Inglenook - for discussion

[cider_steve 26]

Sounds like you have researched well and I am sure she will appreciate your efforts.

 

I think, from what I have read, that you have soup to start and the apple dumplings for desert.What about for main course ? A good one will be a chunky vegetable stew/cassarole with cheese and herb dumplings (one of my mum's specialities) Include lots of pulses/beans to substitute the lack of meat.

 

Steve.

[chattius 2,526]

Main dinner would be a premiere for me: Gefuellter Riesenbovist mit Berglinsen- filled giant puffball with mountain lenses and chilli.

 

We still have some puffballs from summer, 3 to around 10 pounds in weight. They taste a bit like tofu. Normally I cut them in dices, dust them and do them like a schnitzel. But I will hole out a small one and fill it with spicy herbs and then put it into the oven. These mushrooms dehydrate very slowly so putting them in an oven should work. Served with mountain lenses and some vegs.

 

[cider_steve 26]

Sounds wonderful.

 

Good job Chattius and I hope it all goes well on the day.

 

Steve.

[Bondbug 32]

Man Chattius - your stuff is superb. Can we have more information please, if you have this, about the making of the cheese you mention, and as much detail as you can give about giant puffballs (not unfortunately very common here). My wife makes a cheese which is good, much firmer than the cream cheeses but instructions for something firmer would be welcome.

 

The apple dumplings recipe is on the list for soon.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Bondbug

[chattius 2,526]

Hand cheese: you need starter bacteria, not pasteurized fresh milk,... From the milk you make quark, form small discs, and wet them with a bacteria holding liquid. Rotschmiere and Gelbschmiere, have to look up the english names.

 

Giant puffballs, they grow at our welcome 'monument' made from stray. Rarely found on markets, but at least here no other puffball reaches their size and you can eat them as long they are white, so even the most stupid mushroom searcher detects them.

 

I do not know how you call the giant people made from stray. With 3 barrelshape pressed stray packages you can do nice stray people. Sometimes we add 2 packet pressed packages as arms. Then we mount a big sign with our family name and an arrow. They are placed on hilltop fields so if a river flooding down in the valley appears they can be used by the shepherd as a first supply of dry stray and hay. A black or red tube often builds the head and can be used to give water to the sheep.

 

 

If the hay, stray wasn't needed it rots and gives the habitat for a lot of animals ---- and giant puffballs.

[gogoblender 3,070]

Main dinner would be a premiere for me: Gefuellter Riesenbovist mit Berglinsen- filled giant puffball with mountain lenses and chilli.

 

We still have some puffballs from summer, 3 to around 10 pounds in weight. They taste a bit like tofu. Normally I cut them in dices, dust them and do them like a schnitzel. But I will hole out a small one and fill it with spicy herbs and then put it into the oven. These mushrooms dehydrate very slowly so putting them in an oven should work. Served with mountain lenses and some vegs.

 

 

zomgod, that is such a cool pic! Is that like... a really really huge mushroom that you're just stuffing with anything? I think I saw you mention these before, but again seeing it posted like this, you filled me with envy.

 

Dang boring Canadian grocery marts!

 

 

gogo

[Bondbug 32]

We use fresh milk from farm always, with added cream from when we skim for general use. I will need to get my wife to look at this. Thanks Chattius.

[chattius 2,526]

Handkaese

Quark is done by milk acid bacteria with fresh milk, just having it stay around for a few days. The solid parts are filtered with linnen towels.

 

Then you press out some water from the quark

mix with natron and salt

form the cheese

let it ripe around 25 Celcius and 80% moisture for 2-3 days and it should become a bit yellow

spray with salt water and let it ripe again

 

If you have a riping room it has already Rotschmiere (red smear) bacteria in the air, same ones as in Harzer and Roumadour cheese. I cutted some pieces from the outside of a bought cheese and put it in water for a starter bacteria culture and sprayed it on the wannabe cheese balls. With luck there are some in the milk already, but my first tries were covered with ugly molds. So I used this trick.

 

Old delivered recipes sayed putting linnen towel in vinegar and cover the cheese with it, but all you need is the bacteria and avoid molds, which was both done by the vinegar. People had no knowledge of these bactera in old times.

