Guess Who's Coming to Dinner: Antipasti & Primo

 

Welcome back! On to the recipes - this instalment includes one recipe from the Antipasti course, and the four dishes of the apocalypse from the Primo (First) course. 

Antipasti

• Bread w/butter and goat cheese
• Mixed olives
• Marinated mushrooms
• Stuffed eggs (Ova plene)

Stuffed eggs

Libro di cucina, Anonimo Veneziano (Markham, 1623)

XLVII. Ove Plene

Se tu voy fare ove implite, toy le ove e mitili a bolire e fay che siano ben duri e quando sono cocti traili fuora e mitili in aqua freda e schovrali e tagliali per mezo e trane fuora lo rosso e toy caxo magro al piú che tu poy che sia ben dolze e herbe bone che tu ay ben monde e ben lavate e pestali in lo mortaro. Quando sono bene menate, toy lo rosso de l’ova, el chasso e le specie e mecti in el mortaro con le herbe bone insieme e pesta bene e fay pastume, e distempera con ove crude e fay che non sea bono, e miti in la padella sopra el focho, e toy li elapi del ova che tu ay e impleli de questo pastume e fay choxere. Quando sono cocti trali fuora e polveriza di sopra del zucharo e dali caldi a tavola. E se tu voy fare savore, toli, etc.

XLVII. Stuffed Eggs

If you want to make stuffed eggs, take the eggs and put to boil and make that they are good hard and when they are cooked take them out and put in cold water and peel and cut in half and pull out the yolks and take cheese fat the most that you can that is good and sweet and good herbs that you have well peeled and well washed and beat (to a paste) in a the mortar. When they are well mashed, take the egg yolks and cheese and the spices and put in the mortar with the good herbs together and make a paste and temper with raw eggs and make that it is good and put a frying pan over the fire, and take the halves of eggs that you have and stuff with this paste and put to cook. When they are cooked pull off and powder with sugar and put them hot to the table and if you want to make relish, take etc.

Recipe

Serves 6

6 hard-boiled eggs

60 g ricotta cheese

1 tsp Fine Spices*

1 ½ tsp each of fresh herbs

¼ tsp Salt

2 tbsp White Wine Vinegar

Hard-boil eggs, cool, peel, slice in half lengthwise, and carefully remove the yolk. Combine egg yolks with the remaining ingredients in a food processor, and blend until smooth. Spoon or pipe mixture back into egg white halves. Dust with sugar and Fine Spices and serve.

*Fine Spices (also used elsewhere in the feast) were a pre-made mixture based on Scappi’s recipe, and includes cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, grains of paradise, and brown sugar.

Stuffed eggs adaptations

There are about as many variants of this dish as there are cooks in history, so I used a recipe from a 15th c. cookbook, rather than a 16th c. one, because I’d done it before and knew it would be good. The deviations from the original recipe are that I used a pre-made dried Italian seasoning mixture, included white wine vinegar to add some tartness and a bit of liquid to replace the raw egg, and didn’t do the second round of frying after stuffing as it makes the eggs weird and rubbery in ways that can be deeply unappetising. 

Primo

• Chicken with cinnamon-orange sauce
• Compound salat
• Fried beans
• Tortiglione ripieno

Chicken with cinnamon-orange sauce

De honesta voluptate et valetudine, Bartolomeo Platina

Pullus assus

Pullum bene depilatum exinanitum et lotum assabis, asso atque; in patinam imposito antequam refrigeat, aut succum mali medici, aut agresta cum aqua rossaca, saccaro, ac cinnamo benetrito infundes, conui uisqe; appones hoc Bucinus, non displicet, qui acria fimul ac dulcia appetit, ut bile reprimat, qua excitatur, et corpus obesat.

Roast chicken

You will roast a chicken after it has been well plucked, cleaned and washed; and after roasting it, put it into a dish before it cools off and pour over it either orange juice or verjuice with rosewater, sugar and well-ground cinnamon, and serve it to your guests. Bucinus is fond of this because he likes to eat sour and sweet things together, to check his bile, by which he is often disturbed, and this is fattening.

Recipe

Serves 10

10 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

475 ml orange juice 

90 g sugar

45 ml verjuice

45 g cinnamon

Roast the chicken pieces covered in foil in a 190 C  oven until the juices run clear. You can remove the foil for the last 10-15 minutes if you want.

