Free range vs factory farm a 16th century discussion

Scappi, I have found has a wealth of knowledge on subjects I never imagined I would find in a cook book, let alone a cook book from the 16th century. I am investigating right now and re reading recipes in order to create the feat for Accedemia Della Danza this coming March and was in Book VI, dishes for the sick when I noticed that he makes reference to the fact that the poultry should not be cooped or force fed.

The recipe on page 551 number 32, To prepare a paste of chickens cooked in pastry. He states "Get the breast of a meaty chicken, not one that has been force-fed, but killed that day." There is a foot note and the foot note states " Ken Alba points out that physicians held the flesh of captive animals and of cooped, force-fed fowl to be less nourishing and less readily digested than that of their free-ranging counterparts." The foot not further states that his reference is to Thomas Moffett's "Health Improvement" written in 1595 and uses the quote: "Whether (the) penning up of birds, and want of excersise, and depriving them of light, and cramming them so often with strange meat, makes not their flesh as unwholsom to us as wel as fatr. "

The modern practice of factory farming is in fact not modern. I can not imagine what would possess someone to want to coop up their fowl and keep them in bad condition. Besides being animal cruelty, fowl kept this way we know are more susceptable to diseases, loss of eggs and other problems.

page 360 recipe # 229 To braise eggplant - that is, pomi sdegnisi

Get eggplants that are not too ripe or too bitter, and clean off the purplish skin they have- although you do find white ones- and cut them lenghthwise into several pieces. Let them steep for half an hour; discard that water and set them to boil in a pot in fresh water that is lightly salted. When they are well cooked, take them out and let them drain on a table. Have an earthenware baking dish or a tourte pan ready with oil; carefully flour the pieces and make a layer of them in the pan. Get beaten mint, sweet marjoram, burnet and parsley, and beaten fresh fennel tips or ground dry fennell along with crushed garlic cloves, and scatter all that over the layer of eggplant, as well as enough pepper, cinnamon, cloves and salt; splach verjuice on that and sprinkle it with sugar. Repeat, making up two or three layers. Cook it the way a tourte is done. When it is done, serve it hot in dishes with the Broth over it. If it is not a fasting day you can put slices of provatura or ordinary cheese and grated bread between each layer; and instead of oil, use butter.

It is very important that you both soak the eggplant and that you salt the water for boiling. I have forgotten or skipped these steps and came up with an inferior product in the end.
When slicing the eggplant you are looking for eggplants with a thickness of about .5 cm or 1/4 of an inch thick.
When you boil them you want them to maintain some firmness so that they are easily handled in order to flour them.
I add salt and pepper to the flour.
I have crushed the garlic in a press as well as sliced it. It seems the crushed garlic gives a better dispersal of the flavor. Alot is not needed! 2-3 cloves per batch is sufficient. This of course depends on how much of a garlic flavor is desired.
Mint: by accident I had omitted the mint in my first test batch but when the mint was added it was a magnitude better. The heat of the garlic with the cool of mint makes a unique combination that even seems to please the "modern palate"
Lacking verjuice I had substituded instead rosewater, this seems to be acceptable to the palate and doesn't change or hinder the flavor at all. I have also left out the verjuice and the rosewater substitution and had very good luck.
The broth refered to in the recipe I have taken to mean the broth from which the eggplant is drained. I have reserved some and found that a tiny amount is all that is needed, maybe an 1/8th of a cup. You don't want the dish to be "swimming".
I baked the dish at about 350 - 375 f (170-180c) for roughly 1/2 hr to 45 min. This depends on if there is cheese in it or not. You want sufficient time for it to melt and meld with the flavors but not too much time as to make the eggplant "soggy" or "mushy".

The first time I made this dish it was a smashing success and has continued to be so every time it has been served. Highly recomended even for people who do not normally like eggplants.

Book 5 recipe 108 to prepare a pumpkin tourte without a shell.

