Weekend tid bits

ok, this is late I admit it. A few weekends ago I spent some time with my Laurel and we tested a couple of recipes. Stuffed kohlrabi from Scappi and Spinach fritters from The Good Housewifes Jewel. Both of them and notes follow.

Ok To make fritters of spinach.

We sort of just winged it as we went along so there are no ammounts or anything.
Original text:
     Take a good deal of spinach and wash it clean. Then boil it in fair water. When it is boiled take it forth and let the water run from it. Then chop it with the back of a knife, and put in some eggs and grated bread. Season it with sugar, cinnamon,ginger and pepper, dates minced fine and currants. Roll them like a ball and dip them in batter made of ale and flour.

     Take a large bag of spinach and wilt it. Press the water from it and roughly chop. Add in the dates, eggs and spices. Roll them into balls the size of ping pong balls. Dip them in a batter of ale and flour made into a batter just thicker than pancake batter. Heat oil to frying temp, fry them quickly only until they are browned.

     These were tasty!

Scappi: Book 3 recipe # 241 page 364
To cook a stuffed kohlrabi bulb

Get a bulb of kohlrabi that is not woody and, without peeling it, better than half cook under coals. Then take it out, peel it, make a hole in its middle and fill it with the above mixture. Braise it the way the stuffed  onion of recipe 232 is done. Instead of cooking it under the embers or coals you can also parboil it. Mind particularly , though, that the bulb is of a young kohlrabi.

The mixture spoken of is from recipe 240.
Mix old walnuts that are not rancid, ground with a small clove of garlic, breadcrumb soaked in hot water, mint, marjoram, burnet and parsley, those herbs beaten, raisins, pepper, cinnamon, and a little eel flesh which is ground in a mortar.

1.5 to 2 cup of bread crumbs
1 clove garlic
1 cup walnuts

@1/2 water or broth to moisten bread crumbs, more if they were dry

1 Tbsp fresh cut parsley
1/2 tsp mint (dry)
@ Tbsp cinnamon (ground fine, found to be too much)
1/2 - 2/3 raisins
1 tsp marjoram (dry)
2 1 Tbsp salt

The kohlrabi were roasten in a 350degree oven (on the bottom, no pan no oil nothing)
cooked for 1 1/2 hrs then the oven turned off
Skin is tough, do not measure doneness by skin but by internal pressure and depth the fork goes in.

peel, and "core". I used a paring knife 1st and took out a cone shape wedge, using a spoon I scraped out the walls to about a 1/4 inch thickness (in some places it was thicker for fear of taring the flesh)

stuff with stuffing

oil their outsides and place some oil in the pan

Braise until done (about another hour at 350 degree)

Lovely when cut into quarters! The stuffing really stays in place.