Lait Lardé: Bacon flavoured fried cheese

I will start with a warning to readers - this is a long post!

Because I have done a rather hefty bit of documentation for this recipe, I will start by giving you the final product, and then go on to the background.  That way if you just want to try making it, you can do so.  If you want to know where the recipe came from, read on, and if you want to know more about the history of the ingredients etc. read on further.

What can you do to cheese to make it even better?  Add bacon, and fry it!

On the stove, curds separating from the whey

Recipe

• 24 threads of saffron
• 250g smoked speck pieces
• 2 litres of whole (NOT lowfat) milk
• 1 cup of verjuice
• cloves
• pine nuts

Take milk, and put it in a pot, and put it on the fire to heat up. Add the lardons, and ground saffron and gradually raise to boiling temperature. Take off the heat and add the verjuice to curdle the milk.

Allow to cool in the whey. Once cooled, pour it into a piece of straining cloth and form it into a long flat shape. Place a heavy weight on top (I used nested containers and piled up weights on the container on top) and keep in the fridge overnight. The next day, slice into pieces and fry in a pan with a bit of bacon grease. Serve on plates and sprinkle with ground clove and pine nuts.

Serving suggestion: if you strain out the bacon bits after cooking, you will get a more solid cheese, but still with the lovely flavour.  

The cheese curds ready to be pressed

The fully monty: Lait Lardé (Larded Milk)

A 14^th century French cheese

Recipe source (or... who came up with this idea anyway?)

Le Viandier de Taillevent is a cookbook attributed to Guillaume Tirel (1310 – 1395), who was the cook of Charles V and master of the kitchen stores of Charles VI.

14^the and 15^th century manuscripts of this cookbook are in existence: in the Biblioteque Nationale (France), the cantonal library of Sion (Switzerland), the Biblioteque Mazarine (France), and the Vatican Library (Italy).

Originally I found a recipe in the book “Le Viandier de Taillevent” by James Prescott. This claims to be a translation of a transcription of the Vatican Library manuscript.

Larded Milk

Take some [cow's], boil it on the fire, lift it down from the fire, put it on a few coals, and thread in beaten egg yolks. If you wish it for a meat day, take lardons, cut them into two or three bits, and throw them into the milk to boil. If you wish it for a fish day, do not add lardons, but throw in some wine and verjuice to curdle it before you lift it down. Remove it from the fire, put it in a white cloth, let it drain, wrap it in 2 or 3 layers of the cloth, and press it until it is as firm as beef liver. Put it on a table, slice it into strips the size of a full palm or three fingers, button them with whole cloves, fry them till they are browned, set them out and throw some sugar on top.

However as the word “Lardé” is fundamental I wished to satisfy myself that this was a correct translation of the original French.

I obtained transcriptions (in French) of the Sion, Mazarine and Biblioteque Nationale manuscripts, and was disconcerted to find that none of them contained the recipe at all. I obtained a transcription of the Vatican manuscript but unfortunately it also did not contain the recipe.

After further research I discovered that in 1893 they discovered a second part to the Vatican Library manuscript which contains 23 additional recipes, including that for Lait Lardé.

Scully's “Early French Cookery” provides the recipe in French:

Lait Lardé

Prenez le lait de vasche ou de brebis, et mectez fremier sur le feu. Et gectez des lardons et du saffran et ayez oeufs (scilicet blanc et moyeaux) bien batuz, et gectez a ung coup sans mouvoir, et faictes boulir tout ensemble. Et apres hostez hors du feu et laissiez tourner; ou sans ouefz les fait l'en tourner de vertjus. Et quant il est reffroidié l'en le lye bien fort en une piece de toille ou estamine, et luy donne l'en quelque fourme que l'en veult, ou plate ou longue, et chargié d'une grosse pierre laissiez reffroidier sur ung drecourer toute nuyt. Et l'endemain laiché, et frit au fer de paelle (et se frit de luy mesmes sans autre gresse, ou a gresse qui veult) et est mis en platz ou escuelles comme lesche de lart, et lardé de giroffle et de pignolet; et qui le veult faire vert, si prengne du tournesot. 