To make the sauce, mix the remaining ingredients in a saucepan, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced by about half. This will take a while. Be sure it doesn’t foam up, boil over, or burn as it thickens. It may get slimy, which happens when boiling cinnamon in large quantities. Keep stirring, and it will pass. Arrange the chicken on a plate, and dress with the sauce.

Adaptations

Platina doesn’t specify cooking the sauce, but Scappi has a nearly identical recipe in Book II of his Opera for an orange, lime and cinnamon sauce that indicates boiling and reducing, so that’s what I did.

Compound sallet

The English Housewife, Gervaise Markam

To compound an excellent Sallat, and which indeed is usual at great feasts, and upon princes tables: take a good quantity of blanched almonds, and with your shredding knife cut them grossly; then take as many raisins of the sun clean washed, and the stones picked out, as many figs shred like the almonds, as many capers, twice so many olives, and as many currants as of all the rest, clean washed, a good handful of the small tender leaves of red sage and spinage: mix all these well together with good store of sugar, and lay them in the bottom of a great dish; then put unto them vinegar and oil, and scrape more sugar over all: then take oranges and lemons, and, paring away the outward peels cut them into thin slices, then with those slices cover the sallet all over; then over those red leaves lay other course of old olives, and the slices of well pickled cucumbers, together with the very inward heart of cabbage lettice cut into slices; then adorn the sides of the dish , and the top of the sallet with more slices of lemons and oranges, and so serve it up.

Recipe

Serves 8

30 g slivered almonds

30 g raisins, chopped

30 g figs, diced

2 Tbsp. capers, rinsed and drained

4 Tbsp. Kalamata olives, drained and chopped

4 Tbsp. currants

1 ½ heads of lettuce, spinach, and other greens, shredded

1 orange, peeled, pith removed, and sliced (reserve half for garnish)

2 Tbsp. sweet pickles, drained and chopped

4-5 lemon slices for garnish

Dressing:

120 ml white balsamic vinegar

60 ml olive oil

1 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Layer all salad ingredients in a salad serving bowl, saving some orange and lemon slices for garnish. Make the dressing by combining all ingredients and whisking together. Pour dressing on salad right before serving, and garnish with the remaining orange and lemon slices.

Adaptations

This specific recipe is clearly not from an Italian source, but salads weren’t uncommon in this period, and I like this salad. We had very little sent back to the kitchen, so apparently everyone else did, too. I also intentionally used sunflower seeds instead of the nuts to skirt the few nut allergies there were.

Fried beans

Cuoco Napoletano, Anonimo Napoletano

Fasoli

Coce li fasoli in aqua pura ho in bono brood; he quando serrano cotti, tole cipolle tagliate suttile he frigele in patella cum bono olio he matte de sopra queste cipolle fritte cum pipero he canella he zaffrano; poi lassali reposare sopra la cinere calda uno pezo; et poi fa le menestre cum specie bone de sopra.

Kidney beans

Cook the kidney beans in pure water or in good broth; when they are cooked, get finely sliced onions and fry them in a pan with good oil and put these fried onions on top [of the beans] along with pepper, cinnamon and saffron; then let this sit a while on the hot coals; dish it up with good spices on top.

Recipe

Serves 8

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 onion, thinly sliced

2 C dried cannellini beans

Soak beans overnight, then cook in water or stock until just tender. Sauté onion until caramelised. Stir in cooked beans and heat through. 

Adaptations

For the feast, I left out the spices and saffron because the flavour is really special with just the onion. I also hate kidney beans, so used this opportunity to use white beans, as they were a New World food that was very trendy, thanks to the influencer Alessandro de Medici, Duke of Florence.

