Culinary Crashing and Burning

Well, yesterday was a small SCA event^* called Trial By Fire. It's a cooking competition.

The idea is that people present dishes in a number of categories that are prepared on site under Pennsic War^†, and to prepare them in a 4 hour period, along with accompanying documentation of their use in the years covered by the SCA^‡.

Well, I went with two, or maybe two and a half recipes. The first was a chocolate recipe, which was translated from the 1631 Spanish treatise into English in 1652, called Chocolate, an Indian Drinke. Which has the oldest, at least the oldest that I could find, recorded chocolate recipe.

The second was a recipe for a meat pie from a history/cook book called A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews, which uses records of the inquisition, which frequently used food as evidence that people were secretly practiced Judaism.

I actually combined two recipes, one for sausage, and one for pie, because the filling for the pie combined meat and milk, and my deliberate use with my wife's cookware would result in a serious case of acute heavy metal poisoning^§.

I had done the sausage, though not the pie before, and I did a test run of the chocolate drink in our percolator about two weeks prior, so I thought that it would turn out OK, but I was unduly optimistic.

With the chocolate, I made a small but significant change at Trial by Fire, I toasted the cacao nibs before grinding, which made the cocoa butter flow out of the nibs, so when I packed it into the basket of the percolator, it created a wax-like structure that the hot water did not effectively penetrate, so I ended up with weakly flavored sweet water.

As to the pie, the the sausage was fine, as was the filling that was made from it, but due to time constraints and poor fire management, I attempted to fry them at too low a temperature, and they became oil sponges.

On the brighter side, my wife^€, won best dessert with her sage fritters, which were quite yummy.

My recipes:
Chocolate Drinke

• Cacao Nibs 1.5 cups
  
• Cinnamon, 2 tsp (about two small sticks)
• Chile Pepper, 2 TBSP
• Anise Seed, 1 TBSP
• 12 Almonds
• 12 Hazel Nuts
• Roses of Alexandria, 1 tbl (Apothicary Roses, I just use 1/4 cup rose water, available from any middle eastern food store, instead)
• ½ cup white sugar
• Vanilla de Campeche, (Vanilla) One bean
• Achiote, ¾ tsp. (More commonly called Anatto)

Grind everything up but the pepper and vanilla, which you mince, and put in a pot with about 12-16 cups of water (including the rose water) and boil until it is the color of Coffee with about 1 cream in it. One caveat, the author claims that among its health benefits is:

It vehemently Incites to Venus, and causeth Conception in women, hastens and facilitates their Delivery.

As such the I maintain no responsibility for romantic entanglements, pregnancies, general soreness of body parts, goofy smiles, or intemperate marriage.

Sausage Pie
To make the Sausage:

• 1 pound ground lamb
  
• 2 eggs, beaten

Spice Mixture

• 1 tsp grains of paradise
  
• ½ tsp fenugreek
  
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
  
• 1 tsp salt
  
• 1 clove garlic
  
• 2-3 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
  
• 3-4 tsp chopped fresh oregano
  
• 2 TBSP pine nuts

Place the lamb in a medium bowl. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Grind all of the spice mixture, except for the caraway and pine nuts ingredients together in a grinder or mortar. Add the spice mixture, including the caraway and pine nuts to the lamb and mix thoroughly.

Allow the flavors to meld for two hours.

To make the filling:
Finely chop two onions, and sweat in a skillet until just translucent with a pinch of kosher salt, then add the sausage, and cook until done (about 3-4 minutes) stirring to keep a consistency of a Sloppy Joe.

To make the pie dough:

• 1/3 cup water
  
• Pinch of salt
  
• 1/3 cup olive oil
  
• 1½ cups unsifted flour
  
• 2-4 TBSP olive oil
  

Bring the 1/3 cup water, oil, and salt to a boil in a medium pan. Remove from heat.

When the liquid is tepid, add the flour all at once to the water mixture. Stir until all is well mixed.

Place an egg-size lump of dough on a lightly floured bread board. With a rolling pin, shape it into a 1/3 inch thick oval.

Place 1 tablespoon of meat mixture onto a piece of dough. Fold and pinch the fold to seal the pie.

Fry the pies in a skillet with about 2 tbsp of oil.


^*Truth be told, it's not an official SCA event, and as SCA, Inc. has no connection to, or liability arising from, this event.
^†Basically, imagine camping conditions, where there is no electricity, but water from a garden hose.
^‡About 450 C.E. to 1650 C.E.
^§My wife would shoot me.
^€Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.