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Dutch "fish" apple pie
Oct. 5th, 2013 12:44 amFor those of you in the SCA, I will go into more detail on this in an upcoming column in the Kingdom newsletter. But for the rest of you, here's some pure food geekery!
Long story short - I am happy to have an heirloom apple tree. In fact, it is the oldest known variety to still exist - white pearmain - dating back to 1066. This year, I was pleased to get a pretty good crop of apples. Not wanting to just waste them, I wanted to do some sort of cookery project. And what better project for an ancient variety of apples than a period recipe?!
But what to make? Tempting as it is, I wasn't about to just turn them into a Dutch apple pie (delicious as that sounds). But then a thought occurred to me - I DO have access to a 15th century Dutch cookbook. I wonder what they call for in their apple pies? So I checked. And when I searched for apples, I was pretty intrigued to run into a recipe for a "fish pie for lent". Long story short, fish is allowed on Lent. And in this odd cookbook, there is a recipe - not for actual fish - but for an apple filling that could be baked into a pie sculpted to look like a fish. Specifically...
To make formed fish during lent
Crush in a mortar five or six apples, peeled and cored. Add sugar, ginger and cinnamon, and add some pound almonds or toasted gingerbread with some saffron. Bake this in oil. Or make a big fish: bake this in the oven, painted and with some holes in it.
CANDYLAND! That's the project!
So I started with some apples...
After following the directions to peel and core the apples, I added all the other ingredients (choosing the almond angle), along with the saffron. Now here's the thing about saffron. One common mistake that people make is to just add the stamins to the dish. Big mistake! Saffron has a naturally musty flavor. The big "oomph" to saffron is usually the color. And if you just add stamons dry, you will probably end up with one key bite of BLECH and little to no color. But if you soak it in a little bit of warm water, that makes a huge difference...
And here it is again after about 5 minutes...
After pulverizing all the ingredients together, I ended up with a very pleasant apple "mortar". Since the original recipe called for the ingredients to be crushed, I figured that the intent was indeed to make a fine mix. Here is the mix ready to be stuffed into the pie...
Now to form the fish itself. Having made the pie crusts ahead of time, it was time to put my poor sculpting skills to work, starting off with forming the basic shape of the fish...
And then adding the top layer, and beginning to play...
Since the original recipe called for the fish to be "painted", I opted to use red saunders (sandalwood) as a proper food coloring to give the fish some texture as well as a bit of color to the crust. And then, some sliced almonds to add scales.
And then finally, after baking...
I won't lie. This took a bit of work. Hi. My name is Joe. And I'm a cooking geek. But to me it was worth it to experience a moment out of time and to span the ages while enjoying food.
Now to wait until tomorrow to actually eat it!
Long story short - I am happy to have an heirloom apple tree. In fact, it is the oldest known variety to still exist - white pearmain - dating back to 1066. This year, I was pleased to get a pretty good crop of apples. Not wanting to just waste them, I wanted to do some sort of cookery project. And what better project for an ancient variety of apples than a period recipe?!
But what to make? Tempting as it is, I wasn't about to just turn them into a Dutch apple pie (delicious as that sounds). But then a thought occurred to me - I DO have access to a 15th century Dutch cookbook. I wonder what they call for in their apple pies? So I checked. And when I searched for apples, I was pretty intrigued to run into a recipe for a "fish pie for lent". Long story short, fish is allowed on Lent. And in this odd cookbook, there is a recipe - not for actual fish - but for an apple filling that could be baked into a pie sculpted to look like a fish. Specifically...
To make formed fish during lent
Crush in a mortar five or six apples, peeled and cored. Add sugar, ginger and cinnamon, and add some pound almonds or toasted gingerbread with some saffron. Bake this in oil. Or make a big fish: bake this in the oven, painted and with some holes in it.
CANDYLAND! That's the project!
So I started with some apples...
After following the directions to peel and core the apples, I added all the other ingredients (choosing the almond angle), along with the saffron. Now here's the thing about saffron. One common mistake that people make is to just add the stamins to the dish. Big mistake! Saffron has a naturally musty flavor. The big "oomph" to saffron is usually the color. And if you just add stamons dry, you will probably end up with one key bite of BLECH and little to no color. But if you soak it in a little bit of warm water, that makes a huge difference...
And here it is again after about 5 minutes...
After pulverizing all the ingredients together, I ended up with a very pleasant apple "mortar". Since the original recipe called for the ingredients to be crushed, I figured that the intent was indeed to make a fine mix. Here is the mix ready to be stuffed into the pie...
Now to form the fish itself. Having made the pie crusts ahead of time, it was time to put my poor sculpting skills to work, starting off with forming the basic shape of the fish...
And then adding the top layer, and beginning to play...
Since the original recipe called for the fish to be "painted", I opted to use red saunders (sandalwood) as a proper food coloring to give the fish some texture as well as a bit of color to the crust. And then, some sliced almonds to add scales.
And then finally, after baking...
I won't lie. This took a bit of work. Hi. My name is Joe. And I'm a cooking geek. But to me it was worth it to experience a moment out of time and to span the ages while enjoying food.
Now to wait until tomorrow to actually eat it!
