And they’re off…or in. The posts, that is. All nine contenders for the title “Amateur Gourmet Survivor 2004” have submitted their entries via e-mail and I am about to post them here. The challenge was to cook a historical dish and our challengers met the challenge head-on. Your job, now, dear reader is to select one player for immunity and vote (only once!) in the comments section for whomever it is you think should be immune from being voted off. Please base your voting on merit, not looks—all players are heavily airbrushed. Also, no sneaky name disguising etc. etc. I’m on you like white on rice. [Maybe this is obvious, but those in the competition may not vote. You’ll be voting each other off tomorrow night.] And now for the entries, posted in the order I received them… [NOTE: Some entrants sent me links to websites where narrative and pictures were interspirsed, so it was easy to copy and paste that into the text below; others sent me text and then links to a photo album, and it would have taken me forever to interspirse text and photos for you, so I just made a link to the photo album above the text…I urge everyone to follow these links to see these pictures.]
Fae’s Entry
Oh, what to recipe to attempt for AG Survivor round one? Medevil recipes? Nothing but meat, meat, meat, and almond sauce. Not so vegetarian friendly, or appetizing. But I think to myself, “Wartime recipes! They’ve got historical signifigance out the wazoo!”. In my research, I came across a recipe for Mock Duck. There’s a recipe a vegetarian can deal with.
During WWII, when food was carefully rationed and managed, and all the able-bodied ducks went off to serve their countries, a saavy housewife had to make due with what she had. Which was lentils and potatoes, apparantly. The recipe starts by simmering lentils in stock, with onions and herbs.
I forgot about it, and it formed a crisp crust on the bottom. I bet this is a delicacy somewhere!
Once the non-burned lentils are soft, they’re combined with potatoes or rice, and you’re told to mold the sludge “into as close to the shape as a duck as you can manage’. I tried to shape it to look like one of those Celebriducks (I was going for Dr. Frank-N-Furter), but that didn’t really work, So I did the best I could to make it look like a normal roast duck.
Remember, I’m vegetarian, so blame that instead of a lack of creative skills.
The “duck” baked at 425 until I got tired of waiting on it.
Makes your mouth water, doens’t it? Yeah. Me neither. I probably should’ve basted it more.
Truth be told, it didn’t taste that bad. Lentils and potatoes are always ok in my book – but I can’t imagine anyone thinking this resembled duck, no matter how desperate you were for it. It’s a good thing the cows were a bunch of damned pacifists and stayed home.
Since I was this necessity-driven faux food kick, I decided to follow dinner up with the perhaps most well known of mock recipes – Mock Apple Pie.
Mock Apple Pie was made popular during the 30s, when fresh fruit was pricey and Ritz whored their recipe on every box of crackers. But the recipe actually dates back to the days of Laura Ingalls Wilder and kickin’ pig parts around the praire. Back then, cracker bushes were far more prevalent than apple trees, and.. OK, by now you should realise I’m having too much fun making up fake facts, but really, who the hell thought to themselves, “I say! I bet I could some crackers in this pie and it’d taste just like apples!”, anyway?
The recipe starts by boiling water, sugar, cinnamon, butter, and cream of tartar.
Already I like this one way better than the duck recipe.
The syrup is then poured over broken crackers, which have been placed in a pie shell. The recipe I used called for “double-wide soda crackers”. I’m not sure exactly what that refers to, but it sounds like there’s a mullet involved. Maybe the Florida Cracker? I decided to play it safe and use un-salted Saltines. Ines?
See? Crackers! A second crust is placed on top, and the pie baked to that pastry nirvana, golden brown.
Looks almost convincing, doesn’t it? The utterly frightening thing is that it tastes convincing. Mr. Fae, upon trying it, flailed wildly, proclaimed it, “DISTURBING!”, and said it was a good thing he wasn’t very fond of apple pie or else I would’ve ruined it for him. Since we were going to visit friends, we decided to foist it on them, too. We told them it was apple pie, because we’re mean like that, and they had no trouble believing it was, in fact, apple pie.
