HFF 6.14: Waste Not, Want Not

The Challenge: Waste Not, Want Not. Try a dish that reduces waste somehow, such as re-purposing leftovers or using parts of a plant/animal that you wouldn't normally cook.

The Recipe: Rapes in Potage from the Forme of Curry

Take rapus and make hem clene and waissh hem clene. quare hem [2]. parboile hem. take hem up. cast hem in a gode broth and seeþ hem. mynce Oynouns and cast þerto Safroun and salt and messe it forth with powdour douce. the wise [3] make of Pasturnakes [4] and skyrwates. [5]

[1] Rapes, or rapus. Turneps. [2] quare hem. Cut them in squares, or small pieces. V. Gloss. [3] in the wise, i.e. in the same manner. Self or same, seems to be casually omitted. Vide No. 11 and 122. [4] Pasturnakes, for parsnips or carrots. V. Gloss. [5] skyrwates, for skirrits or skirwicks."

Of the "powdour douce", the editor remarks: "In short, I take powder-douce to be either powder of galyngal....or a compound made of sundry aromatic spices ground or beaten small, and kept always ready at hand in some proper receptacle." 

I'm counting this recipe because it involved making a stock out of the vegetable peelings, which felt very efficient.

The Date/Year and Region: c.1390, England

 

How Did You Make It: On a rather large scale. With no set proportions, I ended up searching through multiple modern soup and stew recipes to get an idea of how many vegetables I needed per serving, and opted to try 1/2 parsnip, 1/2 turnip, 1/2 onion, 1 carrot and 1/2 cup stock per person, and then rounding up the total number of people I would be cooking for (20-25 to 30), so make sure there was plenty for everyone. I then ran out of space in my cooking vessels, and so dropped from 1 carrot to 1/2..

 

I started by peeling and slicing the onions, and putting these in a saucepan to brown with a dash of olive oil. I then set about peeling and chopping the parsnips, turnips, and carrots into 1/2" sort-of-cubes. While I worked, I parboiled the turnips, parsnips, and carrots that were already prepared, and threw the peels and odd ends of the vegetables into a stockpot with water, a head of garlic, 5 green onions, 8 marigold flowers, a generous handful of dried rosemary, and nearly a half-gallon (dry) of fresh herbs: mostly parsley, and thyme, with a bit of sage, chives, marjoram, and oregano. The flowers were used in lieu of saffron for color, based on other recipes from this period which use marigold.

 

Once the vegetables were all parboiled, I strained the stock, added the onions, turnips, parsnips, and carrots, and set the pottage to all cook together in my two largest stockpots. I then set about preparing the powder douce, using 1 Tbsp each of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, sugar, long pepper, galyngal, nutmeg, and grains of paradise.*  Since I needed to serve this at an event, I then got to cool and refrigerate the mostly-cooked pottage, transport it to the event, and bring it back up to boiling on a fire (campstove) before serving. I made the spice mixture available for each diner to add as much as they desired (generally somewhere between a half and a whole spoonful per bowl).

 

*The book names cinnamon, mace, cloves, galyngal, pepper, long-pepper, ginger, cubebs (?), grains of paradise, nutmeg, and caraway in difference receipts. Last time I made a recipe calling for powder douce, I noted that Wikipedia gives "grains of paradise, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and galangal" and "ginger, cinnamon, cloves and sugar [+/-galangal and long pepper]" as other options for the powder douce. I liked how the equal proportions of spices worked in my previous use of this seasoning, so I repeated it here.

 

Time to Complete: A long time. At least 4 hours of peeling root vegetables, while the stock boiled and the vegetables parboiled, another half-hour of cooking the pottage all together, and then about a half-hour to re-heat to boiling before serving.

 

Total Cost: $32 for 30-odd servings (which fed some two dozen people with leftovers).

 

How Successful Was It?: No one died, and everyone who commented said they enjoyed it .So, either it was successful, or this was a very polite reenacting crew. Given the option, 100% percent of diners chose to include the spices. The most common remark was comparing it to different east Asian sweet-and-sour dishes. I noticed that the parboiling step removed some of the bite I associate with parsnips and turnips, leaving a mellow but recognizable flavor. The spices suited it quite well--a little odd to me, but perfectly palatable. I recommend serving it with bread.

 

How Accurate Is It? The main departure I made was combining the rapus and pasturnakes (turnips, parsnips, and carrots) rather than making a pottage of only one of them. Following Quin's advice for getting stronger flavor, I added the step of browning the onion in olive oil, which is neither called for nor prohibited in the text. I also used a home-made vegetable stock instead of a "good broth" (which I'm reading as implying bones) in order to make the whole recipe both vegan and gluten-free, which was needed for the particular group. 

 

On the positive side, I think my decision to add the spices at the end fits with the instruction  to "messe it forth with powdour douce", ie, that the spices are to be added when it is served. As far as the year goes, I made this late 14th century recipe for a 16th century event, BUT, it was served to people portraying Queen Elizabeth I's court, and the antiquarian's note claims that this recipe book was once owned by the queen. Which I thought was nice. Also, all of the ingredients are in season--I have turnips, parsnips, onions, and carrots to be harvest from the garden, just not in the quantities needed, while the other herbs did come directly out of the garden.

Side note: I manged to forget to take pictures of the finished product, but here's the in-progress pictures.

Ingredients assembled.

Stock in progress, as every bowl in my kitchen slowly fills with parboiled vegetables.