Hobbit Test Kitchen: The Little Things - Spiced Walnuts

First breakfast is going to center around apple cinnamon oatmeal. You make it in a crockpot with steel-cut oats, so it’s the kind of thing I can plug in at night and it will be ready for us when we all wake up. Ahhhh.

To go with it, I thought it’d be nice to have some spices nuts. I used to make some every Christmas and give them away – cinnamon walnuts and ginger almonds. They were great because they lasted forever, so they were a sweet treat that I could give out, and if the recipient didn’t eat them right away they wouldn’t go stale and be wasted like cookies or other baked stuff.

But somewhere in the course of moving computers over the years, the recipe was misplaced. Also, they were cooked up in a microwave, and ours broke and hasn’t been replaced. So I looked for a new recipe on my favorite recipe site.

As usual, I looked at the recipes by rank, and the highest-rated one was something I had all the ingredients and equipment for. It was originally for pecans, but it seemed worth the risk, so I tried it.

But apparently, it’s not as good with walnuts, period. And it’s definitely not as good as my old recipe. They’re not bad, but walnuts have a much stronger taste than pecans, and this recipe has almost all sweet notes, and no buttery or salty, which I miss. But they’re still good enough that I’m going to try it on pecans later and see what I think.

A reasonable person might wonder at this point why I don’t make this with pecans now. It has to do with the attempted aesthetic for this shindig.

When contemplating the foods I was going to serve, I considered a number of factors. The first, and most important, is that Tolkien himself wrote about food that was inspired by the rural, late-19^th-century diet that he remembered fondly from his youth in the English countryside. It’s also worth taking into account the medieval feel of the stories as well as the 18^th-century feel of the movies’ version of the Shire.

To this end, I’ve tried to cut out American and other non-British crops unless they are specifically mentioned in the books. Potatoes are in (“boil ‘em up, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew”), but the dilly beans I bought really shouldn’t be included, and Tolkien himself ruled out tomatoes during an edit of the Hobbit. (Apparently Gandalf originally asked Bilbo to bring out the “tomatoes and cold chicken,” instead of pickles. There is some debate as to why he made the change, though.)

I’ve already got a fairly thorough knowledge of American crops, but in terms of some other areas – cheeses, nuts, and wines – I’ve had to do some research. Hazelnuts are in, because they’ve been cultivated and prized in the now-BritishIsles since prehistory. I’m going to put them out right in their shells in a salute to this little fact.

Black walnuts are indigenous to the Americas, and so are pecans (a type of hickory nut, apparently), but while regular walnuts aren’t native to Britain, they’ve been eaten there for long enough that they’re now called, “English walnuts.” Good enough for me!

It’s just too bad I didn’t have my old recipe…

Sweet Coated Walnuts

 

1 egg white

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons water

1 pound walnut halves

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Lightly butter a baking sheet.

In a bowl, beat the egg white until foamy. Mix in cinnamon, sugar, salt, and water. Mix well. Stir in walnuts, stirring until well coated. Spread on baking sheet.

Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

Hobbit Test Kitchen: Shire Hotpot

This one was a definite winner. In fact it was such a BIG win that nearly the entire dish was gone before I realized I'd never taken a picture.

Given my level of skill with a camera, that hardly seems like much of a loss.

This dish is based on a British comfort food called Lancashire Hotpot, which I heard of because of Wallace and Gromit, easily one of my favorite cartoons of all time. The authentic dish calls for lamb kidneys, but fortunately for me, I only have to be authentically hobbit, not authentically Lancashire. We're dealing with an American audience here, so organ meats are right out.

Otherwise, Lancashire hotpot is a lot like shepherd's pie. The big difference is that it's made with sliced instead of mashed potatoes, which actually make it simpler to prepare if you don't have leftover mashed handy (and who ever does? Certainly no one in our house). We're going to call our version Shire Hotpot, and it's so good it might make its way into regular rotation in our kitchen.

I based my experiment on a combination of two recipes - one from AllRecipes, one from the BBC. I essentially followed the AllRecipes version (minus kidneys), but added in carrots because the BBC allows it.

Here's how we did it.


Mini Shire Hotpot

1 tiny onion, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, peeled and thinly sliced

½ pound cubed leg of lamb meat
3 to 4 medium-to-large potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

⅔ cup lamb stock
1 cube of chicken bouillon, crushed
thyme
butter
salt
pepper

I used lamb steaks to make my stew meat for this, which meant cutting away some fat, membrane, and bone. I put it all in a small saucepan with some water and a sprinkling of Bell's poultry seasoning to boil into some stock while the potatoes and carrots were peeled and sliced.

Preheat the oven 375°F.

