to be safely canned using the water bath method.

Chutneys, however, are a pickled product. All the added vinegar makes it more than acidic enough to can. I started with this recipe, but replaced the dried cranberries with fresh, added currants, and used date molasses rather than maple syrup.

I caramelized sliced onion in olive oil, then added the pumpkin, cranberries, currants, minced Serrano chili, molasses, date molasses, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, minced ginger, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, salt, and a little water. This was allowed to simmer for forty five minutes, until thick, and the pumpkin and cranberries tender.

This was then canned.

It is a really nice sweet, spicy, vinegary mix. I could just eat a bowl with a spoon. Will make a great butter for scones.

Recipes

Grapefruit Marmalade

3 large, ripe white grapefruit

7 cups sugar

1 pouch liquid pectin

4 cups water

Use a vegetable peeler to remove skin. Use a sharp knife to remove any remaining white pith on the zest. Cut the strips of peel into a fine julienne. 

Remove remaining pith from the fruit, and cut out the sections of fruit without taking any inner membrane. squeeze out any juice from the remaining cores. Wrap cores in cheesecloth, and tie securely.

Place peel, fruit, juice, water, and sugar in a large pot over medium heat. Once it comes to a simmer and the sugar is dissolved, add the cheesecloth with the cores.

Allow to simmer until mixture reaches 220 F. Add in pectin. bring back to a simmer, cook for seven minutes. Remove cheesecloth bag, squeezing out as much liquid as possible. Remove pot from heat, allow to stand for five minutes. Ladle into jars, seal and process in a water bath for ten minutes.

Makes 7 half pint jars.

Orange Marmalade

4 large navel oranges

4 small lemons

2 1/2 cups water

1/8 tsp. baking soda

1 pouch liquid pectin

5 1/2 cups sugar

Use a vegetable peeler to remove skin. Use a sharp knife to remove any remaining white pith on the zest. Cut the strips of peel into a fine julienne. 

Remove remaining pith from the fruit, and cut out the sections of fruit without taking any inner membrane. squeeze out any juice from the remaining cores.

Place peels, water, and baking soda in a pan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, cook 20 minutes. Add fruit and juice, bring back to a simmer, cook another ten minutes.

Transfer mixture to a large pot. Bring to a full boil, add pectin. Bring back to a boil. Add sugar. Bring back to a boil, cook for one minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat. Ladle into jars, process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

Pumpkin Cranberry Chutney

1 onion, cut into thin slices

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 1/2 lbs. fresh or fresh frozen pumpkin, cut into 1/2" cubes

4 oz. fresh or fresh frozen cranberries, rough chopped

4 oz. currants

2 cups apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup date molasses

1/4 cup molasses

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 Serrano chili, minced

2 Tbsp. fresh ginger, minced

2 cinnamon sticks

6 whole cloves

1 Tbsp. kosher salt

2 Tbsp. yellow mustard seeds

In a large pot over medium high heat, add olive oil. Add onion, cook until caramelized. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a simmer, cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

When mixture is thickened, and pumpkin and cranberries are tender, ladle into jars. Process in a water bath for 15 minutes.

Happy Eating!

A 16th Century Italian Dinner

I had the opportunity to cook for some friends. I looked through some of the recipes from a renaissance Italian cookbook by Bartolomeo Scappi for inspiration. His Opera dell'arte del cucinare was the Joy of Cooking of the time, with over a thousand recipes, plus general cooking advice. Looking through it, one can see the start of the transition from medieval to modern cuisine.

I was surprised to find some very modern style cookery. Barbecued rack of beef ribs, with dry rub and a vinegar based sauce (no tomatoes, though) appears in Scappi. Like medieval cookbooks, he doesn't trust vegetables, and boils them to mush. He has very modern pastas, but they are served dusted with sugar and cinnamon, rather than with a cream or tomato sauce.

