Capirotada

I'm currently writing a paper for the Renaissance Society conference next week about 3 cookbooks from the 1540s and the mutual influence among Italy, France and England. Anyway, I came aross this recipe that appears virtually the same in two of them called variously soupe capilorde or suppa di capirotta. Both are ultimately versions of an older Spanish dish called Capirotada. But it just dawned on me as I was writing that this is a version of the souped up (literally) grilled cheese ideas that have been floating around lately among food bloggers. Except this one is literally floating around.


Just try to imagine this. Roasted capon breast taken off the bone and shredded. Think leftover chicken here. Then take slices of good toast and fry them until crisp and brown. Then take a bowl and put down a "sop" of the bread, cover with some chicken, some cheese and a whole mess of spices. Especially cinnamon, some sugar and ginger. More IS better. And make layer after layer of these ingedients. Then pour good broth over it into the bowl. A floating chicken grilled cheese sandwich. I think I may just have to make this tonight.


Oh, and if you're wondering, yes, it's descendant is the capirotada of Mexico, a sweet cheesy bread pudding. And incidentally I have seen baroque recipes for this that are also then baked so the cheese all melts and the bread really soaks it up, and then it's garnished with cockscombs, testicles, circles of marrow, ambergris, gooseberries.


"Lambs and slothes and carp and fruitbats and orangutans and breakfast cereals.... skip a bit brother." Who can name the source of that feast?

Houston, we have a problem

Holy Mother of God! WHAT IS THAT SMELL?

Hmm, this doesn't look good and doesn't come anywhere near to smelling good either. The last time I encountered such an aroma was when I eventually peeled off my socks and boots after a 5 day stint at a particularly damp Glastonbury. That tour of duty resulted in trench foot and such was the stench, I had to stick my feet out of the car window for the entire 4 hour journey home and I can tell you, it took a good while after that to nurse them back to fragrant health. The source of the offending funk this time however is coming from my sourdough starter. Like I said this doesn't look good.

So have I gone wrong somewhere? Well at this stage, it's hard to say. The recipe implicitly says that I had to wrap the grapes in muslin and submerge in flour and dough and leave for 2 weeks. It does indeed say that after such time the mixture will smell slightly unpleasant and have a pink tinge to it. Apparently it is at this point that you can begin to 'feed' it but the tears streaming from my eyes are prompting me to have doubts especially as the starter is only 7 days old.

Before taking any action, I decided to ask some searching questions on a foodie message board and the resulting answers has thrown a multitude of spanners in the works. There's a lot of people out there who seem to really know their stuff and now I am beginning to admit to myself that this whole business of making your own starter demands a lot more respect than I gave it in the first place. The amount of information given is quite dizzying but there seems to be two factors. The first bone of contention is that I have left the mix for too long before feeding it to encourage the natural yeasts to develop, and secondly the quantities of flour and water I've used are far too much. Most of the posted methods take smaller amounts, in which you generally begin the feeding process after 24 hours. After a period of 5 days of feeding you should get a nice yeasty smelling, bubbling mix that you can contain within a jam jar. I have a big bowl of lifeless grey sludge that's covered with murky brown water and smells like the cat has shit in it.

So where do I go from here? Maybe I should try and call Mr and Mrs Sam Clark and quiz them but it's unlikely that I'll get through to them at Exmouth Market HQ. Maybe I should just plough on and proceed as instructed. Or maybe I should just chuck it all away and start again. The one saving grace has come from one foodie advisor who has suggested that the brownish liquid could in fact with time turn to alcohol. And that could open up a whole new world of possibilities!

Sir it's only wafer thin

If I think about it, kicking off this blog with a title such as "Projects Mayhem Parts 1 and 2" is a bit of a misnomer. It implies that I'm embarking on some kind of audacious adventure where I shall be pushing culinary boundaries, breaking down walls, taking myself out of the comfort zone and promoting an effort to be truly epicurious.

However, on reflection perhaps I should have kicked off with "Project Sitting On My Arse and Look In The Fridge From Time To Time" as that is what I have basically done for the last few days. Although I look a bit like him (shaved head-check, angular glasses-check, er thats it) it doesn't really make me out to be the new Heston does it.