While the lamb stock boiled, I sautéed the onions with the carrots in some vegetable oil and butter. (The Lancashire recipe that allowed for the inclusion of carrots suggested this method.) Then I took them from the pan and set them aside. I put the lamb in the skillet to brown it on all sides; the original recipe said to fry it for 12 to 15 minutes, "until rich chestnut brown in color," but I had mine in very small cubes and I didn't want it to get tough or crunchy. So once it browned, I actually added the lamb stock plus the crushed bouillon right in there and let it stew away until 12 minutes had passed. (The bouillon was added because the stock hadn't had time to boil for very long; I presumed it might be kind of weak.)

Because this was a trial sized hotpot, I made it in a greased loaf pan. I put a nice layer of potato slices on the bottom and salted and peppered them, then the onions and carrots went in (more salt), then the stew meat (but reserving the broth - it should be poured over the top potatoes). Here I put in just a sprinkling of thyme (but the lamb is so good on its own I may skip this next time), then lay the last of the potatoes over, slathered some butter on top, and poured the broth over the whole thing.

I covered the whole thing in foil to keep it from drying out, then baked it an hour or so. When the potatoes were nice and soft, I slathered the top with more butter and put them under the broiler (set for low) to give the top some nice browning.

Hobbit Test Kitchen: Mince and Blackberry Pies

So I had this notion that a tortilla press would make the manufacture of weensie pies much easier. To a degree, I was right - but I need to try something a little different on the next batch.

Remember that proper British mince pies are made in muffin tins or tart tins. I made pretty little rounds of dough on the tortilla press well enough, but they didn't fit in the muffin tins - their diameter was too small and they wanted to crumble and tear instead of submit meekly to their reshaping. So instead, I put a dollop of filling between two rounds of crust, squished the edges, and baked them flat to see what happened.

What happened was, there was a REALLY high crust-to-filling ratio. Well, that was one thing that happened. Another thing that happened is that I learned that my mincemeat? Is amazing.

Another, other thing that happened is that I learned to definitely cook the blackberry filling beforehand. You can get away without it in a big pie, but in a small pie it needs to be compacted down so that as much as possible can fit into the weensie pie. The blackberry pies were really ridiculously crusty.

So next time, come what may, I have to make the pastry bend to my will. This will be one of my big tasks this coming weekend, since this is just the sort of thing you can freeze ahead to free up your hands for other tasks that can't be accomplished ahead of time.

Here's how I made up this round of pies.


Mince Pies

1 premade pie crust (don't judge me!)
Mincemeat with cornstarch (I just used 1 T. in one pint of mincemeat)

Divide the pie crust into quarters, ball, and flatten in the tortilla press. Balance one round over a muffin hole to allow more filling; spoon filling in. Place second round on top, seal, and set on parchment-lined cookie sheet. Repeat with second pie.

Poke with fork or cut slits so steam can escape. Bake at 450°for 15-20 minutes, until crust is golden.




Blackberry Pies

1 premade pie crust
Filling made from:
12 oz. frozen blackberries
2 T. cornstarch

¼ c. sugar (I think it might need more - hard to tell with the crust ratio that resulted)

See above for instructions

The Most Expensive Mincemeat EVAR - Coming to a Tolkien Marathon Near You!

"'And mince-pies and cheese,' said Bofur.


My father and I are a couple of those rare birds who still like mincemeat. For the past several years, I've thought about making some to give him at Christmas; this past year, I finally, actually did it.

I usually depend on Allrecipes to look up recipes to try. I've depended on it for more than a decade, and I've had few disappointments because of its rating and review system. So that's where I went to find the right mincemeat recipe, too.

I settled on this one because of the wide variety of fruits involved. If you read the jars in the store, you'll see that most include just apples, raisins, citrus peel, and spices. That sounds like slacking to me. So I decided to go for a little bit of biodiversity in a jar.

But I immediately faced problems getting all the ingredients. Had I thought this out ahead of time, I could have canned some things over the summer and gotten them less expensively and also locally. It was weird how many stores had a space on the shelf for canned sour cherries, but no inventory. And I never did find cans of gooseberries, except online, where it would cost me more than $40 to get them. I eventually substituted gooseberry jam instead, after toying with - and rejecting - a number of other possible substitutes. I wiped out the entire supply of the stuff at a local farm store.

Without further ado, I offer you the recipe below - with descriptions of what actually happened as I went through the steps.

Mincemeat III
(brought to us by Allrecipes user Linda Correia)

2 pounds cranberries (the bags in the store ARE NOT A POUND but 12 oz.)

