No more cakes and ale

I remember when rock was young; me and Suzie had so much fun, and I never missed updates or messed with classic songs so they didn't scan correctly anymore and what's up with that? In way of apology, I actually have two posts/three dishes to deal with, so I shouldn't be playing catchup for long. Ha ha, catchup. Wait, I forget to mention tomatoes, so I guess that's not funny. So, uh....

...

Hey, look over there, it's some squashes that kind of look like a penis!

I'm not going to draw a face on those. You may remember from my last post that I had planned on making Autumn Squashes with Apples and Fried Parsley along with my Crostini. Since that failed, I didn't want to do any more cooking that night, because I'm just that petty. The next night was a different story.

I've never cut a squash before, and it was a little harder than I thought it would be. My knife, she is not so sharp. 

Eventually I got the damn thing open, and scooped out the insides. The inside of an acorn squash, ladies and gentlemen. The webbing around the seeds is for serious gross.

The recipe called for the squash to be cut into rounds, but I didn't do that for two reasons. First, I wasn't exactly sure how to cut the entire squash into slices without stabbing myself in the hand. This seemed easier. Second, the recipe itself calls for small squashes, and mine were not exactly small. If you immediately thought back to the first picture, for shame.

And yet, I felt strangely emasculated when I moved on to the butternut.

This one was supposed to be cut in lengths, but I was not about to try slicing my way lengthwise through a foot-long hard object. And you're doing it again, quit that. I can read your mind, and it is filthy.

I also cut up an apple, since that is the last major ingredient.

Trust me, the photo I took of the sliced apple was equally inconclusive.

Oh, and this is how cool I am. I took all the squash seeds, hit them with olive oil and salt, and roasted those suckers in the oven. They were delicious. Better than popcorn, but sadly inefficient.

Back to the actual recipe. Melting butter in olive oil, which is all sorts of crazy levels of decadence. If Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote were going to cook something, they would start with butter in olive oil. Well, they would start with gin, and then maybe some laudanum, and then get someone else to make the food, but my point still stands.

Oh, I cut up an onion, but that was boring so I didn't show it. The onion sautes for a few minutes before the rest of the ingredients go in.

And as it turns out, my pan wasn't big enough for all of the squash. You can see a lot of it hanging out in the background. The pan gets covered, and then everything cooks for an indeterminate amount of time which is a lot longer than the time mentioned in the cookbook.

While the squash and apple cooked with the onion, I started on frying the parsley. The parsley doesn't stay in the oil long enough to get a good picture, so I thought I would be better off trying a video. Behold! [Edi: Or don't behold, the video seems to have stopped functioning.]

Huh. Despite the dramatic toss gesture, that was a lot more anticlimactic than I thought it would be. Either way, this is what it looked like afterwards. Pretty, but also slightly gross and oily. It had a nice crunch, but it mostly tasted like parsley and friedness.

When the squash finally cooks, you stir in apple cider vinegar, toss the parsley on top, and ta da!

I had a lot of squash left over. I need to find something else to do with it.

The verdict: Meh. Ok, so it was partly my fault for not finding smaller squashes. But all of the acorn squash at the store were the exact same size, and the only alternative for the butternut was a specimen that looked like two bowling balls attempting to create a baby bowling ball. Either way, there was still too much for the pan and the end result was a lot of unevenly cooked pieces of squash. In the end, everything tasted exactly like you'd imagine it. Picture a sauteed onion. An apple. Some squash pieces. Think of parsley, and pretend it is crunchy. Now think of those things with some vinegar on them. Done. That's the dish. Not a lot of return for a ton of effort. I'd consider trying it again with smaller, softer squash, except for the minor detail that I don't care enough to do so.

Here's a replacement recipe for you. Take a whole squash of whatever size. Shove it in the oven, which should be super hot. When you start to get worried about your squash, wait at least another half hour, because it's not done yet. Then wait even longer, and finally pull it out of the oven. Cut it in half, toss a bunch of butter on it, and eat the hell out of it. Done.