Moral of the story: Don’t put all your ducks in one basket. Especially if it’s already full of apples.
Andrhia’s Entry
[Please view corresponding photo album here. It features cute pictures like this:
]
For the historical food challenge, I chose a dish inspired by my
Native American heritage: Pemmican.
Pemmican is the PowerBar of the pre-industrial era. It is super
calorie-dense, lightweight, and chock full of vitamins and also meat.
As an added bonus, pemmican has a shelf life even a Twinkie would
envy. Reports from the Hudson’s Bay Company circa 1780 indicate that
prime pemmican four years old was indistinguishable in taste and
quality from the fresh stuff. And that’s before refrigeration, people!
In the days when fur trapping was a major industry of the Plains
States, pemmican was a major industry, too; all those fur trappers
needed fast energy for peak performance. And also so they did not
starve to death.
So what’s in pemmican, exactly? Three simple ingredients. Dried meat,
dried berries, and suet.
For my dried meat, I used Pemmican™ brand beef jerky. As you can tell
from the name, this jerky was obviously intended for the purpose of
manufacturing pemmican. Also, the illustration on the package clearly
shows that this was produced in keeping with the traditions of my
people.
I used dried cherries as my berry. Blueberries or chokecherries are
more traditional, but I was unable to forage any at my local Stop &
Shop. Forgive me, Amateur Gourmet.
As to the final ingredient… “What is suet, exactly?” you may be asking
yourself. I will answer you in the words of a close friend of mine:
“Suet, n. Gross, gross beef fat, ew.”
This substance was provided to me free of charge by my local butcher.
In return, I must provide him with a sample of the completed pemmican.
Perhaps I shall open a cottage industry in ultra-low-carb snack bars,
together with the butcher! I’ll make millions! Thank you, Amateur
Gourmet!
In order to prepare the pemmican, I had to first render the suet into
grease. Rendering is a cooking method I had not used before. As far as
I can tell, it means “cooking until melted and totally disgusting.” It
takes a very, very long time. In my post-mortem, I discovered that,
really, I should have chopped the suet up into smaller pieces before
beginning the rendering process… but just, ew. I am not sure I could
have brought myself to handle that stuff with my bare hands. After
roughly 45 minutes of rendering, I just gave up on melting all of the
suet the butcher had given me and decided I had enough.
As a side observation: melting fat in a pan smells delicious. But then
you go into the kitchen and see… a pan of nothing but fat. This is not
unlike realizing that the hot guy at the bar is YOUR DAD, EW EW EW.
I also had to pound or shred the dried beef into a substance I like to
call “meat flour.” To do this, I used the traditional tool of my
Native American ancestors: the Cuisinart™. At first, I foolishly
poured all of the jerky into the food processor at once. Chunks of
jerky became trapped between the tines of the processor and the wall
of the bowl, and I narrowly avoided burning out the motor before
discovering the problem. After that, I produced the meat flour in
smaller batches.
I tossed a few handfuls of dried cherries in with the final batch of
meat flour, to fend off the scurvy.
The tallow (“melted suet grease ew ew ew”) had to be drained through a
cheesecloth before I mixed it in with the meat flour. I have no
cheesecloth, so I used a paper towel, after performing the appropriate
ritual so as not to anger my ancestors. Then… I mixed the fat and the
meat flour together.
It would appear that the butcher provided me with way more than the
single pound of suet I had requested, because the fat I had melted
seemed to be more than enough for the task. Maybe he couldn’t bring
himself to handle it enough to cut it into smaller chunks, either. I
mashed the meaty mixture into a colorful dish to set, like something
significantly less disgusting – for example, fudge. In a feeble
gesture toward appeasing cardiologists everywhere, I sopped some of
the fat off the top with more paper towels.
Finally, after a few hours of cooling, it looked… exactly the same.
