Medieval Jammie Dodgers (Fruit Tarts)

This was another dry run for our Game of Thrones feast, with a recipe loosely based on the one in A Feast of Ice and Fire. It was too sweet for my taste, though met with approval from another tester. Personally, I would remove all of the honey in the recipe in future.

Ingredients
Makes about 15 small tarts
For the "medieval sweet dough":
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
pinch salt
1 tsp whole cloves
1 cup water

For the topping:

~150 ml sweet red wine (e.g. Shiraz)
1/3 cup honey (optional; see advisory statement above)
3 Tbsp red wine vinegar (or substitute 1.5 Tbsp of red wine and 1.5 Tbsp of white vinegar)
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
2 Tbsp chopped prunes
2 Tbsp currants
2 Tbsp raisins
4 Tbsp dates

Procedure

For the dough:

Boil the water and cloves together over high heat, then strain & pour the water into a cup. Stick it in the freezer for a few minutes until it gets cold. Meanwhile, combine the other ingredients. When the clove water is chilled, start pouring it into the flour mixture slowly, mixing it in with your hand until it's wet enough to have the consistency of a dough, but not so wet that it's too hard to work with.

Roll out the dough until it's about 1/8" thick and use the top of a jar or a cookie cutter to cut it into approximately 2" diameter circles. Set aside for now.

For the topping:

Bring the the wine, honey, and vinegar to a boil. Reduce the heat to a low simmer, and skim off any foam that comes to the top. Add in all of the other ingredients and simmer until the liquid forms a thick syrup (should reduce to about half its original volume).

TAAAAARTS:
Heat oil in a skillet over high heat (about 1/8" deep in the pan). Prepare a plate with a paper towel on it. Reduce heat to low and gently place the tarts, one at a time, in the oil, frying until the dough forms a crispy, lightly golden cracker. Place each tart on the paper towel to drain off the excess oil. Top with the fruits and syrup and serve hot.

Honeyed Chicken with Chickpea Salad (for Game of Thrones feast)

Before we even get to the recipe, I just want to explain how happy I am right now. And to do that, I think you need to understand something about me. Here it is. I love chicken. No, seriously, I love chicken. I love the golden, crispy, salty skin and the tender, juicy meat. I love how chicken can go with almost any meal. But mostly it's that golden, crispy, salty skin. The only downside to chicken, until last night, was that while I've enjoyed many a delicious rotisserie in my day, I've never been able to produce a whole chicken that wasn't either: 

• partially undercooked, 
• partially overcooked, 
• encrusted in an oily, undelicious mush more resembling a burnt latex glove coated in grease than the skin described earlier, or
• simply tasteless.

That has finally changed! And this in a poorly designed electric oven! So here it is, the maybe not-so-secret secret to delicious baked chicken:

STONES

That's it. Just take some tiles/stones/whatever (make sure they won't explode in the oven -- you can shell out some dough -- har har -- for a legit pizza stone, or get some household tiles from Home Depot; we used some leftover tiles from our hearth). Put them on the very top rack, and place the chicken on the rack below. About an hour later -- voila, feast.

We made this as a practice run for a Game of Thrones-themed feast we will be hosting in a couple of weeks. This one is definitely a go! OK, now I'm done with the fanfare. Here's the recipe, loosely adjusted from A Feast of Ice and Fire.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken (innards removed)

2 Tbsp butter, melted

1 tsp kosher salt

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp butter
1-2 Tbsp honey
1-2 tsp basil
1/3 cup currants (raisins are an okay substitute if you don't have currants, but are sweeter, so adjust honey accordingly)

Procedure
Place tiles/stones on top rack of oven (so that they're generally covering the whole top rack), placing the top rack as high up as it will go. Preheat oven to 450F. Pat the chicken dry and place it in a glass baking dish. Rub all of the skin with the butter and then sprinkle salt evenly, rubbing it in with your fingers as well. Place on the rack below the tiles and bake for approximately an hour, or until the meat in the breast is cooked to at least 165 degrees. I think this took me about 70 minutes in all.