For the entrée, I was inspired to find a pork fat wrapped beef tenderloin in his cookbook. I found asparagus with sour orange sauce that looked interesting, and I wanted to try my hand at making pasta, and found a recipe with chard, spinach, and cheese that sounded good.

The fillet Mignon was first brushed with a mix of white wine, white wine vinegar, and rosewater. It was then seasoned with a rub of kosher salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and coriander. I wrapped them in thick cut bacon. They were pan seared, then finished to medium rare in a hot oven. I removed the fillets from the pan to rest, and reduced the pan juices with a little white wine and white wine vinegar. That made a very nice dipping sauce for the fillet.

For the asparagus, I lightly steamed them in a pan with some homemade vegetable stock. Sour oranges have only a limited growing season in the winter, so I used regular oranges with lime juice, salt, and a little cane sugar. Scappi recommends cooking wild asparagus with raisins. Instead, I added some currants (small, intensely flavored, raisins) to the sauce. I reduced the juice to about one quarter the original volume. This produced an intensely acidic sauce, which the currants helped mellow. I think it was the best thing on the plate.

The pasta were tortetelli; tortellini on steroids. The pasta dough was based on this recipe by Tyler Flores. I've had a pasta roller for years, this was the first time I've actually played with it. For the filling, I sautéed spinach and Swiss chard in olive oil with fresh parsley, oregano, and thyme. I allowed that to cool, then drained the liquid off. The greens were then mixed with ricotta and a healthy amount of Parmesan. To make tortetelli, roll the dough very thin, and cut about a five inch diameter circle. Place about a tablespoon of filling in the center. Brush the edge with beaten egg, and fold in half, pressing to seal. Bring the two corners of the half circle together and overlap, using the egg wash to stick them together. Fold the excess rim of the half circle down, forming a ring. Dust with flour, and allow to dry a little. To serve, I simmered them in vegetable stock, then fished them out, dusted with a little cinnamon sugar, and topped them with grated Parmesan.


For dessert, I made a strawberry custard tart. I sautéed strawberries in butter until they were tender. I forced the strawberries through a strainer, to remove the seeds and fibrous material. The resulting puree was placed in a food processor with ricotta, biscotti crumbs, sugar, eggs, and Parmesan, and processed until smooth. The pastry is a dough of flour, butter, sugar, and rosewater, which Scappi calls 'royal dough'. I needed a garnish for the plate, so made a basil syrup. It worked really well with the strawberry, and brought out the rose in the pastry.

Overall, I think this was one of my best meals yet. The fillet was really good quality, and I think I enhanced it well with the spices, bacon, and sauce. I thought the sauce for the asparagus came out great. I think I under cooked the pasta a trifle, but I really liked the flavor of the filling. The tart filling had a wonderfully smooth and rich mouth feel, and the pastry was light and flaky. Then basil syrup added a nice note, though I had hoped to get a more intense green color. Will have to work on that.

Recipes

Bacon Wrapped Fillet Mignon

for the brushing liquid:

2 Tbsp. white wine
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
2 tsp. rosewater

for the rub:

2 Tbsp. Kosher salt
2 tsp. fresh ground black pepper
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

for the sauce:

1/4 cup white wine
1/4 cup white wine vinegar

6 fillet Mignon's
6 strips thick cut bacon

Mix together brushing liquid ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together rub spices.

Brush lightly all surfaces of the fillets with the brushing liquid. Lightly coat all surfaces of the fillet with the rub. Wrap a bacon strip around of each fillet, overlapping, and securing to fillet with a toothpick of skewer. Refrigerate, covered, for three to six hours.

Pre-heat oven to 425 F. In a large heavy skillet over medium high heat, sear top and bottom of fillets. Transfer to oven, cook to medium rare, about 12 to 15 minutes.

Remove from oven, transfer fillets to a cutting board to rest.

Place pan with juices over medium high heat. Add wine and vinegar. Boil vigorously until volume is reduced by half. Transfer sauce to small cups for dipping.