***

As every good early modern nerd knows, Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday has a way cooler and certainly-not-ridiculous name: Pancake Day! If you have a few hours, I suggest you check out The Shoemaker's Holiday, a ridiculous Elizabethan city comedy by Thomas Dekker. It's sort of about Simon Eyre, supposedly the first Lord Mayor of London to introduce the practice of giving pancakes to apprentices. If you don't have a few hours, you can just read the following bit of Act V, Scene II:

FIRK.  And I’ll promise you meat enough, for simp’ring Susan keeps the larder. I’ll lead you to victuals, my brave soldiers; follow your captain. O brave! Hark, hark!  Bell rings.
ALL.  The pancake-bell rings, the pancake-bell! Trilill, my hearts!
FIRK.  Oh brave! Oh sweet bell! O delicate pancakes! Open the doors, my hearts, and shut up the windows! Keep in the house, let out the pancakes! Oh rare, my hearts! Let’s march together for the honour of Saint Hugh to the great new hall in Gracious Street-corner, which our master, the new lord mayor, hath built.
RALPH.  O the crew of good fellows that will dine at my lord mayor’s cost to-day!
HODGE.  By the Lord, may lord mayor is a most brave man. How shall prentices be bound to pray for him and the honour of the gentlemen shoemakers! Let’s feed and be fat with my lord’s bounty.
FIRK.  O musical bell, still! O Hodge, O my brethren! There’s cheer for the heavens: venison-pasties walk up and down piping hot, like sergeants; beef and brewess comes marching in dry-vats, fritters and pancakes comes trowling in in wheel-barrows; hens and oranges hopping in porters’—baskets, collops and eggs in scuttles, and tarts and custards comes quavering in in malt-shovels.
Enter more Prentices   ALL.  Whoop, look here, look here!
HODGE.  How now, mad lads, whither away so fast?
1ST PRENTICE.  Whither? Why, to the great new hall, know you not why? The lord mayor hath bidden all the prentices in London to breakfast this morning.
ALL.  Oh brave shoemakers, oh brave lord of incomprehensible good-fellowship! Whoo! Hark you! The pancake-bell rings.  Cast up caps.
FIRK.  Nay, more, may hearts! Every Shrove-Tuesday is our year of jubilee; and when the pancake-bell rings, we are as free as my lord mayor; we may shut up our shops, and make holiday. I’ll have it called Saint Hugh’s Holiday.
ALL.  Agreed, agreed! Saint Hugh’s Holiday.
HODGE.  And this shall continue for ever.
ALL.  Oh brave! Come, come, my hearts! Away, away!
FIRK.  O eternal credit to us of the gentle craft! March fair, my hearts! Oh rare! Exeunt.

So yeah. Pancakes. Now, this use to call for a trip to Kathy's or Mrs. Rowe's for pancakes, but these options were not available to me. Now, I could have just headed across the street to Tastee Diner and picked up some pancakes there. Or if I was feeling really adventurous, bust out my pancake cookbook from Bette's Oceanview Diner. But I was not merely adventurous. I was suicidally reckless.


From The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594):

To make Pancakes.
TAke new thicke Creame a pinte, foure or fiue yolks of Egs, a good handfull of flower, and two or three spoonfuls of ale, strain them altogether into a faire platter, and season it with a good handfull of Sugar, a spooneful of Synamon, and a litle Ginger: then take a frying pan, and put in a litle peece of Butter, as big as your thombe, and when it is molten browne, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the further side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hold your pan aslope, so that your stuffe may run abroad ouer all the pan, as thin as may be: then set it to the fyre, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is baked, then turne the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

If there's one thing I need to thank Francine Segan for, it's turning ridiculous nonsense like this into a recipe that a sane person could follow. What you're about to read is not for the faint of heart. First I poured a pint of cream into a bowl. This part was easy. The recipe said a pint, I bought a container labeled "a pint" (or close enough), and poured out exactly all of it. Then I added eggs. I'm going to claim that this picture shows the egg yolks already in the cream, or else it would demonstrate that I can't tell when cream goes bad. TRUE FACT: Despite the fact that I still have trouble boiling vegetables in water, I am a 3rd dan black belt in separating eggs.

Ah, yes, this is my proof of egg use. Despite what the picture seems to show, I erred in the direction of five egg yolks because that was the number of eggs I had. I didn't want my last egg to be lonely. Although, now that I think about it, I could have filmed a stop-motion version of I Am Legend with one egg left in a world of eggshells. I could have drawn a little Vincent Price face on the egg. Maybe next time.

Here's the good handful of flour.

And here's the evil handful of flour from the Mirror, Mirror universe.