Meanwhile! Combine the other ingredients in a small pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, for about 20-30 minutes, or until the mixture reduces to about half its original volume. When the chicken is done, add the pan drippings to the pot and simmer for another 5-10 minutes. Pour the resulting gravy over the chicken. Eat with your hands and say dumb medieval-sounding stuff for the rest of the night!

Serving suggestion
Serve with a chickpea salad (adapted from the same book): roasted chickpeas and currants/raisins on a bed of arugula, drizzled with and oil & vinegar dressing.

Reuse & Recycle!
Roasted chicken: the gift that keeps on giving. When you're done feasting, slice off any remaining meat from the carcass. This will be delicious in a sandwich or salad over the next few days. (Pictured: grilled sandwich with chicken breast, roasted chickpeas, muenster cheese, tomato, arugula, and spicy brown mustard.)

Save the carcass for making stock. You can dump the entire carcass into a big stockpot along with an onion or two and a few carrots, cover with water, and simmer, covered, on low heat for a good long while.

Stove-top Flatbreads

This recipe comes from River Cottage Every Day, like a couple of others on this blog. I love it because it is fun and extremely easy/fast. We had it with Indian food the other day, and it served admirably in place of naan. Extra bonus points for being something we can literally throw on top of the wood stove when it's heating the house anyway.

Ingredients
[makes 8 individual flatbreads]
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp canola/vegetable oil
2/3 cup warm water

Procedure
Lightly flour your counter/cutting board/whatever. Combine salt and flour in a bowl. In a separate container, add the oil to the warm water. Pour the oily water into the flour in a thin stream, mixing it in as your pour, until the mixture is a more or less homogeneous dough.

Knead the dough with your hands on your floured work surface for about 5 minutes. (You can use the dough hook on your KitchenAid or whatnot instead, but that's not nearly as fun. And probably won't save you any time or effort when you factor in the extra dish washing.)

It will feel pretty elastic after 5 minutes. Let it rest underneath the overturned bowl for about 15 minutes.

This bread will be much, much better hot, so don't cook it until you're ready to eat. (The rolling process will take about 5-10 minutes and the actual cooking process will take about 2.) When you're about ready to eat, roll the dough into a long sausage and divide it into 8 equal pieces. Keeping the surface pretty floured, roll each piece into a ball with your hands and then roll it out with a rolling pin into a circle (more or less) about 1/8" thick. If they're a bit thicker, that's okay too -- you'll have a slightly chewier bread.










(Note that if you aren't going to be cooking all of the pieces, you can freeze them after you roll them out. For more on that, see the bit about storage, below.)







If you have a woodstove going nice and hot, wipe that clean. If you're not so lucky, heat a cast-iron pan quite hot, then turn the heat down a bit. Ready a plate lined with either a clean tea towel or a double layer of paper towel.

Shake off excess flour and toss the bread onto the pan/stove. After about 2-3 minutes, the dough will start to look a bit hard (or "set" as Fearnly-Whittingstall calls it) on top. Flip the bread over. If it doesn't have nice golden brown patches, flip it back over and give it another 30 or so seconds and try again. (Do not exceed 3-4 minutes though.) Cook it another 45 seconds on this side, and then place it between the towels on your plate to keep it warm and soft.

Eat immediately!


Storage
You can store uncooked dough in the freezer for a long time. To store it, roll out fresh dough and place on a piece of wax paper. Layer however many breads you want to store in between pieces of wax paper and place them in a plastic bag.

Recycling
As Fearnley-Whittingstall points out in the book, if you do end up with some unused and already cooked breads, they won't be that great once they cool. But you can turn them into crackers by brushing them with some herbs/spices and oil, tearing them into smaller pieces, and heating them in the oven at 425F until they get crispy to your liking. Breads brushed with oil mixed with some oregano go well with Mediterranean dishes (like a side for a Greek salad or some stuffed grape leaves).

Pasties (also: an easy puff pastry recipe)

Another experiment brought about because of River Cottage Every Day, even though all we used of that book here was the recipe for cheaty puff pastry. Cheaty because it isn't as complicated as "real" puff pastry, but I couldn't tell the difference between this and any other puff pastry I've tried, especially on those pasties in which the dough wasn't rolled out too thinly.

