The successes of 'that Saturday'

Due to the screen on my laptop turning pink I was unable to make updates and so I am doing it now.

One saturday in October Brindis came up to help me with my project. To check my redactions and see where things can be improved in order to put them into a book. This is an ongoing project and one that is not going to be done in a short amount of time. I also asked if she wanted a formalized student relationship to give us structure to work under and also so I can help her discover and achieve her goals as well.

My goal was 7 recipes, we accomplished 5! Considering they arrived (she brought her hubby with as a taste tester) 4 hours late than planned this to me was a huge success! We ate as we went and made notes as well. We had a fantastic time even if we were just the 2 of us in my tiny kitchen. We even had to start putting things on the couch for lack of room!

For the most part only minor changes were made to the recipes. We did however experiment with 2 types of rice for the rice dishes as well as substituting broth for milk in one of them as well (it was an alternative in the original.

We accomplished:
To Make a Tart of Rice (Good Housewife's Jewel, p73)
Various ways to saute' a capon (Scappi p199)
To Prepare Rice Fritters (Scappi, p498 )
To Braise Eggplant (Scappi, p360)
To Prepare Pumpkin Tourte without a Shell (Scappi, p484)

Everything tasted fantastic and there is one more thing to try with the chicken and that it to grill it over wood and/or charcoal. We did fry it in oil and we grilled it on an electric grill. Both had distinct flavors. The fried of course carried the flavor of the oil with it as well, seeming to dull the flavor of the chicken some.

The rice tart is oddly better with the parboiled rice as opposed to milk rice.

The rice fritters were fantastic no matter what they were made with but really the milk rice helps them stick together best and to boil them in milk helps too, though the savoriness of those cooked in broth was also quite good.

I didn't take the time to puree the pumpkin only to mash it and the texture was still good. This is a recipe I would make for modern potlucks. Though we followed the weights exact to the medieval recipe (in proportion) It could do with less cinnamon or with a bit more ginger.

We could have used more eggplant for the amount of herbs we had but it was still a lovely flavor and I need to serve this again. It is not a pretty dish but it is quite tasty.

I had started some of the things on the day before. The chicken especially needs to be started ahead of time. I had prepped the filling for a 6th dish but we didn't get to it and that was ok. In total the cost of the experiment was a day and a half of work on my part and Brindis putting in about 6 hours helping as well and an actual cost of 50€ including ingredients for the 2 unmade dishes. Each dish could have served 6 at least except the chicken. The chicken was only 4 whole legs that were split, so 8 pieces.

We are looking for a good time to move on to the next set of recipes as well as Dominik is trying to recover my files from my brick of an old laptop!!! I hope he is successful!