 

 

Giant puffball

Giant puffball is no real delicatesse. It has just a slight taste of Tofu and is low on calories. You mainly use it when you find it. It is really only found on marketplaces here, which have less strong rules than supermarkets about raw plants.

 

Normally puffballs end like this: dusted like a Schnitzel, roasted potato and Remoulade sauce. The holed one was a premiere and the next time I add some lard and bacon for taste. The cut away pieces from holing out became a tofu_like-ghoulash the next day.

[chattius 2,526]

I really do not know how to call the recipe for tomorrow:

 

Deer tongue in a sort of stew, Pot au Feu, Eintopf, done in a Roemertopf (unglazed clay pot) at the baking day at the village owned baking oven. I modified a beef tongue recipe a bit. Beef tongue is normally really cheap to come by if you live countryside. Not much people want them, so you can buy them by the dozen pounds at a slaughterhouse. But tomorrow it won't be beef but from a 1 year old deer which had to be shot because of heavy injuries when hit by a truck.

 

There is a nice english site about how to do beef tongue: Cook-Beef-Tongue

And how to use a Roemertopf: clay pot cooking

 

So the recipe for tomorrow.

Today:

Placing the unglazed clay pot in water today. It will suck up water and if placed in the baking oven there will be no burning of the stew as long the clay pot releases the stored water as steam.

Tomorrow:

Boil/steam the tongue in the clay pot with half a litre if water, salt and pepper till you can remove the hide (90 minutes, depends on size). Remove the hide by putting the boiled tongue in ice water and skin it. Cut the tongue in stripes and put it and half of the filtered broth into the Roemertopf. Carrots, cabbage, leek, onion, redbeet ... depending a bit on season add them depending on their boiling time. Boil/steam for another 90 minutes starting from putting the tongue in.

 

You shouldn't move the cooled/watered pot direct in biggest heat. Just move it slowly or at a home oven: raise temperature slowly.

 

Clay pot cooking was a tradition at my wife's site. Before they became motorcycle racers and mechanics, this family tree was doing clay work for generations.

 

 

How is a Roemertopf (which would translate as romans pot) into english? Unglazed clay pot? The german name is because it is said it was brought to germany by the romans 2000 years back.

[Bondbug 32]

I saw this the other day when I looked in and wanted to thank Chattius for the info.

 

We bought one of these some years ago because we thought it would be superb for the wood oven. Then we read the directions (which were not too helpful) which told us it could not be put into a hot oven, and it never got used - and eventually got broken.

 

Which was a great shame. I think your info will give us the opportunity to try again, once we have had looked up all the references.

 

So thanks again - very interesting post.

 

P.S."Clay pots should always be placed in a cold oven and then heated to the required temperature." I still don't see how this works with a wood fired bread oven which would normally be preheated to it's top required temperature then used variously for different dishes as it cools slowly

Edited March 30, 2012 by Bondbug

[chattius 2,526]

Our clay pot is handmade and no massproduction- wife is from a family with a lot of potters in the ancestors. Lower temperature at clay burning is more water which can be stored, but also more water bubbles which could destroy the pot. Lot of factors....

 

In the public owned baking house therw is a certain order:

 

Flammkuchen, tarte flambee For testing and high first heat

Different types of bread

Cakes

At cooldown the temperature is above boiling for several hours still and we use this rest heat for the clay pot

When removing clay pots , stll enough heat to dry fruits

 

There are colder areas in the oven and the pot is moved there first, still some cakes at the hot place. Doing baking with several families it is a lot of sorting out and sorting into the oven.

[Bondbug 32]

Yes, we have the same sort of baking order as the oven cools from around 250/270° ... bread pizza cakes then stews cassoulet egg custard etc.

 

I see you put your clay pot in while the temperature is still above 100°, which is interesting as that is not the impression we got from the literature, where we get the impression of putting the pot in the cold oven. Good. Our oven is small domestic only 90cm diameter so there are no cooler areas ... which could be more difficult. I would need to know a lot more of the "lot of factors"! Are you suggesting too that commercial pots are of limited value - that is all that would be available here, though I could make enquiries about local potteries. I wonder if they are aware of this form of cooking in this area.