Now, the recipe calls for a few spoonfuls of ale, and I was not going to disappoint. My local beer and wine merchant, Fenwick Beer and Wine, has a pretty decent selection of beers from England. I wanted something that seemed slightly authentical, but realized that there was only so much research that I wanted to do while standing in the store in front of the beer. Ditto for trying to find the beer made closest to London. Instead, I settled for checking through BeerAdvocate reviews, and Black Sheep's Riggwelter Yorkshire Ale was the only beer to have both a) an 85 from the Alström Bros. and b) a sheep on the label.

Now this is the part where I'm supposed to strain them all together into a fair platter. I had no idea what that actually meant. Should I have run it through a strainer (not that I have a mesh strainer)? Then what would be the point of all the flour? It seemed silly, but I should have have given it a bit more thought before just stirring it up a bunch. Also, decent beer, would drink again.

In goes the good handful of sugar. The bad handful of sugar was not invited to the christening, which would cause problems for everyone down the line. Seriously, if they had just extended the invite and plied her with alcohol all night, we could have avoided the whole mess with the curse and the thorns and the dragon.

In go the cinnamon and ginger. Don't worry, I removed both spices from their containers before adding to the bowl.

A spoonful of cinnamon makes the medicine get sort of spicy, and you can't breathe in while you take it. I don't know what a spoonful of ginger does, but today is not the day we find out. I cut out the picture of my batter post-whisking because it goes back to looking like it did before the cinnamon and ginger went in.

Apparently my thumb is a little bigger than a tablespoon, which coincidentally is the amount of butter left in the stick I was using. Once it all started browning on the skillet, I poured it out and was a little sad to see it go. I don't know what molten brown is, but I assume it's somewhere in the vicinity of brown and hot.

The recipe tells me to ladle some of my "stuffe" into the pan, and since this blog is pretty family friendly I'm going to assume that they mean the pancake batter. It doesn't exactly coat the pan, but I let it run as far as it is willing to run.

Now, I was supposed to let this dry out as much as it would without burning, but I probably got impatient. Flipped it too early, it fell apart, and wasn't really brown enough. It was also a weird thickness. Too thin for a pancake, too thick for a crepe. Maybe something in the direction of blintzes. Actually, I've been having a terrible time thinking of a way to describe the result, and that's just perfect. If I had realized this at the time, it may have made a difference in the cooking. I ate this delicious mistake.

I started over with a bit more flour in the batter (it had seemed oddly bubbly the first time), and slightly higher heat. The heat was something I was thinking in relation to crepes, but the flour takes the batter in the opposite direction. I have no idea what I was thinking.

TRUE FACT: If you keep spring-powered magnet clips above your stove, one day they will all reach their temperature breaking-point at the same time and suddenly send shards of broken plastic spraying across the kitchen.

This second attempt came out a bit better. I let it brown longer before turning, and I think that was a good idea. I mean, it still fell apart and everything, but it more closely resembled a food item.

Here is said "food item" shoved onto a plate alongside an attempt at letting the batter set pancake-style. The problem was that, at heart, this stuff was no longer pancake batter. So it was just like the other stuff but thicker.

Verdict: No matter how messed up they are, things made of pancake batter are still delicious. I made a few really, really basic mistakes going into this recipe, and they go beyond choices during the cooking process. First, I didn't know what I was making. I should have compared the ingredients I was working with to modern recipes in order to determine what the end result should have been. I'm not saying that I should have stolen measurements for the flour and sugar or anything like that, but I could have seen that "Oh, this many egg yolks and that much cream sounds like this recipe, so that's probably the consistency I'm aiming for." That would have helped to correct for the second problem, which was that I just don't have a lot of experience making pancakes. Back in undergrad I would sometimes make stacks of them for everyone (and for freezing - small pancakes reheat really well in the microwave) but that usually involved Bisquick and often a pancake maker. And it was years ago. So when I saw that my pancake batter was misbehaving in a certain way, I couldn't recognize that it was because of too much flour, or not enough cream, or etcetera. Finally, I didn't do my research on the cooking methods. This was an intentional decision since I thought too much research would take the fun out of everything, but I should have expected to run into issues when I didn't even know how to follow some of the directions.

So I've given myself some homework: fix this recipe and make myself some historically accurate pancakes.


The pancakes (and bacon!) at Mrs. Rowe's are better than the pancakes (and bacon!) at Kathy's, and I will fight anyone who thinks otherwise.