I mustered up the courage to eat some and cut off a bar. Then I
chickened out and fed it to my daughter, instead. She took the piece
with enthusiasm. “Pemmican?” she asked.
“Yes, honey. Is it good?”
“No, it’s yucky, mommy” she replied. Not a promising first review.
Then again, this child also feels that pancakes are yucky, so she
might not be a reliable source.
I braved a bite myself. And you know? It’s not bad. A little on the
soft and crumbly side; salty and sweet together. Tradition says you
can eat pemmican as-is, or you can pan-fry it, or boil it into a kind
of… meat porridge. If I can’t give enough of it away to the butcher,
my unsuspecting in-laws, or the birds, I may try all of these variants
on preparation. Surprisingly, the finished product doesn’t seem much
greasier than a good pie crust. In all, it’s a lot like… a big chunk
of Bacos!
And it would *totally* beat starving to death.
Harry’s Entry
Growing up on Long Island, there was rarely a Sunday morning without bialys gracing our breakfast table. What? Bialys? Don’t you mean bagels? No, I speak of the long lost brother of the bagel. I speak of the crusty, chewy, yeasty goodness of a different European bread. A savory bread that doesn’t have a hole, but rather an indentation where sweet white onion rests. A circular bread that is not boiled like the more popular bagel, but baked for a short period of time in a high temperature oven. A bread that is no longer being made the way it originally was. A bread that is rarely known outside of New York. A bread whose origins lie in a time when the term “lo-carb” didn’t exist. A bread that has all but disappeared from the culinary landscape. I recently read Mimi Sheraton’s “The Bialy Eaters, The story of a bread and a lost world” and was inspired to attempt to recreate and taste the rich history of what was once known as Bialystocker Kuchen and is now known as the bialy.
Bialys were once a staple of Jewish households in the Polish town of Bialystock. Sadly, the bialy is no longer remembered by today’s residents of Bialystock. Those Bialystockers who were lucky enough to leave before the German occupation of Poland brought the bialy to New York’s Lower East Side. Dozens of bialy bakeries were located in basements of tenement buildings, but today only one bialy bakery remains – Kossars on Grand Street. Kossar’s is known the only place in the world that concentrates on making authentic bialys. I am proud to say that on Friday, there were two places in the world making authentic bialys. Bialystok, I dedicate this bialy baking session to you. I am proud to carry on your tradition in my kitchen and declare with great courage, “I am proud to be a Bialystocker Kuchen Fresser.
According to Sheraton, authentic bialys are made with poppy seeds although this practice did not get carried over to the Lower East Side. I followed the recipe provided in the back of Sheraton’s book. The process itself was a tedious one. We have no mixer so I had to do everything by hand which hurt. The dough had to be worked for twenty minutes. I kneaded for eight minutes and my wife took over for the last thirteen. Exhausting work. It was interesting to learn that today in Kossar’s the dough is still kneaded by hand after the initial mixing. The dough is way too sticky at this point to go into a mixer. The waiting was also tiring. There were three rises which added up to almost five hours. We ended up baking them quite late at night. I was thrilled with the result. The outsides of the heavenly bread were nice and crisp, the inside chewy, the overall texture was floury and the bialy was somewhat salty -just like they used to be.
Catherine’s Entry
When Adam said “cook an historical dish,” I was a bit lost. My family has a lot of family dishes, but being the citizens-of-the-world riffraff we are, nothing really historical gets cooked, which meant I had to go to traditional holiday foods that we don’t really eat much. Coming up is Rosh ha shana, but honey cake is a little boring. Then it hit me! Oznei Haman! The perfect mix of dessert and bloodthirstiness.