Steamed Asparagus with Sour Orange Currant Sauce

1 bunch asparagus
2 oranges
2 limes
1/4 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup currants
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 cup vegetable stock

Wash asparagus, remove woody ends of the stems (keep and freeze to use for future stock). Juice oranges and limes. Place juice in a small saucepan with sugar, salt, and currants. Cook over medium to medium high heat until volume is reduce by 3/4.

Heat a non-stick heavy skillet over medium to medium high heat. Add stock and asparagus, cooking until asparagus is al dente.

Plate sauce, place asparagus on top.

Chard, Spinach, and Cheese Tortetelli

for the filling:

1 bunch fresh spinach, washed and rough chopped
1 bunch Swiss chard, washed and rough chopped
1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
1/4 cup minced fresh oregano
1/4 cup minced fresh
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 cup ricotta
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

for the pasta:

2 cups all purpose flour, plus additional for dusting
3 eggs, plus one for wash
1 tsp. kosher salt
3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 quarts vegetable stock
2 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/3 cup grated Parmesan

Place flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. While mixer is running, add three eggs, one at a time, allowing a little time between each addition. Slowly drizzle in olive oil, until dough forms a ball.

Transfer dough to a lightly floured board. Knead for ten minutes, until dough is smooth and elastic. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for an hour.

In a large pot, heat three tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add spinach, chard, and herbs. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender. Remove from heat, allow to cool. Strain off excess liquid.

Place greens in a bowl. Add ricotta and Parmesan, mix thoroughly.

Remove dough from refrigerator. Beat an egg to use as a wash for the pasta. Using a pasta machine, roll out a thin dough, keeping it well dusted with flour to prevent sticking. Cut out five inch diameter circles. Place about one tablespoon of filling on each circle. Wet edges with egg, fold circles in half and press to seal. Bring corners of the half circles together, overlapping and using the egg to stick together. Fold down top of half circle to form a ring with a bulge on one side.

Dust tortetelli with flour, place on a baking sheet to dry.

Mix together cinnamon and sugar, set aside.

Bring vegetable stock to a simmer. Add tortetelli, cook until tender, about 4 to 8 minutes.

Remove pasta from stock. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Plate, top with Parmesan cheese.

Strawberry Custard Tart

for the crust:

9 oz. by wt. all purpose flour
6 oz. by wt. cold butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
4 oz. by wt. sugar
3 oz. by volume ice cold rosewater
1 tsp. kosher salt.

for the filling:

1 lb. fresh strawberries
2 oz. by wt. butter
2 oz. by wt. biscotti crumbs
5 oz. by wt. ricotta
1 1/2 oz. by wt. Parmesan
3 oz. by wt. cane sugar, plus 1/4 cup for dusting
5 egg yolks
1 egg white

Sift together flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in butter until it resembles course crumbs. Slowly add rosewater one tablespoon at a time, mixing by hand, until dough just sticks together.

Form into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and place in refrigerator to chill.

Wash, hull, and rough chop strawberries.

In a skillet over medium heat, melt two ounces of butter. Add strawberries, sautee until tender.

Remove from heat, cool. Force strawberries through a strainer to remove seeds and fibrous pulp.

Place strawberry puree in the bowl of a food processor with crumbs, ricotta, sugar, egg yolks, and Parmesan. Process until smooth.

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

Lightly grease six small ceramic ramekins. Roll out dough thin, line ramekins. Cut out circles just big enough to cover. Cut out vent holes in top crusts.

Fill ramekins with custard mix. lightly wet lip of crust with water. Place top crusts on, pinch crusts together to seal. Dust top of tarts with egg white, and sprinkle with sugar.

Place in oven. bake 20 minutes. Turn oven temperature up to 425 F.  Cook another 5 - 8 minutes, until top is brown and custard is set.

Remove to a rack to cool.

Basil Syrup

3/4 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup whole fresh basil leaves

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer until sugar is dissolve and basil leaves are soft, about 15 minutes.