 

And  “Menagier de Paris”, contains an English translation:

Larded Milk

Simmer cow's or sheep's milk and add bits of diced bacon and saffron. Take whole eggs, scilicet the white and yolks, beat well and pour in all at once, without stirring, boiling all together. Remove from the fire and let it curdle; or without eggs, use verjuice to make it curdle. When it is cool, fasten it tightly in a piece of linen or cheesecloth and give it whatever shape you wish, either flat or long, and weight it with a large rock, leaving it to cool overnight on a sideboard. The next day, open it up and fry in an iron skillet – it needs no added grease, but you can add some if you wish – and place it on plates or in bowls like slices of bacon, and stick it with cloves and pine nuts. Should you want a green colour, use tournsoc.

This is clearly a very different recipe from the one written by James Prescott, which contains no references to sheeps milk, saffron, uses just egg yolks not whole eggs, uses wine and verjuice to curdle, and sprinkles the final dish with sugar (omitting the pine nuts). I was glad I spent the time to research and find a more accurate description!

However, I decided that I should, in fact, attempt to translate the original French myself. I speak some French so a fair amount of the recipe was understandable to me, however to deal with unfamiliar words and to try to ensure that I was making the minimum of linguistic assumptions, I obtained a facsimile of a 1611 French/English dictionary, which I used to translate. While this dictionary is much later than the Taillevent manuscript it seemed to me a closer bet than a modern dictionary.

Here follows my translation:

Larded Milk (translation by Kiriel)

Take the milk of a cow or sheep, and put in a tub [Mect is translated as a tub or trough] and put on the fire to simmer. Cast lardons [this term is also used in modern French, in which it refers to matchsticks of thick bacon – in 1611 it is read as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”] and saffron and whole eggs (Indeed [Yay!  The hivemind that is my friends have given me the translation of scilicet, confirming to me that I really need that out-of-print latin-french dictionary!] white and middle), well beaten, and cast this in one blow, without stirring, boiling all together. And after lift off the fire and leave to turn, or if you have not added eggs, use verjuice to turn [curdle] the milk.

And when it is cooled, pour it into a piece of toille [voile – translation is actually tuille] or seiving cloth and give it what form you wish, flat or long, and press with a large rock, leaving to cool under a cover overnight. The next day, open and fry on the fire in a pan (and you can fry it without other grease, or with grease if you want), and place on plates or in a porringer like leaves of bacon, and top with clove and pine nuts; and if you would make it green, then use tournsot [I believe this might be tournesoc, a plant commonly used in period for colouring].

There are not many real differences between my version and the previous translation, however at least one of these is significant – the first sticks cloves into the pieces, whereas my translation says to top with cloves, which could be ground instead. I believe this is a much more likely scenario – why waste entire cloves when you are just after the flavour?

If you would like to know more, here is my article on the ingredients themselves.

The ingredients (Bacon flavoured cheese part 2)

The ingredients

(wherein Kiriel establishes that lards aint lard, and investigates the pH of verjuice)

This recipe contains few ingredients, but the use of them is not as simple as you might assume! So let's go through each one.

1. Saffron

Saffron was the King of spices in the medieval world. Incredibly expensive, outrageously colourful and equally exquisitely delicate in flavour, these flower stamens remain today the world's most expensive spice. The strands are toasted lightly to dry them out so that they can be ground up and added to dishes. Imitation saffron powder will give a similar colour, however will not give the very specific flavour that real saffron imparts to the dish.

Just as Taillevent cooked for Kings, so I cook for judges deserved of great esteem, and thefore use a generous portion of this precious spice.

2. Lardons

The 1611 French/English dictionary describes lardons as “the little slice or piece of lard wherewith meat is stucke”. In modern France this remains pretty much the same – lardons are something akin to what we would call “bacon bits”, but in a more of a thick matchstick form.

Whatever form they are in, one thing is reasonably sure – medieval lardons would have been saltier than modern equivalents. Smoking and salting meat was the most common way of preserving meat, as refrigeration options were much more limited for the medieval cook. A well smoked and/or salted ham can be eaten for years – unlike the average slab of bacon you buy in the supermarket now! Try a lovely slender slice of Spanish jamon iberico and be converted forever away from pale and flaccid bacon!

For my initial experiments with the recipes, I tried a supermarket bacon, but it quickly became clear that as one of the fundamental flavours of this recipe, it just did not work.

I tried the recipe again with a mature salt cured speck and the improvement was enormous, but it still was missing the smoky flavour I felt was needed.