Maybe I am being a little too hard on myself here as the Duck Bresaola turned out very well, a little bit on the salty side but overall, the flavours of the star anise, coriander seed and zest came through. In fairness, I left the duck breasts in the cure slightly longer than I should have done before rinsing them off and air-drying in the fridge for two more days, which I think may account for the saltiness but if I'd had something like this, well that may have made all the difference. I sharpened my trusty Global as best as I could but couldn't quite get the delicate paper thin slices that I wanted. Yet, having served it up with some lamb's lettuce, drizzled with walnut oil and lemon juice, one of my test subjects remarked that it reminded her of parma ham so perhaps I wasn't that far off after all. Will definitely have a crack at this again as it would make a good stress free starter for a dinner party, though if only watching the fridge wasn't so boring.

No F*** off, I'm full!

Do(ug)h!

Its alive, ITS ALIVE!

Ok not yet but it will be soon

Of course I'm talking about my sourdough starter which I started this morning, thus taking the first steps I have ever made towards baking bread. Looking around at the exhaustive amount of information on the Internet, I have possibly bitten off more than I can chew. One particularly comprehensive site states unless you know what you're doing, making your own starter for the first time is akin to trying to build your own bike before you've learnt how to ride it. Well in the spirit of adventure I say up yours to that, I don't need stabilisers, my Dad always held onto the seat whilst walking behind me.

So the basic premise of creating a sourdough starter is to try and capture some of the wild yeasts that float around us within the dough and then feed it with flour to keep it alive, replacing what you take out when baking your loaf. If you get it right and take care of it, the starter or 'mother' will stay alive in a yeasty, bacterially kind of way (you can tell I'm not a scientist) and you will have access to an endless supply of tangy, moreish, yummy bread. If you get it wrong, I've heard you can end up with equivalent of paint thinner.

I've used a recipe from the first Moro cookbook which uses grapes giving a head start for getting those essential wild yeasts in there. Simply mix up 500 grams of strong flour with 1 litre of water in a suitable bowl, tie up a bunch of grapes in a piece of fine cloth ie. muslin, crush the grapes and submerge into the watery dough. Leave for 2 weeks.

Can it be any easier?

Come back Donald

I like the idea of creating dishes by curing. Basically you take your main ingredient, normally meat or fish, smother it in a mixture of salt, sugar, herbs and spices and then leave it to do its own thing. Come back a week later, clean your magic mix off, slice up into wafer thin slivers and serve it up cold on a plate drizzled with some olive oil or with some bread and pickles. And hey presto you're a culinary wizard, albeit a lazy one maybe but still it often impresses. Admittedly I have only ever really gone down the gravadlax route before with salmon using different cures, lime and vodka is a winner, so I am intrigued to see how this home made bresaola turns out.

Bresaola is normally made with beef, air-cured over a long period of time (3 months) but I have found a recipe that uses duck and only takes four days which is good as I am not that patient. To feed 6 people as a starter, two breasts should do the trick.

The key ingredients for the cure are salt, peppercorns, star anise, coriander seed, all crushed up in a pestle and mortar and then mixed in with the zest from one orange and one lemon. Remove all the skin and fat from your duck breasts and smother the cure over them, pat it all down and place in a fridge covered with cling film. And then the alchemy begins.

I hope, see you in four days.

Project Mayhem Parts 1 and 2

Ever experienced the scenerio of standing at the edge of a diving board on the highest platform, looking down into the deep blue water and wondered whether you could go through with it and actually jump?

Starting this food blog feels a little bit like that, especially after making a couple of abortive attempts last year to actually kick start this thing. So to get things going I thought it would be fun to set myself a challenge and attempt a couple of long term foodie projects. That way I could report back, document and create some filler for Food Urchin and hopefully gain some momentum.

So to begin, I shall mostly be making Duck Bresaola and a Sourdough Starter, the former should take about 4 days, the latter about 4 weeks. Wish me luck.

Dumpling

There are some words which should just be stricken from the English language. This one tops my list. Conjure the image now. There is someone squatting over the stockpot while it gently simmers. Little dumps. Float to the top, and they're ready.


So, I propose, as with so many other words, that we invent them anew. Borrowing from other languages if necessary. The Dutch in this instance could lend us the word turdkin. Isn't that cute? Or the French with a hearty crapette. Deux crapettes sur la plate, avec du beurre et persillade. Doesn't that sound savory? Or why not the Italians who give us parmesan-laced poopini. I can see them now in the refrigerator section of your favorite grocery. Poopini Puttanesca. Or how about German Scheißbollchen mit Speck und Kraut. Now if I could remember the dimuntive in Russian correctly.... Шицники (Shitsniki)?

Someone help me here.