     When the oumpkin is scraped, cooki it in a good meat broth or else in salted water and butter. Then put it into a strainer and squeeze the broth out of it. Grind it in a  mortar along with, for every two pounds of it, a pound of fresh ricotta and a pound of creamy cheese that is not too salted. When everything is ground up put it through a colander, adding in ten well beaten eggs, a pound of ground sugar, an ounce of ground cinnamon, a pound of milk, four ounces of fresh butter and half an ounce of ginger. Have a tourte pan ready with six ounces of very hot butter in it and put the filling into it. Bake it in an oven or braise it, giving it a glazing with sugar and cinnamon. Serve it hot.
     You can do midrib of lettuce in April the same way, after it has steeped thoroughly and been parboiled.

I have made this recipe exactly as is stated in its "minimum" ammounts. DELICIOUS, it was fabulous. I must say though that it was equally good cold (from the fridge) we didn't have a chance to eat it room temperature. I have a huge ceramic torte (10.5 inches) pan and it filled that one and then a smaller one i have(9.5 inches) so either their pans were larger still or deeper than mine are. My pans are roughly an inch deep.

This very much has the consistancy of a good custard.

I used a "standard" pumpkin for this and am going to try a few more variations this fall.

As a side note. i cooked it like a custard too so for about an hout at 170c or about 350f .

Book 2 recipe # 156 To prepare a rice dish in the Lombard style. pg 219-220

     Get rice which is cleaned in as above and cook it in a broth that has cooked capons, geese and saveloy. When it is done such that it is firm, take a portion of it and put it on an earthenware, silver or pewter platter. Sprinkle it with cheese, sugar and cinnamon, and on the rice put a few dollops of fresh butter and capon breast and goose breast along with finely chopped saveloy. Then sprinkle on cheese, sugar, and cinnamon. repeat, building up three layers of it. On the topmost pour melted fresh butter, and sprinkle on the same mixture. Put it into an oven that is not too hot, leaving it there for half an hour until it browns a little. splash rosewater over it and serve it hot.
     You can do that rice another way. When it is cooked, grease the platter with butter and on that put slices of fresh unsalted provatura sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon and grated cheese, and on that put rice. On the rice put raw freash egg yolks, the number of them depending on the ammount of rice there is, having first made hollows in the rice in which you set the yolks. Over those yolks again put the same ammount of sliced provatura sprinkled as before with sugar, cheese and cinnamon. Then cover that with as much again of rice. In that way you can make up two or three layers. On the last put a little bit of butter. Set it on hot coals or in the oven as before. Serve it hot.

This is the translation from the book I am using. Not speaking Italian I have not translated the recipe myself. Though if I can find an Italian speaker I may try to do so.

Foods can kill

Greetings all,

I wish to get a little off track at this time and talk about a very mundane but very important issue to a kitchen, allergies. I myself have one very serious one and one very annoying one. I have a severe reaction to almonds and this is the one in particular that I would like to address. More than nausea , more than dizziness and shortness of breath, this one can kill me.

Recently I was accidentally exposed to my allergen. This was scary for me as you can imagine but also very scary for the head cook, autocrat and server who put the dish in front of me,  and all of this could have been avoided with some simple communication.  I have been a head cook, so I know the stress of the kitchen, this cannot be an excuse for potentially fatal mistakes and all allergies should be treated as potentially fatal. I can only share my way of doing things to avoid this happening.

1. I try to avoid if possible the allergen. If it is not possible I try to makes its use limited and keep it separated from all the other foods.

2. I try to identify and talk to the persons with the allergies as soon as possible. When I find them I talk over with them about what to expect, i.e. what dishes to avoid of if there is no possibility of  a substitute or let them know if they should be expecting a separate dish for themselves.

3. Something that I have not done consistently but have done is to make available to the populace a list of ingredients in each dish. IMPORTANT note: if you do this and then make a substitution or add an ingredient please have it announced!