 

 

 

I note that you also talk of "public owned baking house". That is interesting. I must find out if there are such things still in France. Depends to some extent on what you mean by "public owned" - to me that indicates local authority/local government/commune ownership rather than "private" ownership.

 

I wonder if other people have any experience/knowledge of this ... or is Hesse the last bastion of civilization!

[chattius 2,526]

There is a book from an english man travelling close to my area in 1848,first pages are free to read:

 

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1791011?uid=3737864&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=47698845241617

 

It was like each of the village owned a part of the forest. But coppicing showed more profit so people agreed to build a cooperative system. At coppicing you do a circle of around 11 years. It was more easy to chop big areas than small ones. So it was discussed which part of the forest would be chopped, which used for buckwheat, which for farming caddle and forest pigs,... So a kind of speciaöization was done: the forest of a smith was worked by woodcutters, who got the iron products from the smith. The coppicing area soon produced more wood,tanning bark and food than 5 times the area in better suited farmland. So it was only a small step that the village build a baking house with a big baking oven for everyone.

[Bondbug 32]

A somewhat patchy discussion I am afraid as I do not get here as often as I should. Apologies Chattius.

 

I think you will find that bakehouses, or at least facilities for communal baking/cooking, were available to the public in most countries, though perhaps not in the form described by Chattius. Quite lot of facilities were made available for working class and rural families. Ovens were one, wash houses were another. In France there are still washhouses, little used now except by a few older folk, usually near a stream or spring for a good supply of water. I remember in Scotland in Dundee in the 50s there were still large washhouses locally known as "steamies" which were centres of social interaction as are some laundrimats nowadays. Used to see women pushing their laundry to the steamy - in prams usually.

 

However I am most interested in the clayware for baking. I will come back with a pic of our small oven and you may be able to tell me if the clay pot could be used in it.

[Bondbug 32]

Here is our little oven - not quite as imposing as Chattius' Bakehouse oven!

 

 

Is it possible to use your claypot with such a small oven? I do not know what the range of sizes may be for these pots. I am a bit suspicious of web info here where they talk of 15mins soaking as compared to Chattius' overnight soaking.

[chattius 2,526]

Seems a bit too few room ;(

 

One trick could be slowly heating up with a nearby(?) gas/electrical oven and then putting into the wood-fired baking oven? My long watering is probably part of the way the clay was burned and part because I clean it a bit same moment, using a water/vinegar mix).One warning, if youdo fish all the time - it is nearly impossible to remove the fish taste from the pot after a while. Some pots are glazed in the inner side of the lower half to prevent this. I have no experience with these types of pots. Should ask my mother in law.

 

Same important as slowly heating is slowly cooling.

[Bondbug 32]

Many thanks Chattius. Good idea pre-heating. I understand about porous material and fish smells! We normally keep separate pans for fish.

 

I will come back to this if I may when we return from 2 weeks away. My wife loves trying new methods, and we were sad we got it wrong last time we tried this. Fortunately no rush, as we have not yet replaced our broken pot and may have to wait till we go to England later in the year. We may find something here in central France but I doubt it. We have a couple of German friends in the choir, so will ask them about it. Alsace might be a possible place for finding clayware like this - but it is as far as England!

 

One of these days we might come and ask your mother in law to give us some lessons.

[chattius 2,526]

Maibock , yummy

 

Mai - may , bock - male roe deer

 

Hunting seasons for male roe starts in may and so a Bock shot in may is the youngest roe you can legally get in germany. Very low fat and very tasty. In germany hunting rights is also a hunting duty and since germany has no (not enough) predators you have to hunt to keep population at a constant level. So my spare time is mainly to hunt weak roe till the needed number is reached and do the documentation. Only half the number of roadkills this year. Roadkills are counted into the number of roes to be shot.

 

In german a male roe is a Rehbock, related tothe africaan/dutch word Reebok which gave its name to the sportswear.

 

Our au pair will leave this week so we are currently reading web-pages for next aupair girl. While this year was mainly to have a sort of older sister with a car for our oldest, next schoolyear with oldest at university, will bring the need more to transport and babysit the twins.

 

We search for one who is used to countryside and a big family.

