HFF 5.7: Offal-ly Good

 

The Challenge: Offal-ly Good. Make a dish with offal or using parts of an ingredient that you normally wouldn't cook with. Watermelon rinds, seed pods, or anything edible-but-unexpected is on the table.  

The Recipe: Garbage from Harleian M.S. 279 "Potages Dyvers", as printed in Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books 

xvij Garbage Take fayre garbagys of chykonys as þe hed þe fete þe lyuerys an be gysowrys washe hem clene an caste hem in a fayre potte an caste þer to freysshe brothe of Beef or ellys of moton an let it boyle an a lye it wyth brede an ley on Pepir an Safroun Maces Clowys an a lytil verious an salt an serue forth in the maner as a Sewe. 

In more modern spelling: 17. Garbage. Take fair garbages of chickens, as the head, the feet, the livers, and the gizzards, and wash them clean and cast them in a fair pot, and cast thereto fresh broth of beef or else of mutton and let it boil and allay it with bread and lay on pepper and saffron, mace, cloves, and a little verjuice and salt and serve forth in the manner as a sewe [stew?].

The Date/Year and Region: English, c.1430-1440

How Did You Make It: I saved the organs from the 4 boyl'd chickens made the previous night, as well as the remnants of one carcass (to substitute for the head/feet, which my cooking mentor recommended). Not being able to find any beef or mutton bones in the store(s), I used beef bouillon cubes for the beef broth. The meat and bones were added to the broth, and then boiled over the fire by my kind and able assistant. I added the pepper, saffron, mace, cloves, and salt just before serving. The bones were also removed prior to serving.    

Time to Complete: No time pieces were available, but it seemed ~ 1 hour-ish.

Total Cost: Unsure. The bouillon was about $2, but the chickens were purely left-over.

How Successful Was It?: It tasted great, though I still don't care for the texture of chicken hearts. I'd be tempted to copy the flavor profile for a chicken stew without organ meat. The spices were lovely with the chicken.

How Accurate Is It?: I purposefully substituted the carcasses of the left-over boiled chicken for the head/feet, after a long discussion with Friend-Who-Raises-Chickens. The reasoning is that the bones and cartilage and scraps of meat in the carcass should provide a similar flavor/thickening property as the head/feet, without the necessity of cleaning blood and feather off a fresh-killed chicken head (or assorted-barn-yard-matter off the feet). I'm also still working on the whole 'cooking with meat' thing, so I think this was the right choice for me. I omitted the bread on purpose since some of the diners need to avoid gluten/carbohydrates, and the verjuice on accident (I'd brought apple cider vinegar as a substitute for it). On the other hand, I couldn't find my ground cloves, and so used my mortar and pestle to grind up whole cloves, which was very fun. 

Garbage (pottage)