Finally.

[madbaker]

I should have posted this earlier this week, but... I didn't. This week's Resolution Recipe was something I made at the cooks' playdate at A&S: To frie Pistinachie Nuts.

Make them very clean and take out the hard matter with them, then seeth them, and when they are sod [boiled] roule them in flower, and frie them in oyle. (Epulario, 1598)

1/2 pound pistachio nuts, shelled and unsalted
water
white flour
rapeseed oil

Place the nuts in a small saucepan and barely cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer for one minute. Drain the nuts and pat them dry lightly. Roll them in flour.
Heat 1/4 inch of oil in a skillet to 325 degrees. Fry nuts for 5-7 minutes, turning, until light brown. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

Rapeseed oil (marketed as Canola) was used from at least the 1400s for frying.

Sources: de Rosselli, Giovanne. Epulario, or The Italian Banquet. LaVergne, TN: Proquest, 2011. Print. ISBN 978-1-171-32446-1.

What worked: Renaissance bar snacks! They were damn good. We dusted them with a slight amount of sugar and salt which made them really, really tasty. I wandered the event foisting bar food on anyone who held still long enough. anthino was invaluable helping me judge temperature and timing. He's done this sort of thing before.

What didn't: I let the second batch get slightly too dark and bitter. The dusting with sugar and salt may not be justifiable - I'll have to see if I can find anything similar in other late 16th century fried foods.

Will I make it again? Probably, although half as much would still be plenty. We idly discussed selling paper cones with these and proscuitto as a fundraiser. If we did it at a Crown, then we could hawk "Get yer nuts on the field" or something like that...

We visited the local Asian market Friday after setup; I picked up some cheap pork belly to start more bacon as I'm (gasp) out. I also bought some frozen conger eel to try, since we were sure there were plenty of period eel recipes. The upstairs neighbors bought a piece of some whitefish that the market fried up for us then and there, which we happily ate back onsite with sour orange juice drizzled over that I got at one of our local Mexican groceries. Period oranges were not as sweet, so this is a readily available way to be more authentic.

We cooked Liuerings of Veale for our dinner. Then Villa Luna invited us over for their traditional Friday sushi dinner, which was both lots of fun to make (I'd never done it before) and exceedingly tasty.

Saturday I took a class (meh) and then hung out chatting and cooking for the rest of the day. It was totally worth getting slightly sunburned. It was as much fun as the one at West/An Tir last year, even if it was fewer people and a shorter time. Lots of people made lots of tasty food. The eel recipe I made from Scappi was simply flouring the eel and frying it, then drizzling with the aforementioned orange juice. I liked it, as did most people who tried it. I guess I was expecting it to taste more like unagi (which I love), but it came out like a generic breaded whitefish. Pretty similar to what we had Friday night, actually.

I quick-brined a ham that the Miyakes smoked onsite. It came out pretty well and looked beautiful, although the outside parts were on the excessively salty side. anthino suggested that I should soak it overnight after removing from the cure to leach out the excess. This makes sense to me and I will try it next time. Other than that, though, the experiment was successful so I look forward to taking advantage of their smoker again at events. (For the record, I sent them home with a bit more than half the leftovers as payment.) The Laurel meeting and PPFIII meeting both went fine. Both had a tendency to bog down in details, more so in the PPF meeting as we'd already had dinner...

Sunday I actually took a class for the first time in years - painting 15th century-style Spanish bowls, taught by hrj. My artistic skills are exceedingly limited, but that actually fits in with a lot of the decorative styles they did. Many of them were clearly "Quick, paint this up in three minutes so it sells better." I designed mine with gouttes and the wife painted a very nice-looking bunny on hers. Assuming they don't break in firing, we'll have some beautiful, and easily-identifiable, serving bowls for the kit.

Comments

[syele.livejournal.com]

I totally enjoyed your nuts, fyi.