I visited two butchers that smoke their own meats and bought a wedge of speck from each. They were very different from each other and both delicious, and choosing which was the better flavour was challenging (oh the sacrifices I make for my cooking, eating lots of bacon flavoured cheese!)

3. Milk

Milk of course in period was not homogenised nor pasteurised. Homogenisation is the process by which the fats (the cream) in milk are broken up and distributed through the milk, where naturally they would slowly rise to the top of the bottle or carton as cream. Pasteurisation is a process whereby milk is raised to a high temperature to kill off bacteria.

What difference does this make to cheesemaking? Ask any French cheesemaker and they are likely to simply throw their hands up in the air and mutter something along the lines of “Philistine!” at the question. Homogenisation does not in my experience in fact make a great deal of difference at least at the level of cheesemaking in this recipe.

Pasteurisation does make a difference. Hundreds of modern French and Swiss cheeses are made from unpasteurised milk. These cheeses tend to have a far stronger smell than any Australian cheese you will ever have tasted, although surprisingly, often a far milder taste than you expect. Unpasteurised milk is hard to get in Australia – you can sometimes buy it as “bath milk” from organic shops.

Other things that also made a difference in period, and in some countries continue to make a difference is the season, and the feed the animals eat. The amount of fat in the milk changes according to the season and the taste and properties of the milk change dependent on the diet of the animal – Vacherin Mont d'Or for example is made from a mixture of milks – one part from when the cows eat spring grasses, and one part from when they eat hay – oh and only from one particular mountain in France.

I tried this recipe with both homogenised and non-homogenised milk, achieving the same results. You do need to use whole milk though, not skim or non-fat!

I made the decision not to use sheeps milk a) because I couldn't find it and b) I thought it best to try and get a more familiar taste in the cheese.

4. Verjuice

I started this experiment trying both verjuice and wine (as per the James Prescott version of the recipe). With new white wine, the milk refused to curdle. With verjuice it refused to curdle. A few days later the same wine (having sat on the kitchen bench) mixed with verjuice did curdle. I also tried with red wine which worked excellently:

But of course then I discovered that my recipe was wrong, so had to abandon the whole wine experience. I tried again with verjuice and again it failed. I tried with verjuice mixed with lemon juice and had much greater success. I decided it was time to investigate the properties of verjuice a bit further.

Verjuice is unfermented grape juice produced from early season grapes – picked before they are fully ripened. But the acidic qualities of verjuice differ from grape to grape, and within the season Menagier de Paris states that “in July old verjuice is very weak and the new is still too sharp. After this time, during the harvest, a mixture of half old and half new is best”. (recipe 279).

It was common in period too, to have substitutes for verjuice, since its unfermented nature meant that it did not preserve well. In the Italian period cookbook Libro della Cocina, it is advised that you could use lemon juice, orange juice or rosewater as substitutes. Menagier de Paris even provides a recipe for a sorrel based verjuice.

I concluded that the verjuice I had (Maggie Beer) was probably a bit more sophisticated and less acid than period verjuice. To test the acidity of my verjuice, I sought out testing strips. After some searching I had to settle on purchasing a set of strips to test swimming pools and spas. Unsurprisingly the acidity of lemons is rather off the scale compared to that of the average swimming pool but it still provided some useful data. 

 

I compared Maggie Beer verjuice, Anchor verjuice, (squeeze) lemon juice, and later, vinegar.

The Maggie Beer tested slightly differently to the Anchor verjuice, which showed equivalently to the lemon juice in both alkalinity and pH. Interestingly the Anchor showed very low traces of free chlorine, and the vinegar's pH test result was outright bizarre.

So from then on I used the Anchor verjuice, to much better effect. The taste of verjuice in the cheese is quite different from lemon and very pleasing.

5. Cloves

Freshly ground cloves – ah that smell, redolent of mulled wine and easter buns! An absolute staple in every sophisticated medieval kitchen, cloves were among the most prized and necessary spices. Every cook would have a pouch of cloves and they were an essential ingredient in the classic medieval spice mixture, powder forte.

You may feel wary that something as spicy and strong as cloves would overwhelm this dish, but have faith... there is something magical that seems to happen when you combine cloves and speck...!

6. Pine nuts

There are many species of pine that produce edible pine nuts. As an ingredient in my research I have seen them mainly being used in period Italian and French cookery.