1 quart water

9 apples - peeled, cored and ground (I grated them instead)

2 pounds raisins

3 (16 ounce) cans gooseberries (I subbed in 6 8-oz. jars of jam)

3 (16 ounce) cans pitted sour red pie cherries (found 2 24-oz. glass jars)

2 cups brandy (om nom nom nom nom)

2 tablespoons lemon zest

2 tablespoons orange zest

2 cups distilled white vinegar

4 cups white sugar

1 tablespoon ground cloves

1 tablespoon ground nutmeg

2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 tablespoons ground allspice

 

Place cranberries in a large saucepan and pour water over them. Simmer on low heat until cranberries begin to split. Remove from heat and pour into a big giant pot.

 

To cranberries add apples, raisins, gooseberries, cherries, brandy, lemon rind, orange rind, vinegar, sugar, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice. Stir this mixture thoroughly. It will look like red vomit and smell like sangria. (I tried not to be too discouraged at this step, but it was hard.)

 

Divide mincemeat between as many crock-pots as necessary and turn on low; cook overnight. Mine still looked disturbingly red and also thin and watery; the recipe doesn't say to drain any of the ingredients, so I didn't. I tried to thicken with cooking, propping the crock-pot lids open partially, but all that happened was that it finally turned brown (prompting renewed panic - OMG did I OVERCOOK now?!?!) but stayed just as watery. I decided maybe I'd thicken it with cornstarch if I ever finally got to the pie-making step - you can't fiddle with the recipe before canning because you might poison yourself if the acid balance isn't right. 

 

Sterilize enough canning jars and lids to fit all mincemeat. Can in quarts or half-gallons; it makes 8 quarts if I remember correctly, but two of them blew up in the water bath. I think I wasn't careful enough about the amount of head space. I always follow directions from PickYourOwn when canning; the instructions given in the original recipe do not meet modern standards of safety for canning.

 

 

Now here we are having a Tolkien party with Britishy Tolkieny foods, and mince is one of those things specifically mentioned in the books. Isn't that a handy coincidence? Given the fact that Bofur asks for "mince-pies," plural, I'm thinking little hand pies are what's called for here. It looks as though you can put them together in muffin tins, making the process that much simpler; I'm toying with the idea of making my own pastry and flattening it with my handy-dandy tortilla press. Awww yeah.

I'm also going to make little blackberry pies, because blackberry tart is served to Frodo & co. at the Prancing Pony, and I'm extrapolating so that non-mince-lovers can have little pies, too. Because everyone should have pie.

Cold Chicken and Pickles

"'Put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!' Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. 'And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!'"


For this party of hobbity greatness, the condiments are nearly as important as the rest of the food. I want everything to be delicious, to be home made or local or simply fantastic. Everything right down to butter and jam and yes, pickles.

Tolkien mentions quite a few condiments directly in the texts - The Hobbit opens with dwarf-filled scenes that include raspberry jam, butter, pickles, and more. Where I can buy ahead, I've started.

Here are the hand-picked condiments I've gathered together:

That's buckwheat and clover honey from my favorite bee man, who was kind enough to have a long discussion with me on the day our backyard spruce was taken over by a swarm. Also, Bonne Maman raspberry jam and orange marmalade, which isn't local but is a variety I've wanted to try for ages. I could swear I remember seeing a jar in my friend the cake-maker's kitchen, too, a sure sign that it's passed stringent taste tests.

Then there are the pickles. I work in the state offices at the Empire State Plaza right now, where they have a farmer's market every Wednesday. Bird Haven Bakery sells pickles and jams alongside their delicious sticky buns, so I bought some bread and butter pickles from them (and some whoopie pies for my son, who is obsessed for some reason). Then I visited the lady from The Grey Mouse Farm; she was offering a discount if you bought two jars, so I got baby sour dills (tiny! dill!) and dilly beans. Beans don't seem hobbity to me - too American - but you know, I wanted something a little different. She had some lovely gardeniera, but that being so associated with Italian food, I was afraid it would seem even more out of place.

I also bought some pretty molds to shape the butter (which I won't buy till closer to the event, for obvious reasons of flavor). Rather than a traditional wooden butter mold, I got a silicon muffin mold with a number of fancy shapes. It'll be so much easier to wash. I don't really like wooden implements, and I avoid them as much as I can.

Yesterday's trip to the Saratoga Farmers Market yielded two-plus pounds of lamb for Shire Hotpot, plus a brace of coneys for stewing. I got myself a new-to-me chest freezer that's all plugged in and freezing stuff to beat the band, so next weekend, the first of the real, non-test-kitchen cooking can begin.

It's on.

Hobbit Test Kitchen: Seed Cakes, Three Ways.

"'A little beer would suit me better, if it is all the same to you, my good sir,' said Balin with the white beard. 'But I don't mind some cake - seed-cake, if you have any.'

