HFF 3.7 Faux Foods

The Challenge: Faux Foods

The Recipe: I spent a lot of time procrastinating this one, trying to decide between mock clotted cream or perhaps Welsh rarebit, but finally opted to make Mock tomata sauce from the New Family Receipt Book. I served the sauce over a pork cutlet.

The Date/Year and Region: 1810, London [cutlet: 1861, also London]

How Did You Make It: I made a tiny batch, using a single apple.  After roasting the apple, I removed the skin and core, and ground up the apple flesh as best I could in a mortar and pestle. Having no chili vinegar available, I added 1 Tbsp of red wine vinegar, and a generous dash of chili powder. [I should have added the tumeric at this point, but after purchasing all of the other ingredients and getting started, I could not ind the tumeric I thought I had on hand. Since this seems to be mostly for coloring the sauce, I decided to skip it rather that stop to buy some.]  This produced ~ 4 oz of apple mush/liquid; I added 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (which was probably to much), 1 section of a clove of garlic, and about 1/4 of a shallot [by proportion, it should have been 1/8 oz of shallot and 1/32 oz garlic; I couldn't practically measure such small amounts, and so estimated].  The ingredients were then heated to a boil on the stove, after which the garlic and shallots (and larger apple bits) were removed.

I served the sauce with a pork cutlet, roughly prepared according to Beeton's instructions (1861): remove the bone, add pepper, broil until cooked (by not dry), then salt and serve with tomato sauce.

Time to Complete: I roasted the apple for about 40 minutes (probably longer than was needed), and spent another 20 preparing the sauce (meanwhile broiling the meat). Most of the prep time went into trying to pulp and mash the apple--I think that using the proper tools would expedite this to a certain extent, but that this is a recipe that would be more efficient on a larger scale.

Total Cost: At such a small scale, the amount of meat, shallot, apple, etc. totaled about $4.

How Successful Was It?: Fairly. The vinegar and spice made a very credible tomato odor and flavor, and even without the tumeric, the color was closer than I expected. The texture was a bit coarse (I needed to pulp the apples better), and I think I used too much cayenne (or possibly too much chili), as the sauce was about 3 stars hotter than I would like. In the right circumstances, I might try this one again (specifically to interpret food substitutions/preservation).  The cutlet broiled longer than called for (15 minutes instead of 9 minutes, as it was not fully cooked in that time); moreover, I used a modern stove' 'broil' setting instead of a gridiron on a fire.

How Accurate Is It?: Ish? The lack of tumeric and the apple choice likely affected the flavor, which the texture definitely suffered for want of a hair sieve. 

Except for the burning of too much cayenne,
it was fairly tasty. Surprisingly tomato-like, too.