Wednesday 15 July 2015

To make a Salmon Pie

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This salmon pie was really good and very easy to make. I cheated a bit with modern conveniences such as ready made pastry, and the lobster was from a can but that all makes it really simple, I served it up as part of a dinner party and 'twas well-received accompanied by a glass of Sack on ice.

To make a salmon pie.

MAKE a good crust, cleanse a piece of salmon well, season it with salt, mace and nutmeg, lay a little piece of butter at the bottom of the dish, and lay your salmon in. Melt butter according to your pye; take a lobster,boil it,pick out all the flesh, chop it small, bruise the body, mix it well with the butter, which must be very good; pour it over your salmon, put on the lid and bake it well.

funny thing is, she spells 'pie' with an i in all the titles of the pie recipes, but in the body of the recipe it's spelled 'pye'. Odd quirky spelling was usual in the 18th century, Samuel Johnson did his best to homogenise spelling but it took a while before it caught on.

For this recipe I lined a terracotta oven dish with puff pastry sheets and then put in the butter. I used two salmon fillets, seasoning them as Hannah says to. I don't want to boil a lobster because it's really cruel, so I decided a can of lobster meat would be better. Then I don't have to ' pick out all the flesh' and 'bruise the body'  - that's been done for me by the brave fisher folk. If you can't find a can of lobster meat then red crab meat is just as good. melt butter in a pan and fry lobster/crab briefly, add a bit of creme fraiche or ricotta or perhaps a little white sauce to make it a little softer and accentuate the taste, otherwise you will need a LOT of butter.







Saturday 4 July 2015

Or this way, beans ragoo'd with cabbage


Stuffing a huge cabbage in the middle of a heatwave.
I had to do something with this cabbage, I had grown it in my allotment and brought it home and since it was too big for the fridge it just sat there on the counter wilting depressingly in the heat. I found this recipe among the bean recipes and I thought it sounded pretty and would make good use of a cabbage. It's intended as a side dish, flanking the inevitable five-dish Georgian meat extravaganza, but it good on it's own too.
 I adapted this recipe at certain points to a more modern taste and adjusted the vegetable to what was growing and ripe in my allotment, but basically I followed the instructions set out by Hannah two hundred and something years ago.
God it was hot yesterday. My brain has turned to Apple Pupton.

Take a nice little cabbage,about as big as a pint bason; when the outside leaves, top, and stalks are cut off, half boil it, cut a hole in the middle pretty big, take what you cut out and chop it very fine, with a few of the beans boiled, a carrot boiled and mashed, and a turnip boiled; and mash all together, put them into a saucepan, season them with pepper, salt and nutmeg, a good piece of butter, stew them a few minutes over the fire, stirring the pan often. In the meantime put the cabbage into a sauce-pan, but take great care it does not fall to pieces;put to it four spoonfuls of water, two of wine, and one of catch-up;have a spoonful of mushroom -pickle, a piece of butter rolled in flour, a very little pepper, cover it close, and let it stew softly til it is tender;then take it up carefully and lay it in the middle of the dish, put your mashed roots in the middle to fill it up high, and your ragoo around it. You may add the liquor the cabbage was stewed in, and send it to the table hot. this will do for a top, bottom, middle or side -dish.


I used different vegetables for my ragoo, I used what I had harvested from my allotment and what was in season. I had turnips, courgette, broccoli, broad beans and peas, I boiled the turnips and broccoli and beans first and then put all of them together in a frying pan with the cabbage I cut from the middle, until it was soft enough to be mashed. I steamed the cabbage in a tall pressure cooker pan which worked very well, and instead of catchup (I will be trying to make this at some point, it's a kind of strong tasting mushroom chutney) and mushroom pickle I used bouillon cubes and a splash of balsamic vinegar and two fat cloves of garlic. The liquor the cabbage was boiled in was very good and gave a great taste to the ragoo when it was poured all over it.
It's spectacular when it's served and the taste is very good- different to what we're used to and  evocative of a different age.