"'Lots!' Bilbo found himself answering, to his surprise; and he found himself scuttling off, too, to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug, and then to a pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel."


Seed-cake being specifically mentioned in the opening scenes of the Hobbit and many other places, it's a food that I've wondered about for a long time. I have a certain curiosity about food because I love it so much, so I often make things just to see how it's done or to see what something tastes like.

Of course this had to go on the menu. So the research began.

The recipes were quickly narrowed down to two versions, both from old cookbooks and translated into modern measurements and terms by bloggers. The first recipe dates from 1861, approximately the correct point in time, and the blogger tells us it stays nice for days and that a sprinkling of demerara sugar just before baking makes a delightful crisp texture on the crust. Sold.

But the problem is, this recipe (like most of the others) calls for caraway seeds. I hate caraway seeds. They're the most common type of seed used in seed cakes, but ick, no.

Enter this recipe. It's from a 1591 cookbook, making it rather old and complicated. (It's leavened with yeast, for example, because it predates baking soda and baking powder.) However, it also allows for a variety of seed options ("anise, caraway, coriander, cardamom"). Now that gives me some wiggle room.

I definitely wanted to try caraway because it seems to be the most-frequent option. But I also bought some anise and cardamom at the store, thinking that those would be most-likely to go well with the mace and nutmeg also called for in the recipe.

Today, I gave it my first try. I've altered the recipes in a few places for boring reasons. And for this baking, I didn't use a round pan because I don't even know whether I like seed cake, but whether or not I do, I doubt I can eat three of them before they go stale. These are just tasting size, in mini-loaf pans.

Three Kinds of Seed-Cakes

1½ cups flour
2¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅜ teaspoon salt
2 sticks of butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon mace
½ teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons brandy
4 to 6 tablespoons milk (I used all 6)
2 teaspoons each caraway, cardamom, and anise seeds
demerara sugar

Preheat your oven to 350°. Grease three mini-loaf pans.

Sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. This is to substitute for self-rising flour.

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs. Add mace and nutmeg and mix in along with flour mixture. Add in brandy, then enough milk to get a good "dropping consistency." It took 6 tablespoons of milk to get that for me.

Split the batter between three bowls. Put 2 teaspoons of seeds into each bowl and mix in; pour into loaf tins. (I found out later I should have crushed the seeds, at least the bigger cardamom ones - whoops!)  Finally, sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake; mine took 30 to 35 minutes. They're done when the toothpick comes out clean, you know the drill.



....and now.... for the taste testing!

Hobbit Test Kitchen: Asparagus + Carrotses = Pretteh!

One of the problems with hosting a hobbity meal is that it's supposed to be pretty simple, description is often spare, and in some categories there are no recipes (who writes a recipe for "boil peas; add butter"?). But, I found one important clue in the hobbit food study I read; it quotes Tolkien himself stating that "growing food and eating it occupied most of their time." You know what this means: veggies. And fruit!

Filling in some of the gaps left in the books requires some speculation. That's as it should be - most of us wouldn't want to read a book that stopped and described every detail about what each type of character ate; we want storyline! But it does leave us guessing. And personally, when making those guesses, I want to make sure that I'm not filling the space with the conspicuously-modern, say California blend frozen vegetables or some nonsense.

So, in serving veggies, I'm trying to come up with simple dishes that contain likely ingredients, for which I can use presentation that's just a little bit different from my norm, as a modern person. It needs to feel old school, while still suiting the modern palate. And it gives me an opportunity to put something together for the vegetarians fairly seamlessly. I can't really break out the veggie burgers and Tofurkey here.

I've jotted down a few ideas for myself - creamed potatoes with peas in? Asparagus with carrots? Carrots with leeks and mushrooms? Peas and mushrooms? Parsnips and carrots? And just the other day I began the taste-testing process.

I'll want to have myself a trial run of most everything I'll be serving that day. I mean, the day of the big party is no time to find out that a casserole takes longer than you thought, or that peas + mushrooms = herk. And I'm exited to get my test kitchen running! But it's also almost Christmas right now. I want to whip up Lancashire hotpot and steamed puddings, but I'm broke and I already have a lot to juggle. So I started small.


Asparagus + Carrotses, Precious
2 parts asparagus, cut on a diagonal for pretteh
1 part carrots, cut into thin sticks for faster cooking +pretteh
SO MUCH BUTTER OMG
salt to taste

Place asparagus, minus tips, into steamer basket with carrots. Steam two minutes before adding tips, then cook for 5-6 more minutes until tender.

Put in serving dish and add salt and butter. LOTS of butter. Hobbits love butter; it's a known fact.

Enjoy beautiful veggies!