Third of three from the war.
Jul. 25th, 2022 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerThis week's Resolution Recipe: Meat croquettes, or rather dumplings and ravioli.
1/2 lb pork belly, skin off, boiled
1 1/4 oz basil
small handful each: savory, marjoram, tarragon
4 green onions
1/3 bunch parsley
1/4 cup ricotta
1/4 cup? flour
4 egg whites
lard or veg oil
pinch sugar
Mince or grind pork belly. Pound herbs in a mortar or grind, and mix into the pork. Mix in the ricotta, egg whites, and flour. Form croquettes - small patties or cylinders.
Bring oil to fry temperature. Gently lower in croquettes and fry for (time) until browned. Drain, sprinkle sugar over the batch, and serve.
Marjoram, tarragon, and rosemary are common in this manuscript. Parsley, savory, and scallions seemed like good contemporaneous additions. Frying in rapeseed oil (aka Canola oil) is documented in England to the 13th or 14th century.
What worked: Everyone really liked it; this was one of the standouts that night, he said modestly. I think the basil and savory really added a nice note.
I ground the pork and herbs together at home and brought them in a Ziploc, which made assembling easy. (By design.) Frying in a shallow pipkin over coals was surprisingly easy as well even if it took a while to get the oil to temp.
There are always concerns about the pipkin cracking and spraying hot oil over everything, but I was careful to put oil in the pipkin before I started the coals underneath, so that didn't happen. Part of the time to get the oil to fry temp was starting it with a smaller number of coals and then adding more as the clay adjusted to the heat.
I thought the sugar might be a bit weird, but I used very little so it didn't have any real impact (positive or negative).
What didn't: 4 egg whites may have been too many with the liquid from the ricotta - they were too runny to form a croquette-type cake (I was envisioning quenelle-type cylinders) and I didn't want to add any more flour. So I blopped in small irregular patties with a spoon, not thinking about piping from said Ziploc until I was almost done - which might have made more regular blobs. Granted, not a period technique but.
Will I make it again? Yes, I would like to make this a staple too. Not that we eat fried food very often if at all, but this one is worth trying to nail down an interpretation I can repeat. This would make a very good ravioli filling (if I ever made ravioli, which I don't.)
Take skinned pork belly, boiled, and mince it thoroughly with a knife: take a good quantity of savory herbs, and pound them thoroughly in a mortar: put some fresh cheese on top of this and a bit of flour, and dilute it with egg with egg whites, until it is stiff. And take a good quantity fresh pork fat, put it in a pan, until it boils, and make croquettes out of this; and once it has been cooked and taken out, put sugar on it. (Anonimo Toscano, late 14th-early 15th c.)
1/2 lb pork belly, skin off, boiled
1 1/4 oz basil
small handful each: savory, marjoram, tarragon
4 green onions
1/3 bunch parsley
1/4 cup ricotta
1/4 cup? flour
4 egg whites
lard or veg oil
pinch sugar
Mince or grind pork belly. Pound herbs in a mortar or grind, and mix into the pork. Mix in the ricotta, egg whites, and flour. Form croquettes - small patties or cylinders.
Bring oil to fry temperature. Gently lower in croquettes and fry for (time) until browned. Drain, sprinkle sugar over the batch, and serve.
Marjoram, tarragon, and rosemary are common in this manuscript. Parsley, savory, and scallions seemed like good contemporaneous additions. Frying in rapeseed oil (aka Canola oil) is documented in England to the 13th or 14th century.
What worked: Everyone really liked it; this was one of the standouts that night, he said modestly. I think the basil and savory really added a nice note.
I ground the pork and herbs together at home and brought them in a Ziploc, which made assembling easy. (By design.) Frying in a shallow pipkin over coals was surprisingly easy as well even if it took a while to get the oil to temp.
There are always concerns about the pipkin cracking and spraying hot oil over everything, but I was careful to put oil in the pipkin before I started the coals underneath, so that didn't happen. Part of the time to get the oil to fry temp was starting it with a smaller number of coals and then adding more as the clay adjusted to the heat.
I thought the sugar might be a bit weird, but I used very little so it didn't have any real impact (positive or negative).
What didn't: 4 egg whites may have been too many with the liquid from the ricotta - they were too runny to form a croquette-type cake (I was envisioning quenelle-type cylinders) and I didn't want to add any more flour. So I blopped in small irregular patties with a spoon, not thinking about piping from said Ziploc until I was almost done - which might have made more regular blobs. Granted, not a period technique but.
Will I make it again? Yes, I would like to make this a staple too. Not that we eat fried food very often if at all, but this one is worth trying to nail down an interpretation I can repeat. This would make a very good ravioli filling (if I ever made ravioli, which I don't.)
