Krapfen

These recipes are from the Mondseer Kochbuch, which was written in the mid 16th C at the Benedictine monastery in Mondsee, Austria. These are the modern German transcriptions from Speisen wie de Äbte und esse wie die Mönche, by Arnold Nauwerck, published in 1998.

40. Wie Man gute Krapfen macht

Willst du eine gescheite Speise machen, so mache einen Tieg aus Eiern und Weißmehl und dicke ihn mit geriebenem Weißbrot. Schäle saure Äpfel und schabe sie größer als Speck zu Hühnern. Mische alles zusammen. Gib die Maße löffelweise in die Pfanne, breite sie mit dem Löffel aus und brate sie in Schmalz oder, falls es kein Fleischtag ist, in Butter und serviere sie.

How to make good Doughnuts

If you want to make a sensible dish, make a bowl out of eggs and white flour and thicken it with grated white bread. Peel tart apples and scrape them larger than bacon on chickens. Mix everything together. Spoon the measurements into the pan, spread them out with the spoon and fry them in lard or butter if it’s not meat day and serve.

This transcription varied somewhat from the next recipe, so I went back to the original German, and double-checked it with Volker Bach, who translates recipes from the original German texts all the time. He thinks the instructions should be interpreted as more like a ravioli recipe, putting the filling into a dough that has been separated. I tried that with a couple, but also did some as if they were more like pirogies, so I could have a thinner dough and more filling.

41. Wie Man Krapfen mit Käse und Speck macht

Reibe Käse, mische ihn mit Eiern und schabe gekochten Speck dazu. Mache einen derben Teig, fülle ihn damit und mach Kräpflein. Backe sie, je nach der Zeit (ob Fasttag oder Fleischtag) in Butter oder in Schmalz und serviere.

How to make donuts with cheese and bacon

Grate cheese, mix it with eggs and shave cooked bacon on top. Make a rough dough, fill it with it and make donuts. Depending on the time (fast day or meat day), bake them in butter or lard and serve.

I fried mine, rather than baking, as I believe it is a more accurate translation.

I used a jumbo egg, about 3/4 c of white flour, and some crushed breadcrumbs to make a dough. I divided it into eight pieces and rolled most of them out. I reserved two to test stuffing more of a ball shape. The apple I used wasn’t particularly sour. I only needed half of one to make four krapfen. I cooked one slice of bacon and chopped up about 1 1/2 oz of cheese for the second batch of four. I cooked them in approximately 2 Tbsp of chicken fat. It was really tempting to combine some of the apple filling with the cheese and bacon.

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Naalbinding socks for Lucia

When my dear friend Lucia de Enzinas was elevated to the order of the Pelican (the highest award for service in our medieval group) recently, she asked for a pair for naalbinding socks. She asked for them just a week before her elevation so they weren’t done in time, but I finally finished them this week.

I used skeins of wool that I had previously dyed with walnut for the brown and something yellow. I think it may have been camomile that I had saved for many years from a group dyeing project my sorely missed friend Etaoin o Fearghal had put together. If so, it is perfect, as it draws together two of the women I care about most, both of whom were/are Laurels and Pelicans.

I have made many socks over the years, but this was the first time I tried working the heel from the top down, then going back to add more onto the ankle. I used the Coppergate/York stitch, which always comes out a bit twisty, but is nice and smooth against the foot. The biggest challenge was making them during a pandemic. I had time to work on them, but getting together regularly to check the fit wasn’t an option. Her feet are smaller than mine, and I can just squeeze them on, so hopefully they will be okay.

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A 14th C Egyptian Hummus Recipe

Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table, a 14th C Egyptian cookbook translated by Nawal Nasrallah, has a whole chapter on hummus. I chose to make himmas kassa (recipe 616).

(616) Recipe for ḥimmaṣ kassā
Boil the chickpeas, and pick out the fine-tasting and tender ones. Put them in a huge wide bowl (jafna), and beat them well with a ladle until they disintegrate into each other. Next, press them through a sieve, and discard the remains, [like the skins, which do not pass through the sieve].
When the chickpeas are ready to use, take salt-preserved lemons (laymūn māliḥ), chop it into small pieces (yufram rafīʿ), and pound it in a stone mortar; but take care to remove all of the seeds. Add sweet olive oil and tahini to this lemon, and stir well. Next, add to them a bit of wine vinegar, aṭrāf ṭīb (spice blend), rue, mint, and a bit of pounded and sifted cumin. Stir all these ingredients, and add the chickpeas to them. Stir all of it well.
Spread the mix in a porcelain bowl (zibdiyya), garnish (yushahhal) with [salt-cured] black olives and olives preserved in brine (mukhallal), toasted hazelnuts, aṭrāf al-ṭīb, and a bit of rue and mint.

I cooked about three cups of chickpeas, but only used about 1 cup of the cooked chickpeas because they were really difficult to push through the strainer. The effort of that alone makes this a luxury dish, in my view.

To the chickpeas, I added half a preserved lemon that I had chopped finely, a tablespoon of tahini and a dollop of olive oil (probably about one tablespoon full), and stirred everything together. I used about 2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar, 1/2 tsp of cumin, and 1/4 tsp each of rue and mint. I also used about 1/2 tsp of the aṭrāf ṭīb which I made by mixing together approximately equal parts of the following ingredients:

• Ground bay leaf
• Nutmeg
• Mace
• Green cardamom
• Cloves
• Long pepper
• Powdered ginger
• black pepper

The original recipe also called for spikenard, betel leaf, rosebuds and Syrian ash, but I didn’t have those.

These are all very flexible amounts, so feel free to adjust to your taste. The essentials are brined lemons, tahini, olive oil, vinegar and cumin, for me. Everything else added nice layers of flavour, but if you don’t have something, or want to add more of a favourite, you should be fine.

As usual, I forgot to decorate with olives, hazelnuts, mint and rue, but I did remember a pretty bowl from Horus Eye Pottery.

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Garden Chicken

I loved the name of this recipe, so when Volker provided a translation, I knew I had to make it. Coincidentally, he published his experiment the same day I tried it. I think his turned out better. I would make it again, with some tweaks to my method.

To cook a garden chicken (Gartenhun)

Take a nicely large, thick and hard cabbage head and cut off the leaves around it carefully. Lay these leaves into a pot and all around the sides so that it cannot burn. Hollow out the cabbage head inside and fill it like a chicken, with onions, bacon or butter, parsley, egg, and cream. Set it into the pot and place several whole leaves into the space above it. Set it into a baking oven or stove (in Backofen oder in eine Bratroer) and let it roast until it turns out done and nicely brown like a roast chicken. (Oeconomia, Book III, p. 57)

I fried four slices of bacon (cut into small pieces) and a chopped onion in butter,. I stirred together three jumbo eggs with a dollop of cream a couple of tablespoons of dried parsley. Six small or medium eggs would have been more appropriate for the time of the recipe, but jumbo is what I had on hand. Then I stirred the egg mixture in with the bacon and onions just long enough to cook them.

I had peeled the outer leaves off a cabbage and cut out the core, but didn’t hollow it out very much. In retrospect, I should have peeled off more leaves and hollowed out more cabbage. The cabbage barely fit in my cooking pot and the filling didn’t reach all parts of the cabbage, as I discovered when I cut it open. Also, more leaves on top would have allowed me to cook the cabbage until it was more tender.

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