Most people probably know these as “Hamantaschen,” (For those of you who don’t know those either, here’s a sample picture) but when we lived in Israel they were called oznei Haman (Haman’s ears), and it stuck in my family. The (abridged) premise behind the cookie is this: Once upon a time, the king of Persia decided to add to his harem as his previous wife refused to dance naked in front of his drinking buddies. The ideal candidate happened to be a Jewish girl named Esther who had been living with her relative, Mordechai. Esther ends up earning the dubious honor of marrying a man too many years her senior (the story doesn’t mention her views on naked dancing) and the Jews rejoice. However, a few years later, the king assigns as his minister one Haman, who is a sworn enemy of the Jews. Surprisingly enough, as this never happens before or after again in Jewish history, this guy wants to destroy all the Jews. He decides to kill off all the Jews of Persia on a certain day, but Esther finds this out, and using her feminine wiles (short version here) convinces the king that Mordechai is good, Haman is evil, and that she herself is Jewish. Haman ends up on the gallows, and to this day we eat Haman’s ears to remember how they were his downfall in listening to bad things about the Jews.
We’re quite a ways from Purim right now, but I haven’t had these in years, and I remember them being quite good… so I went online and found this recipe at the Gems in Israel website.
Dough Ingredients: 1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter or pareve margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. orange juice
2 1/2 – 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 Tsp. salt
Filling Ingredients: 1 cup walnuts
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 Tsp. vanilla
1/2 lemon, quartered and seeded
1/2 orange, quartered and seeded
1 Tbsp. rum
2 figs, roughly diced
1/2 Tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 cup orange marmalade or apricot jam
Preparation: 1. To make the dough cream the butter or margarine with the sugar. Add the egg, vanilla and orange juice and continue to cream until smooth. A food processor is great for this.
2. Add 2 1/2 cups flour baking powder, and salt. Mix or process until a ball of dough is formed, adding flour as needed. Chill for 2-3 hours or overnight.
3. Meanwhile, to make the filling, place all of the filling ingredients in a food processor and pulse until chopped but not pureed. You should have approximately 2 cups. Set aside until the dough is chilled.
4. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease a cookie sheet.
5. Roll 1/4 of the dough out on a lightly floured board to a thickness of 1/8 inch. Cut into 3-inch circles. Place 1 teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. To shape the Hamantaschen, first brush water around the rim of the circle with your finger. Pull the edges of the dough up to form a triangle around the filling and pinch the 3 corners together. Leaving a small triangular opening in the center. Transfer to the cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the tops are golden.
I had a few problems with the recipe–for example, at first I forgot to buy the eggs, and when I tried making the dough without eggs. I figured, maybe it’d be OK and it’d be sort of like sugar cookies in an oznei Haman shape (No, I’ve never made sugar cookies. I figure now they’re not made like this). No luck. After I chilled the dough, it pretty much turned into a buttery, sugary rock. A trip to the student store later, that mistake was corrected. Second of all, the filling was much too complex (and expensive) on my budget, so I just substituted in apricot jam and for some of them, condensed milk. Now, even though I’m a condensed milk maniac, the latter was a mistake–I didn’t quite seal the corners properly and it leaked. It was still good–but not quite your usual hamentaschen. I will say though, that they came out super yummy–and I’d provide pictures, except they’ve all been eaten by ravenous college students. Personally, I looove apricot jam, so that was a perfectly good filling for me. Some people like the poppyseed filling, which is also good–and my mom has an incredible recipe for it, which I’d be glad to share with anyone not voting me off the island :)
No pictures, unfortunately–this was a very hectic weekend as I had a visitor from a galaxy far far away, I mean, Japan, and so this was done in a hurry. But for the next recipe, I promise to provide ample documentation!
Michelle’s Entry
After pondering all of the scary sounding foodstuff of years past
(like vinegar pie!), I decided that I would make something likely to
be yummy. Hence, the Cornish Pasty!
The pasty was a convenience food of the mining town of Cornwall.
References of the pasty’s existence go back to the 1100s.
Traditionally a mix of beef and root vegetables in a crusty shell, the
pasty was easy for tin or copper miners to take along and eat on the
go. It could easily be heated on a shovel with a lantern candle while
in the mines, and then could keep the miner’s hands warm while stored
in his pocket.