Transfer to a blender. Blend until basil is finely chopped. Strain, place in a squeeze bottle, and chill until time to plate.


Happy Eating!

 

 

Creampuffs with Strawberry Orange Pastry Cream and Galangal Dark Chocolate Ganache

I owed a friend some cream puffs in exchange for a favor. I decided to use the opportunity to experiment a little. We had purchased some strawberry oranges at the Farmers' Market. This is a variety whose technical name is Vaniglia Sanguigno. This is Italian for 'Vanilla Blood'. It is also marketed as a Vanilla Orange, or as a Mango Orange. It is an almost acidless variety, with none of the tartness one expects from an orange.

I thought the strawberry orange would make a really great pastry cream. I adapted this recipe for orange pastry cream. Since the strawberry oranges are sweeter, I needed less sugar, and because they lack the acid, I could increase the amount of juice without worrying about curdling the milk.

The pate a choux for the cream puffs is the same recipe I used here. That was not my first intention, though. I still have a lot of buttermilk, so I thought I'd try a buttermilk pate a choux. When I googled it, however, I found no recipes. None, whatsoever. With the number of food bloggers out there, every combination of food that makes any sense, and quite a few that don't, have been done. So, I was suspicious, but decided to try it, anyway.

I learned why there are no buttermilk pate a choux. As soon as I started heating up the mix of buttermilk, water, and butter, the buttermilk curdled. But, as I learned as a science student, we learn as much, or even more, from the experiments that fail as from those that succeed. So, now I know why there are no buttermilk pate a choux recipes, and the next person to google looking for one may find this blog post.

For the ganache, I used a semi-sweet chocolate with 58% chocolate liqueur. I added some galangal. Galangal is a relative of ginger, but with a more peppery taste. Since orange and ginger are such a classic combination, I thought it should work. I kept it light, however, as I did not want the galangal to overwhelm the delicate orange flavor of the pastry cream.

Recipes

Strawberry Orange Pastry Cream

2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 Tbsp. strawberry orange zest
1/4 cup strawberry orange juice
4 large egg yolks
1/4 cup cornstarch
pinch kosher salt

Sift cornstarch. Add egg yolks, whisk until light colored and smooth. Set aside.

In a saucepan over medium low heat, combine milk, sugar, vanilla, zest, salt, and juice. Bring just to a boil. Remove from heat. Slowly add 1/2 cup of hot milk mixture to the egg mixture while whisking continuously. Add mixture back to pot, return to heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.

Strain mixture, cover directly with plastic wrap, to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until cool.

Chocolate Galangal Ganache

4 oz. by wt. semi-sweet chocolate
4 oz. by vol. cream
1/4 teaspoon ground dried galangal
pinch salt

In a double boiler, melt chocolate. Slowly whisk in cream. Add salt and galangal. Whisk to combine.

 

Chiffon Cake Reprise

The most challenging thing for me that we have made so far in my pastry class was the chiffon cake. My icing and piping skills still need work. I thought it would be a good idea to practice making one by myself. The cake itself is unchanged from the recipe in the previous post.

I did want to play with the flavors a bit, however. Since I did not have any of the commercial raspberry filling we used in class, I needed to do something different. I had some strawberries left over from Valentine's Day. I mashed those, and made a quick strawberry jam.  Instead of the lemon syrup, I made a mandarin orange syrup to soak the cake with. I also added the zest of a mandarin orange to the Swiss butter cream frosting.

To decorate the cake, I dipped blanched almonds in dark chocolate melted in a double boiler.

Recipes

Quick Strawberry Jam

1 cup mashed strawberries
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
pinch kosher salt

In a sauce pan over medium  heat, combine all ingredients. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Cook until mix reaches 220 F. Transfer to a metal bowl in an ice bath.

Mandarin Orange Syrup

1 cup water
1 cup sugar
juice of one mandarin orange

In a sauce pan over medium heat, combine all ingredients. Bring just to a simmer, making sure all the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, and allow to cool. Strain.

Happy Eating!