[gogoblender 3,070]

heh, actually Chattius, Venison is something I so rarely eat. I know, I'm so boring, but I just find the taste of game so strong. Seems like I can only stand mild mcd's beef...

 

joking

 

 

gogo

[chattius 2,526]

Fear I lack the proper english words:

 

Several traidtional hessian ways to make game softer and less in taste:

 

Marinieren - marinating: meat covered with a spice/vegs/wine mix and rest for up to 2 weeks

 

Beizen - ?: Dried spices and vegs are powdered and rubbed into the meat. Put in a clay pot, or fresh clay or nowadays plastic wrapped around and rest for some days. So the marinating liquid is kinda the meat juice.

Before it is powdered, can buy the mix in a good food store if you are too lazy to make it ysourself.

 

 

Reifen - riping: Raw meat is hung up for some weaks to ripe. Best have an own room for this.

 

 

Outside my state: figus, pineapple have enzyms which speed up riping. But these fruits are not natural to germany and therefor not in tradtional recipes.

 

pineapples:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromelain

[Bondbug 32]

Yummy venison Chattius - poor Gogo must have a weak stomach - too much chicken and pasta? I seem to remember part of the problem in cooking venison was making sure it did not get dry, but wife is the expert - I think she wrapped it in something like bacon.

 

But we can't get venison here. Gone are the days, many years ago, when one butcher in Dundee (Scotland for the geographic dunces)sold nothing but venison at the same price (3shillings!) for any cut. We live here near an estate with a high class hunt and forests stocked with deer - heaven only knows what happens to the venison - can't find it in shops or privately.

 

However I expect Gogo prefers pâté chinois.

Edited June 24, 2012 by Bondbug

[chattius 2,526]

Stupid european laws forbid to use same instruments used for butchering beef and pork for wild game in professional use. So a butcher needs two cool houses, two cooking rooms, ....Too complicated for small butcheries. Supermarkets however prefer a predictable food supply and buy game from breeders, mainly imports from newzealand.

 

I think we had a discussion thread about fat net, wrapping with bacon, piercing holes and pvut bacon in needle shape so the meat looks like a hedgehog before roasting.... All nice tricks if the meat has no enough fat. However I prefer a riping/marinating combination for venison and leaf bacon wrappings for fish.

[Bondbug 32]

Thanks Chattius. Time you went to Brussels to sort them out and stop them interfering with purely local matters.

 

What you say about small butchers is interesting. All the small butchers I know, who had their own small, spotlessly clean slaughterhouse on the premises have had to close them. Brussels makes regulations for the large operators and forgets to adapt them for the small family business. Our daughter, the vet, was angry about this too when she was in Scotland. The practice used a small local facility for dealing with large animals that had had to be put down - not sick, but like horses with broken legs - and Brussels regs closed them down. Family butchers cannot afford the cash or the space to provide separate rooms for all the different functions. Our local man occasionally slaughtered a sheep or cow, and we had access to bits like tripe, and other "abats". Can't even get the bits to make haggis anymore!

 

As for venison - not available in butchers or supermarkets.

 

Disappointed with Gogo - thought he might bite on the "pâté chinois" - one of his favourite dishes!

[chattius 2,526]

Yes logics are a bit weird here, as crazy as in the Catch 22 movie.

 

I can sell a cadaver to a restaurant, so the cook can transform it into some meals. Here not the venison pieces are sold to the end consumer but a meal. Only thing that the cook has to do is making sure the meal is healthy.

 

But I am not allowed to sell the cadaver to a butcher who will sell venison pieces direct and uncooked ...

[Bondbug 32]

Aye logic is a funny thing, but there are no doubt ways round Brussels logic. Administrative rules vary from country to country. Foodstuffs banned in one country sell in another. Mad cow seems to be still choking the English, but the banned cuts and bits in England are readily available in France.

 

I can still have oxtail soup and make haggis, and go to the farm with my churn for fresh milk. When it is still warm from the cow, as it sometimes is when the wagon has just emptied the tanks and the fresh milk has not had time to cool, we get thick cream that whips up beautifully into thick cream not unlike clotted cream. People tell me it is not legal but it is difficult to believe.

 

Er ... cholesterol did you say ... like all things to do with food and diet that is the wife's problem.