A brief mention of tournsoc:

This is Gozophoria tinctoria, a lichen – it is naturally blue but turns red in acid situations and blue in alkaline – presumably the combination of it and saffron creates the green mentioned in the recipe.

References:

Secondary

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Vatican manuscript
Le Viandier de Taillevent – Sion manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Mazarine manuscript

Le Viandier de Taillevent – Biblioteque Nationale manuscript

A dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), by Randle Cotgrave

Tertiary

Early French cookery – Scully

The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages – Terence Scully

Le Viandier de Taillevent – James Prescott *I do not recommend using this!

Restaurant review: Canberra: Koochi Afghan cafe

Dear reader,

My penurous state has meant that I haven't been in a position to indulge myself fully in rediscovering the joys of the Canberran restaurant scene, however that does not mean I have been entirely stuck at home researching old recipes.

In fact, the other day I found a little gem that I thought I really had to share with you.

The Koochi Afghan cafe is in Gungahlin - yes I know for many of my Canberra readers, this is the equivalent of outer Mongolia, and I admit that I was not holding out a great deal of hope to find a decent meal.

But Koochi sparked my curiosity and I decided to give it a go.  

The restaurant was quiet (but so was the whole of the area at the time), with only a solo diner and a small family beside myself.  I was invited to sit anywhere, and settled myself down in a window seat.

The decor is all very modern, apart from the rather charming ceiling which has wooden beams and is hung with modified kerosine lamps.

I ordered a cup of tea and chose for my lunch Borrani Bonjon - described as pan-fried eggplant, topped with tomatoes, onions and drizzled with yoghurt and dried mint, served with rice. 

Now I do love a bit of well prepared aubergine, and as the dish was placed before me I had to admire the colour and presentation - a rich red, swirled with yoghurt.   They gave me the dish of aubergine, rice, a yoghurt based dip, and a fresh condiment that they called chutney - but you need to imagine something more like a light chilli dressing.

The scent of my dish was so tempting I took a bite immediately.  Oh my.  What a glorious balance of sweet and savoury and of delicate spices.  It was at that moment that I decided that I had to write this review.  That is why the photo I took (which I will post shortly) has a bite out of it.

I didn't quite get to the point of licking the plate, but I can promise you, there was not a morsel left of that dish.  The price of this memorable meal?  $12 for the dish itself - prices for meals range from 12 to 32 dollars, depending mostly on the meat factor. There is a 32 platter to share for two, which I would like to try next time.. 

Try it... go on, head out to outer Mongolia and let me know if you love it too!

Koochi Cafe
Gungahlin Marketplace

Deepest Darkest Chocolate Fudge biscuits

Ok, I am about to share with you one of my most precious recipes. These amazingly rich, tasty and chewy biscuits (cookies for my US friends, so don't go thinking this is a scone recipe!) are seriously unbelievably good.  The recipe was given to me by my friend Jocelyn, for which I will thank her forever.

It is a rare recipe that uses this much chocolate without being too sweet. Cocoa, melted chocolate, chocolate chips, this recipe has it all, and the final result is truly special. 

One of the fun things too about this recipe is sharing the list of ingredients with friends... making a double batch particularly so, because then you can tell them that it contains 1.3 KILOS of chocolate chips. 

I think that one of the keys to this recipe is beating the butter and sugar by hand... I don't know why it is, but I do it by hand, and my version seems to come out better than those made by friends using a mixer. Proof that there are times in life, where it is best to do things the slow way.  If you are going to use a mixer, I advise beating on a slow speed.

Deepest Darkest Chocolate Fudge Biscuits (cookies)

214g plain flour
56g cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
227g milk chocolate broken into pieces
113g unsweetened chocolate broken up (a nice dark bittersweet will do)
340g soft light brown sugar
170g unsalted butter (take out of the fridge to soften)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

OPTIONAL - 680g plain chocolate chips. 

Method

 Sift flour, cocoa, bicarb and salt. Set aside.

Put plain and unsweetened chocolate pieces into a double boiler and heat for 12 - 15 minutes. Stir till smooth and keep at room temperature until needed. (You can microwave the chocolate instead, but be very careful not to over cook it)

Beat butter and sugar. Once creamed, add eggs, one at a time, beating into to the mixture. Add vanilla essence and beat. Add chocolate and beat. Add flour mixture and chocolate chips stirring until thoroughly combined.