The recipe itself is extremely simple (there’s not even real
measurements!), and taken from some web site in Cornwall, where it
claims to be authentic and old and stuff. Let’s start with the crust:
Mix together 1 1/2 cup flour, a pinch of salt and an unspecified
amount of vegetable fat (or lard). Yay, guessing! I tossed in as much
authentic Crisco as seemed reasonable and mashed it all together
“until the mixture is so fine that it falls through the fingers”. You
know, the flour falls through the fingers before I even add the
unspecified amount of fat. Go figure. Once I had a nice crumby looking
flour and fat mixture, I added a little water (and then a little more
water, and then just a bit more water) to form a solid dough ball of
tasty pasty pastry.
Now time to roll the dough! The recipe says to roll it into circles
the size of a plate. I chose a salad plate, just because dinner plates
seemed really large. My ball of dough made 5 neat circles, thus
guaranteeing that my husband and I would be fighting over the last
one. Hopefully, the argument won’t be, “No! YOU take it!”
In the mines, it was not uncommon for the miners to discard the last
part of the pasty crust for the “Knockers” in the mines. The Knockers
were apparently little mine gnomes that caused misfortune unless you
fed them, then they became good luck. I imagine that the misfortune,
at the time, was eating a bunch of arsenic after your dirty mining
fingers held onto the pasty to eat it. Yum. Good to discard it, I
suppose, but seems like a waste after all the effort to make the
crust.
After setting the crust aside, I went to work on the filling: Chuck
steak, two large potatoes, half large swede, one large onion, salt and
pepper to taste, water.
Half large WHAT? Given my ethnic background, I was a little disturbed
at this point. My dad is a large half-Swede, does that count? And
would he really consent to being chopped up for pasties?!!? I don’t
think so.
Luckily, a swede turned out to be a yellow turnip. Also known as a
rutabega. Well, heck, I know what a rutabega is. Why didn’t they just
say that in the first place? My grocery store had many large
rutabegas, but, having never cooked rutabega before, I have no idea
what I would do with a leftover half. So I chose a somewhat
less-than-large specimen with the intent of using all of it. The
vegetables could be wither diced or sliced. I diced them, because it’s
more photogenic. Then, I chopped up the steak. I don’t even know how
much steak. Whatever the package happened to be. It still seemed like
there were way more potato, onion and swede bits than beef bits.
At this point, I started to get concerned. This is a LOT of filling.
For 5 salad-plate sized crusts? No way! I have a giant giant bowl of
filling here!
I made five little pasty pastry pockets by putting filling on each
dough circle then sealing with a little water. There’s some argument
about whether the traditional pasty gets sealed on the top or on the
side. Top’s easier, decision made. After cutting little slits in the
top to let steam escape, I think I was supposed to brush the pasties
with egg. I forgot. Oh well.
And, as predicted, I still have half the filling left. Oh well, I
guess I can always make more pasty crust later. Much later.
After baking in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes, the pasties were
golden and yummy-looking. They were supposed to bake for 40 minutes –
good thing I checked on them! Despite having no other seasoning but
salt and pepper, they’re surprisingly flavorful. And very easy for
your Cornish miner to take with him!
Dallas’s Entry
Ok, for this just follow the link (the text is captioned beneath the pictures so I can’t copy and paste it here): The Link. Here’s a sneak peek:
Wendy’s Entry
You know what’s in my blood? Scotland. I know it’s true cause my Grandma speaks with a Scottish accent So when the words “historic dish” are spoken in my immediate vacinity, I am genetically programmed to automatically think “haggis”. I was galdarned convinced that I would make haggis for round one of this competition – nevermind that I wouldn’t have eaten it. It’s history and entertainment in one sheep’s stomach of glory.
