Literary Bakes

As soon as he opened the refrigerator, he saw it. The Caponata! Fragrant, vivid, generous, a whole deep dish, enough for at least four people. It had been months since his housekeeper Adelina last made some. The bread, in its plastic bag, was freshly baked, bought in the morning. Naturally, spontaneously, the notes of of Aïda's triumphal march came to his lips. Humming, he opened the French window after turning on the lights on the veranda. Yes, it was a cool and breezy night, but nice enough to eat outside. He set a small table, brought out the food, the wine, and the bread, and sat down.

If you haven't read anything by Andrea Camilleri, one of the greatest italian crime novelists (and huge personality), you might have never heard of detective Salvo Montalbano. This charismatic policeman, with his passion for his job, beautiful women and, most of all, food, has become an icon of "sicilianity", embodying many of the often conflicting facets of his island.

An "Excursion to Tindari" is the fifth novel of the Montalbano series, in which the detective investigates the connection between the death of a sketchy depraved character and the disappearance of an old couple who lives in the same building, after they left for a daytrip to Tindari's sanctuary. The city they decided to visit is an ancient greek colony, and took the name of Tyndaris in honor of the putative father of Helen of Troy and the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, but it's the Sanctuary of the black Madonna the real reason why hundreds of tourists and worshippers face the steep climb to the top of the hill every week.

Unfortunately, that's about what I feel comfortable saying about the book, because it's such a good crime fiction story that I don't want to risk spoiling anything for you. So let's focus on something rather important for this blog: food.

Food is paramount in Montalbano's saga, its smells and colours are used to describe emotions, personalities, and the overall atmosphere of the scenes. In the one I quoted, it's the relief of coming back home after days of work and frustration and finding one of the most delicious sicialian comfort food, the aubergines caponata.

The original ancestor of caponata was a very simple dish consumed above all by the less affluent classes in anctien Roman times. Only during the Spanish domination of Sicily, it became an aristocratic dish, being enriched with crustaceans, octopus and different types of fish. The first version of the caponata a little closer to today's one can be found in the culinary treatise "Theoretical-practical cuisine with corresponding answer" by the cook and scholar Ippolito Cavalcanti (1837). According to him, the caponata was prepared with toasted slices of bread soaked in oil, white vinegar, salt and pepper. Even at the time of Cavalcanti the caponata recipe was still clearly very distant from the current one, and the only common element between the two recipes, is the sweet and sour sauce. Most likely, the transition from one recipe to another, happened as an attempt to reproduce a dish of the wealthy classes using poorer and easily available ingredients.

The recipe that I present to you today is very simple and comes directly from ... my father.

This is one of the ways my family makes caponata, though sometimes we make a few variations that also include peppers or other vegetables, but this is definitely my favorite one. Don't let the initial steps scare you, the result is worth it.

Ingredients

4 black aubergines

1/2 large white onion

2 celery

1/2 can of peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon of salted capers (desalted)

150 g of green olives in brine (pitted)

q.s. extra virgin olive oil

q.s. peanut oil (for frying)

q.s. salt

1/2 glass of "good" vinegar (preferably white)

3 tablespoons of sugar

Cut the aubergines into cubes and put them in salt for at least an hour in a colander, in the sink.

In the meantime, prepare the sauce: wash the celery, cut it into chunks and put it in a pan, add the chopped onion and sauté everything with plenty of extra virgin olive oil. Then add the capers - well rinsed from the salt, the olives - whole- and finally the peeled tomatoes or, alternatively, the tomato sauce. Season with salt and cook over low heat, until you get a thick and tasty sauce. Before removing it from the heat, add the sugar and vinegar to make it "sweet and sour", according to your taste.

Now rinse the aubergines with a clean cloth and fry them in hot and abundant oil, this way they will absorb very little oil. Drain them and place them on a tray with absorbent kitchen paper. Finally, add the aubergines to the caponata sauce previously prepared - off the heat! Mix and let it cool completely. Traditionally, we leave it in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Don't forget some good freshly baked bread to go with it, just like Montalbano.