For lovely big giant cookies, drop a tablespoon of mix per biscuit onto baking sheets (about 6-8 biscuits per sheet).   For more normal sized biscuits, a heaped teaspoon is about right. 
Bake on the top and middle rack of the oven at 170ºC for 15 minutes, rotating half way through baking time. Do keep an eye on the time, as the high sugar content means that they can burn very easily. 
 

Cool on sheets for 5-6 minutes. Transfer to cooling rack. 

Sit back and enjoy one of the most sensational sweet experiences of your life.

Interesting new marinade

Last weekend I joined some friends for the weekend in a 17th century chateau in Burgundy (sorry I know I am boasting... I can't help myself!).

On the first night, we were cooking a BBQ for dinner.  My friend Christoph had bought some Bon Maman chestnut spread... he didn't quite know what it was when he bought it, but thought it might be interesting to try.

He and his girlfriend decided that it might be fun to use it as a sort of marinade on some chicken breasts they had bought for the BBQ.  I suggested that mixing it with grainy Dijon mustard might balance the sweetness, so Monika did just that; smeared the chicken with pretty close to even quantities of mustard and chestnut spread.

The chicken was cooked, and the marinade declared to be an unqualified success.  I thought I would post  it up here so that I would remember it, and maybe you could try it sometime.  It proves once more that the real key to exciting cooking is the willingness to just experiment, and try new things that you haven't tried before.

Renaissance fresh cheese fritters

This simply gorgeous recipe is redacted from a translation of "The art of cooking, composed by the Eminent Maestro Martino of Como".  This 15th century manuscript showcases some of the finest Italian renaissance cuisine, and has been published as "The art of cooking: the first modern cookery book" by the University of California press.

The recipe is called "Fritters made with egg whites, sifted flour, and fresh cheese"  The main recipe and technique is from the previous recipe for Elderflower fritters, so I will give you the relevant bits of that recipe as well.

Recipe 1:  Take some good fresh cheese, and a little aged cheese, and crush well, adding a bit of sifted flour to them and the necessary amount of egg whites; likewise, a little milk and some sugar; and grind all these things well together.. [bits about elderflowers removed]. so you can form the round fritters using your hands, or in whatever shape you like, and then fry them in good rendered lard or butter, or in good oil, and serve very hot. 

Recipe 2: Follow the directions and method  described in the previous recipe, but add neither milk nor elderflowers to these fritters. 

Here is my version.

Fresh Cheese Fritters


250g ricotta cheese
60g parmesan, grated
2 egg whites
60g white flour
sugar

Take the ricotta and grated parmesan, and put them in a bowl. Gradually add the sifted flour, the egg whites and just a pinch of sugar.  Form round fritters using your hands, and fry them in a little oil. Serve them hot.  (hint: I found that having wet hands made it easier to stop the dough from sticking to the hands)

Incredibly easy, and quite incredibly delicious.  Makes approximately 12 fritters.

Bizcochos - renaissance Spanish recipe

This recipe is from a book by Diego Granado, "Libro del Arte de Cozina", 1599 trans. by Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

Take twelve eggs, and remove the whites from four of them, and with a little orange-flower water beat them a great deal, and grind a pound of sugar, and cast it in little by little, always beating quickly, and cast in flour, or powdered wheat starch, and beat it with force. Having cast in the said flour, when they see that it is necessary, and very fine, and the dough must remain white, just as for fritters, and then cast it in your pots, and carry them to the oven, and when half-cooked remove them, and dust them with well-ground sugar, and cut them to your taste, and return them to the oven, and let them finish baking a second time: and if they wish when they beat them, cast in as much white wine as an eggshell, it will be good.

My version of the recipe:

3 eggs
1 egg white
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp orange flower water
1 tsp wine

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees

Beat the eggs, wine and orange flower water till fluffy but not dry. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat. Once well blended and dissolved, add 2 cups of flour gradually, continuing to beat. This will make a sticky dough.

Put this into a loaf tin and bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes till the loaf is set and firm to the touch but not browned.

Allow to cool. Slice thinly.

Drop the oven temperature to 140 degrees. Lay the slices of cake on oven trays and put back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes until lightly browned.

These strongly resemble modern biscotti minus almonds, and are crisp and light and would be great with coffee.