Alas, three phone calls and one visit to various butchers later, I was out of luck. No one could get me the disgusting supplies I needed, and even if they could it would take days. Days, I tell you! Well, days just aren’t a luxury in Amateur Gourmet Survivor 2004, so I moved on. I moved on to a nation of spice and sombreros, Scotland’s closest relative – Me-hee-co! Cause nothin says cousin like Scotland and Mexico. (Awkward silence)
I once had a crazy teacher who told me that the Mexicans combine chicken, chocolate and chilies. I thought that was silly. When you think chocolate, you think of caramel, nuts and maybe pizza. But chicken and chilies? Preposterous. Well amigos, here is the story of my crazy concoction: Mole de Poblano.
I was enjoying a laid-back Sunday with my television when my ball and chain burst through the door. “Woman!” he said. “Get in the kitchen and make me some dinner”.
(surprised pic)
My mind raced. The only ingredients I happened to have were chicken, imported chilies and chocolate, as well as some random (but convenient) spices and vegetables. What a disaster! My only choice was to throw them all into one chicken explosion. So I did. And it was just meh.
You’re right, that didn’t happen to me. But legend has it that it did happen to 16th century nuns in Mexico who had no banquet to offer the visiting Archbishop. The nuns began to combine everything edible they could find, and killed the only turkey they owned. The result was a uniquely flavoured dish that their almighty guest quite enjoyed, thank you. Oh and by the way, it became the national dish of Mexico.
So here’s my anti-climactic attempt at Mole.
I was supposed to de-stem and tear up 1.5 ounces each of mulato, ancho and pasillo chilies. But since I don’t exactly know how much an ounce is (ok, 1/16th of a pound) and the store didn’t have a scale, I estimated. Here’s the dried chilies, talking about the weather:
(chili pic)
While those were soaking in boiling water, I also boiled chicken with garlic and onions. The recipe said to use a whole separated bird, but since I’m a chicken elitist I only used breasteses. Boil, my pretties!
(raw chicken boil)
After a soothing bath, the chilies are forced into a blender with tomatoes, onions, garlic, cinnamon, aniseed, coriander, sugar (breath), almonds, dry roasted peanuts – and the best/weirdest part: chocolate.
(chocolate pic)
Right, there was supposed to be sesame seeds in there too but my memory sucks sometimes and I bought sunflower seeds instead. Anyway, my blender didn’t puree very well at first and instead just sat there. Observe the layers:
(blender layer pic)
With the help of a beating courtesy of my wooden spoon, the blender started some puree action. I cheered him on:
(blender coach pic)
I poured the strange smelling concoction into a cast iron pan and it boiled for a minute on its own, but when I returned I noticed it had painted my wall saucy. Bubble action equals mess:
(mess pic)
Adding the chicken (which I had browned after boiling, I forgot to say), this dish of national importance simmered for a half hour (ok, longer cause my friend called):
(simmering pic)
Finally, the poser mole was served on a torilla while the Mexican national anthem played robustly in the background. This is me doing a senorita pose but you can’t really tell.
(final)
So in conclusion, once wrapped in tortilla, it wasn’t bad. Sort of good, actually. The sauce on its own was strange, but it could be because I don’t know what an ounce is. Go Canda!
Amanda’s Entry
My historical recipe is of bread pudding. This particular pudding was
recorded sometime around 1800 by Mrs. Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s
mother. Mrs. Austen enjoyed rhymes. She didn’t consider herself a poet
but submitted this recipe-as-a-poem to her daughter-in-law for a
homebook she was making:
If the vicar you treat,
You must give him to eat,
A pudding to his affection.
And to make his repast
By the Cannon of Taste,
Be the present receipt your direction.
First we take 2 lbs. of bread,
Be the crumb only weigh’d,
For the crumb, the good wife refuses.
The proportions, you’ll guess
May be made more or less,
To the size the family chuses.
Then it’s sweetness, to make;
Some currents you take,
And sugar, of each a half pound.
Be butter not forgot,
And the quantity sought
Must the same with your currents be found.