Let me know if you try this recipe. In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!

‘There was a momentary lull, broken by Hannah, who stalked in, laid two hot turnovers on the table, and stalked out again. These turnovers were an institution, and the girls called them ‘muffs’, for they had no others and found the hot pies very comforting to their hands on cold mornings.

Hannah never forgot to make them, no matter how busy or grumpy she might be, for the walk was long and bleak. The poor things got no other lunch and were seldom home before two.’

Oh, how conforting would be to hold one of Hannah Mullet's warm apple turnovers, and enjoy the smell of cinnamon and butter, on these cold winter mornings of this crazy pandemic times!

Hannah is the March's family housekeeper, but she is more like a family member. She has helped raising all four sisters, she has been a friend through tough times, and I'm sure her cooking skills were most apreciated by Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth...

But you'll be wondering: the book only mentions "turnovers", how do you know they had an apple filling? A turnover can be any puff pastry pie, both sweet or savoury, but my guess is that they were in fact apple "pies" because of the time and the setting of the book.

First of all, it is said that the March family's house and its surroundings are based on Louise May Alcott's own home, the Orchard House, now a historic house museum, where she lived with her three sisters. Both the real and the fictional houses were surrounded by said orchard, and it is not difficult to imagine that it was made up mostly by apple trees, apple being the most popular and widely cultivated fuit at the time.

Moreover, apple turnovers were very popular during the late 1800s: in the second half of the 19th century, numerous recipes for them appeared on famous cooking books, such as Cassell’s Dictonary of Cookery published in 1874.

But how could we make a nice batch of hot apple turnovers today? And how would Hannah have made one in the late 1800s?

First of all, we need to make some good ol' puff pastry, and though today we can buy a ready-made sheet at the supermarket, Hannah would have definitely made her own fresh pastry dough.

We can find a very good recipe for puff pastry in Hannah Glasse's The art of Cookery made Plain & Easy from 1747 :

Puff-Paste
Take a quarter of a Peck of Flour, rub fine half a Pound of Butter, a little Salt, make it up into a light Paste with cold Water, just stiff enough to work it well up; then roll it out, and stick pieces of butter all over, and strew a little Flour; roll it up, and roll it out again; and so do nine or ten times, till you have rolled in a Pound and half of Butter. This Crust is mostly used for all Sorts of Pies.

To be honest, I would be perfectly satisfied with this recipe, since it doesn't differ much from the modern way of making puff pastry. Of course, today we would maybe use a planetary mixer or a food processor to speed up the process, but the ingredients are the same.

But the process of making the butter lamination of the dough is definitely the longest and the most annoying part and it cannot be done with a kitchen appliance. Of course, if we decide to make it ourselves, we do not need to roll it out nine or 10 times, especially if we want to make a quick breakfast pie.

The recipe I use is this one:

Frozen butter cubes 200gr

Flour 200gr

Cold water 90gr

Salt 1/2 a teaspoon

I quickly blitz all the ingredients in a food processor (possibly one that has a dough mixing setting), then i form a ball with the dough and wrap it in clear film and leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Then, I follow the rolling and folding with the butter to get some of the lamination typical of the puff pastry.

If you're smarth, though, you will skip this part, buy a pre-made puff pastry sheet and go straight to the filling.

Speaking of which...

Apple filling

Ingredients:

Honeycrisp apples 4

Butter 1 tablespoon

Brown sugar 50gr

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Water 1 tablespoon

Peel and cut the apples in small cubes and put them in a large frying pan with the butter on medium heat. When the apples start to soften, add the sugar, the spices and the water and leave to simmer with a lid on untill they are completely cooked and the water and the butter have formed a light caramel sauce.

While the apples cool, roll the dough on a flat foured surface and cut it in squares - I suggest to use a pizza cutter. When the filling is cold, put a tablespoon of it in the center of the dough squares, then fold them in half to form triangles. Close the triangles with the help of a fork or with your fingers - as I like to do - and brush some eggwash on top before baking them for 15 minutes at 180° C.

