In Which I do cook some pork or Making Cormarye

The other day with a nice pork roast in the freezer I gleefully decided it was time to take on a "bigger" medieval recipe!  There was a nice pork roast called Cormarye that called for red wine, garlic and coriander and caraway and I quickly decided on that.  

So I started with a pork roast, I can't remember what type of roast it was but it was a nice three pound chunk of pig flesshe. 

Here's the original recipe:
Take Colyaundre, caraway smale grounden, powdour of peper and garlec ygrounde, in rede wyne; medle alle thise togyder and salt it. Take loynes of pork rawe and fle of the skyn, and pryk it wel with a knyf, and lay it in the sawse. Roost it whan thou wilt, & kepe that that fallith therfro in the rostyng and seeth it in a possynet with faire broth, & serue it forth with the roost anoon.

Here's what I used
3 lb pork roast
one bottle merlot wine
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp caraway seeds
2 tsp salt
3 tsp fresh ground black pepper
5 cloves garlic finely minced
I used my crock pot because I love the crock pot for roasts.  I put the whole bottle of wine in and added the spices and put the pork roast in and I let it marinate overnight.   Then I cooked it till it was well cooked and almost falling apart. It was in the crock pot on low for 5 hours or so I think.    I took the meat out and let it set while I strained the cooking liquid and used it to make a gravy.  I used cornstarch so it wasn't truly "authentic" but flour would have worked well too.   I thought that was too strong for my tastes so I took two cups of chicken broth and added some of the stronger gravy to it to make a gravy with the red wine flavor but not so strong.  Hubby liked the strong gravy better though so it's just personal taste there.    Next time I'd use half chicken broth and half red wine for the cooking liquid instead of the whole bottle of wine.   

I liked the flavor of the meat itself quite well. The meat was tender and moist and had a nice pork and red wine flavor and the coriander and caraway added nice elements to the flavor as well. I would definitely make this again sometime with some changes.  

Here's a picture of the roast(on a chipped plate:P) after it was cooked and had set for fifteen minutes.

The color is from the wine inside it was a lighter more typical color for a pork roast.   Here's a pic of it shredded with gravy

You can see how it's darker on the outside and light on the inside.   I fixed non-medieval california mix veggies and mashed potatoes with it, because I'm too darn lazy to do three dishes at once!!  Maybe one day I'll do a mini-feast and document it but for now one dish at a time will do just fine thank-you-very-much!    Anyway, thank you again for reading!  And farewell till anon when I shall once again take to my kitchen and venture to make some recipes of days long long ago from original sources! 

In Which I am possessed of a Christmas Spirit or Making Medieval Gingerbrede

The Frog of Green house at this moment has been possessed of a holiday spirit of late.   The tree was erected in the living room and adorned with ornaments and tinsel and the smell of (non-medieval) cookies have been wafting from the kitchen.   The other night was a night for gingerbread! I made gingerbread cookies and my version of medieval gingerbread.  I love gingerbread cookies first of all.  I love the molasses and spices and how they are soft and chewy and not overly sweet.   I love making them in gingerbread children shapes and then biting off their limbs and their heads and dunk them in cocoa, I'm just a cookie sadist like that I guess!   But medieval gingerbread is much different then our modern cookie and cake versions.   It was a candy rather then a baked recipe.   And it didn't even always have ginger in it!

Here's the recipe:
Gyngerbrede. Take a quart of hony, & sethe it, & skeme it clene; take Safroun, pouder Pepir, & throw ther-on; take gratyd Brede, & make it so chargeaunt þat it wol be y-leched;then take pouder Canelle, & straw ther-on y-now; then make yt square, lyke as thou wolt leche it; take when thou lechyst hyt, an caste Box leaves a-bouyn, y-stkyd ther-on, on clowys. And if thou wolt haue it Red, coloure it with Saunderys y-now.

So to make this I took two slices of store bought bread and toasted them.  I toasted them first at a medium temp then at a low temp to get them really toasty without burning them.    Then I grated them with a cheese grater.   It sounds odd but it worked well to make them into bread crumbs.   Then I heated about 1/4 cup of honey(I eyeballed it and didn't measure it)on medium heat and watched it and let it boil and skimmed the foamy stuff off the top for several minutes then I added several good shakes of ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and pepper to the honey.   Then I added the breadcrumbs until it held together well and then I pressed it out to about about 1/4 inch think onto aluminum foil I'd greased. Then I let it cool and cut it into diamond shapes.   

I liked this, it was spicy and chewy had a nice flavor from the honey and it had kind of candyish quality about it.  I'll definitely make it again, and try some variations on it (like leaving out the cinnamon) and maybe adding some butter, but I really liked it. 

 Here it is cut into diamonds

Here it is before I cut it out

Thanks much for reading, I hope there's happy holiday activities going on in your castle this festive season of the year!  Farewell till anon when I take to my kitchen to prepare another medieval recipe from scratch :)

Here's after I pressed it out