Puff pastry 
[Makes 6-7 pasties]
2 cups flour
pinch salt
2/3 cup butter, chilled and chopped into small cubes
ice water

[I would recommend adding more salt!]

Procedure
Sift the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Throw in the cold chopped up butter and toss until all the butter chunks are covered with flour. I found it easiest to do this with my hands. Add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing it in with a wooden spoon, until you have just enough liquid to make a firm dough. The butter is still in chunks at this point.

Shape the dough roughly into a rectangular prism with your hands and put it on a well-floured surface. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out in just one direction (away from you is easiest) until it makes a long, flat rectangle -- about 3/8" thick. Fold the top third down and the bottom third up over that (like a letter) so that you have a rectangle that's three layers thick. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat the process. Roll out, fold, and rotate a total of six times. Then cover the dough with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prep the fillings (see below for some examples). When ready, preheat the oven to 375F and pull out the chilled dough and roll it out so that it's about 1/8" thick. Use a plate or pot lid to cut out circles (I used a smaller pot lid, which gave me 6-7 pasties from each rectangle of dough). Spoon the dough just off center, and fold the dough circle in half. Brush the edges of the pastry just a little bit with water and crimp them tightly, making sure the filling is sealed in. I think the more you can fit inside, the better it'll taste, but that's up to you. Brush the tops with an egg wash (use 1 egg beaten together with 1 tablespoon of milk), lay on a greased, foil-lined baking sheet, and bake for about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Fillings 

In this first and unreasonably ambitious experiment, we made four savory and one sweet type of pastie. This is a great medium for shoving it full of whatever leftovers or random ideas you have, so the following filling descriptions are pretty vague -- no exact amounts or instructions. You can figure them out yourself. :) 

1. Mushroom & Barley
   barley
   chopped mushrooms
   cooked spinach
   onions
   salt
   black pepper
2. Chickpeas & Curry
   chickpeas
   boiled chicken
   red pepper
   green beans
   potatoes
   curry
3. Butternut Squash & Chicken
   boiled chicken
   boiled butternut squash, pureed
   potatoes
   raisins (optional)
   onions
4. Keema Matar
   
   I made keema last night with this recipe and used the leftovers for this pasty. :)
5. Butternut Squash, Ricotta, & Raisins
   
   boiled butternut squash, pureed
   ricotta
   brown sugar
   raisins

Peanut Butter Cups

I have had a bad craving for peanut butter covered in chocolate. Seriously guys, it has been unbearable. I went so far as to buy a peanut butter Twix at a gas station late at night but it didn't satisfy the craving. Because it was gross. 

Yesterday, we decided to go to the store to try to get some good chocolate (in particular, I had tried a piece of Lake Champlain's peanut butter filled milk chocolate a few days ago, and I figured no imitation would do to fill the hole in my soul left by not eating more of that bar). And of course, the store was closed by the time we got there. So I finally took matters into my own hands and put this together.

My soul is whole once again. 

Ingredients

• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 5 Tbsp butter
• 3 Tbsp unsweetened peanut butter
• 1 Tbsp powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp butter
• pinch of kosher or coarse sea salt

Procedure

In a double boiler, melt the chocolate chips and (5 tablespoons) of butter together. (See link for more fun with dipping chocolate.) 

Meanwhile, combine the other ingredients (peanut butter, powdered sugar, and 1 tablespoon of butter) in a cup and microwave until soft but not liquidy (took about 50 seconds for me; check the cup after every 20 seconds). 

Prepare something to make the peanut butter cups in. I lined a mini muffin tin with foil, which is convenient because you can pop the foil cups out after you form them. 

Pour in a bit of chocolate to each cup and let it set (about 2-3 minutes in the freezer). Add in about a teaspoon of peanut butter filling, and top with another layer of chocolate. 

Sprinkle just a pinch of salt on top, and put the cups into the fridge to set. They'll be ready in about 15 minutes. If you're in a big hurry, toss them in the freezer for about 5 minutes. 

Note:

How much peanut butter or chocolate goes into each layer is up to you -- if you want a thin layer of chocolate, add only a bit and spread it around evenly. If you want lots of chocolate surrounding the peanut butter, thicken the chocolate layers accordingly.