My little turnover triangles are not the best looking, but they are so, so easy, quick to make and so good that, honestly, don't mind them looking so rustic and homey.

Let me know if you try this recipe. In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!

So, it's winter, at least in this emisphere. To be fair, since I live in the most southern part of southern Europe my concept of cold might be slightly different from yours, depending on where you live.

But if there is someone who knows what real cold is, it is definitely the Night's Watch. Yes, I'm talking about Jon Snow and all the knights who dedicate their lives to guarding the Wall, the immense fortification on the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms, essential to defend them from what lies beyond. And what lies beyond is danger (I'll try not to spoil anything if you haven't read all the books or watched the series) but also ice. Lots of it.

So, when the night gathers and his watch begins, what a man of the Night's Watch needs is something warm and spicy to stand the icy winds that blow through the corridors of Castle Black. Something like the hot spiced wine, prepared according to the recipe of Lord Commander Jeor Mormont, for example.

“The Old Bear was particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron heresy… The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a boil.”

Over the history, so many types of spiced warm wine have been drunk in so many different places, for example it was popular in the Roman Empire, as attested in the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder. The first recipes for spiced wine called "pimen" appeared at the end of the 13th century in the Tractatus de Modo and at the beginning of the 14th century in the Regiment de Sanitat of Arnaldus de Villa Nova. Nowadays it is mostly known as Hippocras, or "medieval spiced wine".

The fictional time depicted in A Song of Ice and Fire resembles a lot our late Middle Ages, especially giving how much inspiration has George R.R. Martin taken from the War of the Roses, dated between 1455 and 1488 - as he himself has stated multiple times. So to obtain something similar to what the Old Bear likes to drink in the books, we might as well follow an old recipe for hippocras.

The following method of making hippocras is taken from The Booke of Kervinge and Sewing (London: 1508), which in its turn is derived from recipes in fifteenth century sources such as John Russell's The Boke of Nurture, which contains a hippocras recipe in verse.

Take ginger, pepper, graines, canell, sinamon, sugar and tornsole, than looke ye have five or sixe bags for your ipocras to run in, and a pearch that your renners may ren on, than must ye have sixe peuter basins to stand under your bags, than look your spice be ready, and your ginger well pared or if it be beaten to pouder, than looke your stalkes of sinamon be well coloured and sweete: canell is not so gentle in operation, sinamon, is hotte and dry, graines of paradice be hot and moist, ginger, grains, long pepper ben hot and moist, sinamon, canell and redde wine colouring.

Now knowe yee the proportions of your ipocras, than beate your pouders, eache by them selfe, and put them in bladders and hange your bagges sure that no bagge tough other, but let each basinge touch other, let the first basin be of a gallon, and each of the other a pottell, than put in your basin a gallon of red Wine, put these to your pouders, and stire them well, than put them into the firste bage, and let it ren, than put them in the second bagge, than take a peece in your hand and assay if it be stronge of Ginger, and alay it with sinamon, and if it be strong of sinamon, alay it with sugar, and look ye let it ren through sixe renners, and your ipocras into a close Vessel and keep the receit, for it will serve for sewers, than serve your souvraign with wafers and ipocras.

Ok, maybe we can find an easier one.

Ingredients:

Red wine 750 ml

Honey 3/4 of a cup

Water 3/4 of a cup

Cinnamon 2 sticks

Nutmeg

Raisins

Pinenuts

Dry cramberries

Let the wine simmer over medium-low heat with the other ingredients, until steamy. Make sure that it never gets to a boil and strain it before you serve it.

Let me know if you made your own version of a mulled wine this winter. In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!

As you may know, the story of poor Jane Eyre is not a happy one. Having to endure the death of her parents first, then the malevolence of her aunt and cousin, the violence at Lowood School and finally everything that happened at the Rochester mansion... let's just say that moments of enjoyment and lightness in this novel are very hard to find.

The first beacon of light that we encounter in the book, comes right after one of the incredibly harsh punishments endured by Jane by the hand of the School's headmaster, when the only charitable teacher Miss Temple decides to take her and her only friend Helen into her chambers to offer some comfort, as well as tea and cake.

"Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.

‘I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,’ said she, ‘but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,’ and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.

We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied."

Now, what was this seed cake like?

Though accounts of this simple - but rich - cake appear in recipe books since the end of the 16th century, it reached the peak of its popularity in the 1700s and remained popular through the whole 1800s. This is why it is mostly known as a Victorian cake even though its origins are foregoing.

The seeds mentioned in its name are Caraway seeds. At the time they were so popular that in Mary Eaton's 1822's "The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary" they appear in at least 14 other cakes and biscuits, as well as in soap and treatment for "hysterics" recipes.

But let's just focus on the cake.

Since, as i previously mentioned, it was and still is a very popular dessert, there are too many recipes to chose from. Some of them include milk, some include candied orange zest or brandy... Personally, I believe that the one served in a severe victorian boarding school like Lowood, had no such frills and expensive ingredients, but it was rather simple and rustic, with very few ingredients.

The one I chose to test, with amazing results, is the following:

butter 180gr

caster sugar 150gr

eggs 3

caraway seeds 3tsp

baking powder 1tsp

a pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°). Butter and line a loaf tin with baking paper.

In a bowl, or a cake mixer, cream together the soft butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then sift together the flour , the baking powder, the caraway seeds and a pinch of salt. Mix well to combine evenly and scrape into the prepared baking tin.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or unti well risen, golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

I used a gluten free flour mix for this one and the result is super moist and soft, so I can definitely vouch for the versatility of this recipe. Feel free to add the other traditional ingredients to make it more rich in flavour, but I can assure you that the aroma of the Caraway seeds makes it already perfect as it is.

Let me know if you try this recipe. In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!

In my heart, I could not have started this silly project with anything but the most mocked meal of the whole English literature. Every Jane Austen's fan has quoted and made a meme or a joke of this infamous sentence, pronounced by no other than Mr. Collins, the unsensible and unagreable cousin of our beloved Bennet sisters:

“What a superbly featured room and what excellent boiled potatoes! Many years since I’ve had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should i compliment the excellence of the cooking?"

To be fair to the poor cousin Collins, what now may seem one of the dullest and uninspiring side dishes, in 1813 - year of publication of Pride and Prejudice - potatoes were just starting to be considered a common vegetable suited for the needs of the working class, while by the end of the 18th century it was still considered a somewhat exotic food.

But how were these exemplary vegetables cooked in the early 1800s?

Well, since we can't ask the Bennet's cook, we might look for the answer in The New Art of Cookery by Richard Briggs, first published in 1788. This is the recipe he quotes:

Boiled Potatoes

‘Wash them very clean, put them into a sauce-pan, nearly cover them with cold water, put in a little salt, cover them close, and boil them very gently, but look at them often; when the skins begin to break try them with a fork, and if they are done strain the water from them, cover them close to steam for a few minutes, then peel them and put them in a dish, with melted butter in a boat.

You might have noticed that this recipe... doesn't say much.

So, we might at least try to add a couple of condiments that could suit both our and the Bennets taste, using ingredinets easy to find even in 1813.

Salmoriglio

The easiest way to spice up boiled potatoes is a very simple italian infused oil, made with olive oil, finely chopped parsley, a couple of garlic cloves (whole), salt and white vinegar.

Vegetable gravy

A super tasty and vegan sauce. You will need: 3 carrots, 1 big onion, 1 big leek, a rosemary branch, oil, red wine and a small pan.

Wash and chop all the vegetables and put them in a small pan with enough oil to cover half of them in height, and the rosemary (whole). Let them fry for a couple of minutes, when they are softer and darker, add a little red wine (one quarter of a glass) and let them boil untill the wine has reduced. Remove the rosemary and blend the rest with an immersion blender untill you get a silky gravy.

This extremely simple recipe is only the beginning of this little experiment, I hope you will have as much fun as I'm having just thinking about the next few recipes.

In the meantime, take care, be safe and keep reading!

Ester

References:

How the Potato Changed the World

Promoting Potatoes in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The English Art of Cookery