Cloves & Mace you will want,
With rose water, I grant,
And more savory things, if well chosen.
Then to bind each ingredient,
You’ll find it expedient
Of eggs to put in a half dozen.
Some milk, don’t refuse it,
But boil, as you use it,
A proper pint for it’s maker.
And the whole, when complete,
[Shall be ready to eat]
With care, reccommend the baker.
In praise of this pudding,
I vouch [it] a good one,
Or should you suspect a fond word,
To every guest,
Perhaps it is best
Two puddings should smoke on the board.
The two puddings-yet-no!
For if one will do,
The other comes in out of season;
And these lines, but obey,
Nor can anyone say,
That this pudding’s without rhyme or reason.
You’ll notice that while the recipe gives you portion sizes for all
the ingredients, it doesn’t tell you how to put it all together. Lucky
for me, I’ve made bread pudding before and it’s pretty easy. I decided
to cut the recipe in half, since I don’t have a big family and
housemaids and butlers to feed. I started with a 1lb loaf of bread and
cut it into slices. I buttered each side and cut the slices into small
squares. I lined the bottom of my buttered dish with bread cubes and
then sprinkled them with a quarter cup of sugar. On top of that I
sprinkled raisins. It called for currants but Publix didn’t have any
and I didn’t have time to drive to the farmers market. Raisins are
pretty close. Then another layer of bread, sugar and raisins. I boiled
my milk as the recipe calls for (and as you should do anyhow) and
whipped it together with 3 eggs. I’m guessing that boiling the milk
was likely the most important step in 1800, so that none of your
family members or guests died from your pudding. Yummy bacteria. I
also added vanilla because I didn’t have rosewater and the guys at
Publix looked at me like I was crazy when I asked them where I could
find it (in fact, they directed me to Rose’s Lime Juice. . . ). Lastly
I was supposed to sprinkle the top with clove and mace but I was out
of mace so I used nutmeg instead. Baked for 60 min at 325 until set.
I’m not a huge bread pudding fan but my dad is and he said it was
delicious. =)
Nick’s Entry [Which was slightly late, but he’s forgiven because of its religious nature. Religion makes us forgive.]
What do you get when you add bread, wine, 12 guys and just a hint of
Jesus? The last supper! If you take the yeast out of the bread
Ãequation, you get matzoh, and THAT folks is what I was going for
tonight. I figure if I consume matzoh, red wine, and some lamb (ya know,
for good measure), I should be able to reasonably duplicate The Last
Supper. That said, here we go!
For the purposes of proper investigation, and because I incorrectly
thought that there was a needed photograph of the recipe, here we have, a
recipe photograph.
Must get ingredients. Flour was needed – wheat for the matzoh, a/p
because I was out.
¸
There’s mention of fish in the bible, two in fact, so we can’t leave those out!
A little bit of lamb, and we should be good to go. (I didn’t think they would give me just what I needed of the
wrapped, so I went with the steaks)…
Onward!
Here we have the hardware …
Here we have the players …
And here we have me in the early stages of creation (pun unintended)!
There was measuring…
There was sifting…
There was mixing…
Then there was a molded disc…
Then there was rolling…
And thensome frightening action with a rolling pin before pricking the
matzoh!
It’s pricked! Oh the conception jokes that I’m tempted to make, but fear
the eternal flames of Hell…
Then the baking!
The Passion of The Christ, The Something of The Matzoh
Look how thin! And delectable! And cardboardish! (That’s how I knew I
had it right).
The lamb went well with the asparagus, and both went well with the
matzoh.
It
was my first time with all 3 of the objects on the plate,
and that all turned out reasonably successful was both astounding and
encouraging.
I was thrilled with the meal, and that my dinner companion
was satisfied (I’m trying to date her). We concluded the meal with her
being full, and to make sure that we didn’t blaspheme more than necessary, we used the remainder
of her meat to form a cross.
The END!