4. Speak with the servers and try to identify to them or at least your head server the people with allergies and make them aware of what is in the dishes or if there will be extra dishes for those people.

As a person with allergies I usually try to find the cook and ask what is "safe" for me and what to expect. I also usually try to double check with the server when the food is served to me if it is the appropriate dish. If for some reason I have not done this,  I have  assumed that if the cook has not approached me or if the server does not identify to me that the dish contains my allergen I will assume it is safe to eat.

As you can see there is much room for error on all parts. The trick is not to let all the errors occur.

A medival kitchen in modern times (ponderings)

I was just thinking about redactions and experimentations. I love cooking both modernly and medivally but how do you combine the two? When doing a redaction or experimentation with a medieval recipe I use my modern kitchen of course. I don't usually have the time it would take to set up what very few basics i have for a medieval kitchen (though someday i would love to have one that stayed set up!)  So how accurate is one's redaction if it is done in a modern way? no real way of telling of course. Even if one were to set up a "period" kitchen would it truely be "period" enough? We have scientific data that there has been a climactic shift since that era and if you for example, bake bread, climate can be all the difference sometimes. Too cold, too hot, too moist and too dry can all be problems. Also with that is region you ar ecooking in. Italy is significantly warmer than Germany is, if I set up an Italian medieval kitchen in Germany am i really going to be able to reproduce Italian food accurately.

Obviously alot of these questions have no answers and never will. Truly we can only "do the best we can with what we have". This also does not mean we should not try. In fact I think it means we should endeavor to try harder , especailly with ingredients. To find what we can that is absolutely as close to period as we can get. At least I want to endeavor to do this. It has not been an easy process, not by any stretch. Names of plants have changed as well as growing procedures. Trying to trace a lineage of a plant can sometimes be like following a Russian royals family tree, abrupt ends and inbreeding.

How to address the consolidation of modern and medieval is a question I have been thinking about recently. For my part I am starting with trying not to use modern equipment such as mixers, chopper and grinders. Easier said than done when time can be a constraint. I will use pre cut, chopped or ground items though. The work is done by someone else as it would have been in period. Large estates had many people in a kitchen each with their own job title and duties. You would have a dozen cooks for a single feast and everyone working full capacity at that. So to never use a pre prepared product would be senseless. The best of course is if you can pre prepare the items yourself.

I will leave myself here for more ponderings later before I meander too far away.

A bit more on Lombardy Rice

Greetings and welcome to some notes on the recipe. I would love to post the recipe but can't lay my hands on my book. For some reason it has run away from me and now I must hunt it. So I shall jsut share a few notes.

The basics of the recipe are as follows: Goose, Capon, Sausage, Rice, Provolone cheese, Cinnamon, Sugar, Butter.

You boil the goose, Pull it out and set aside,then using that stock you boil the capon, again putting it aside with the goose,then using that you boil the sausage, again setting it aside,then using that (after carefully straining out any small bones or bits) you boil the rice and then drain off excess liquid.

While your rice is boiling Strip your goose and capons, then chop up your meats into just smaller than bite sized pieces. Also shred your cheese

Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a proportion that is to your taste.

Lay a layer of rice down and top with chopped meat, sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar mixture over it and top with shredded provolone cheese. Top with another layer of rice. Here I recomend you pour a light drizzle of melted butter in. Then top with more meat and repeat the procedure til you have a final layer of rice on top. Top with cinnamon sugar and if you have leftover cheese you can add that too. Remember to pour the butter on before the cheese though.

Bake in an oven meant for a pie for approximately 30 min.

My own redaction has come from experimentation and is not perfect.
1 goose
2 chickens
2.25lbs sausage
3 lbs provolone cheese
2.25 lbs butter
4.5 lbs rice
about 1.5 cups sugar
cinnamon

This is enough for roughly 40 people! The pans I used were HUGE! At least 24" by 12" by 4".

As i fiddle with the recipe i will continue to make notes.