Tortiglione ripieno

Opera, Bartolomeo Scappi

Tortiglione ripieno

Impastinsi libre dui di fior di farina con sei rossi d’ova freschi, e due oncie d’acqua rosa, & un’oncia di lievido, stemperato con acqua tiepida, & oncie quattro de butiro fresco, over strutto, che non habbia tristo odore, & sale a bastanza, & per spatio di mezz’hora sia ben rimenata essa pasta, & facciasene sfoglio sottile, et ongasi di butiro li quesatto, che non sia troppo caldo, overo strutto, et con il sperone della pasta taglinsi gl’orli a torno a torno, gli quali sono sempre assai piu grossi che’l resto; spolverizzisi il sfoglio d’oncie quattro di zuccaro, & un’oncia di canella, poi habbisi una libra d’uva passa di corinto, che habbia levato il bollo nel vino, e libra una di dattoli cotti in esso vino, & tagliati minuti, et una libra di zibibbo senz’anime che habbia levato il bollo in vino, & tutte le dette materie sieno raccolte, & mescolate in sieme con zucchero, cannella, garofali, et noci moscate, et pongasi la detta compositione sparsa sopra il sfoglio con alcuni bocconcini di butiro, & commincisi per il lungo del sfoglio a rivolgere in su come i cialdoni, avvertendo di non rompere la pasta, & a tal tortiglione non gli uvole essere dato piu ditre rivolture, per meglio poterlo cuocere, ne uvole essere troppo calcato, ongasi di sopra di butiro liquefatto non troppo caldo, comincisi da un capo venendo a rivolgerlo non troppo serrato, di modo che venga a foggia di scorza di lumaca, o di labertinto, habbisi apparecchiata la tortiera con un sfolio della medesima pasta alquanto grossetto, onto di butiro liquefatto, & mettasi sopra il tortiglione leggiermente senza essere calcato, & facciasti cuocere nel forno, o sotto il testo con fuoco temperato non mancando alle volte d’ongerlo di butiro liquefatto, & come è presso a cotto spargasi sopra zucchero, & acqua rosa, & servasi caldo. La tortiera dove si cuocon i tortiglioni ha da esser sparsa, et bassa di sponde.

Stuffed tortiglione

To prepare a filled twist.

Make a dough of two pounds of fine flour with six fresh egg yolks, two ounces of rosewater, and ounce of yeast moistened with warm water, four ounces of either fresh butter or rendered fat that does not smell bad, and enough salt. That dough should be kneaded well for half an hour. Make a thin sheet of it, greasing it with either melted butter that is not too hot or with rendered fat. With the pastry wheel cut the edges one after the other, which are always quite a bit thicker than the rest. Sprinkle the dough with four ounces of sugar and an ounce of cinnamon. Then get a pound of currants that have been brought to a boil in wine, a pound of dates cooked in that wine and cut up small, and a pound of seeded muscatel raisins that have been brought to a boil in wine; combine all those ingredients and mix them with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Spread that mixture out over the sheet of dough along with a few little gobs of butter. Beginning at the long edge of the dough, roll it up like a wafer cornet, being careful not to break the dough. A twist like that needs only three rolls so it can cook well; it should not be too tight. Grease its surface with melted butter that is not too hot. Begin at one end to roll it up, not too tightly, so it becomes like a snail shell or a maze. Have a tourte pan on hand lined with a rather thick sheet of the same dough greased with melted butter and gently put the twist on it without pushing it down. Bake it in an oven or braise it with a moderate heat, not forgetting to grease it occasionally with melted butter. When it is almost done, sprinkle sugar and rosewater over it. Serve it hot. The tourte pan in which the twists are baked as to be ample and with low sides.

Recipe

Serves 6

1 sheet of pre-made pastry

30 g butter, half of which is melted and cooled

80 g light brown sugar

3 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp ground cloves

80 g currants

80 g dates, chopped

80 g raisins

Unroll the pastry and brush with melted butter. Mix the sugar, spices and dried fruit together, and spread out evenly over the pastry. Starting on a short edge, carefully roll the pastry into a log and gently seal the edge. Carefully slice the log into 12 pinwheels, and place pinwheel side up on a lined baking sheet. Dot each pinwheel with a bit more butter. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before removing from tray.

Adaptations

An obvious modern substitution was using gluten-free puff-pastry (served as individual pinwheels). The original recipe from Scappi has you rolling up the initial log of sugar, spices, and dried fruit as I did, winding that log into a spiral, then putting the entire spiral into another pastry shell for baking. 

First, that’s a lot of pastry, we had quite a few people with a gluten issue, and pre-made gluten-free pastry is costly. Second, I wasn’t sure what the serving dish situation would be and didn’t want to send out foil pie tins to the feast hall. To solve this, I followed the recipe as far as rolling up the initial log, then sliced those into rondels/pinwheels so there would be enough for everyone, and they would be easier to serve.