Read Shakespeare's Kitchen Online
Authors: Francine Segan
Shakespeare's Kitchen (18 page)
Zest of ½ Seville orange (or 1 lemon)
1.
Cut the lobsters in half lengthwise, discarding any inedible parts.
2.
Preheat the broiler. Combine the nutmeg, wine, lemon juice, olive oil, and bread crumbs and spoon over the lobster halves. Place the lobsters on a baking pan and cover with aluminum foil. Broil for 10 minutes, remove the foil, and broil for 5 to 6 minutes, or until the tail meat lifts out easily. Sprinkle on the pistachios.
3.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Add the orange juice and heat until warm.
4.
Place a lobster in the center of each plate and sprinkle with the orange zest. Serve the orange butter in small dishes on the side.
ORIGINAL RECIPE:
To hash Lobsters
Take them out of the shells, mince them small, and put them in a pipkin with some claret wine, salt, sweet butter, grated nutmeg, slic’t oranges, & some pistaches; being finely stewed, serve them on sippets, dish them, and run them over with beaten butter, slic’t oranges, some cuts of paste, or lozenges of puff-paste.
THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660
Lobster Tails with Wildflowers
SERVES 4
T
HE ACCOMPLISHT COOK
lists more than twenty-one ways to prepare lobster, which was inexpensive and regularly enjoyed by the working classes in Shakespeare’s time. Here, the lobster tails are steamed in floral herbal tea that imparts a lovely fragrance to the lobster. The meat is then seasoned, placed back in the tail, and covered with colorful edible summer flowers.
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 tablespoons grapeseed oil
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and freshly milled black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh or dried edible flower petals
4 chamomile herbal tea bags (must be 100 percent chamomile leaves)
1 mint herbal tea bag (must be 100 percent mint leaves)
4 lobster tails
½ cup assorted purple and yellow edible flowers (such as chive, borage, periwinkle, marigold, calendula, mustard flowers, or chamomile)
1 lemon, sliced
1.
Whisk together the lemon juice and grapeseed oil. Add the nutmeg and season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the flower petals and let stand for at least 30 minutes.
2.
Place the chamomile and mint tea bags in the boiling water in the bottom of a steamer. Steam the lobster tails for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the meat lifts easily out of the tail. Remove the lobster meat, reserving the shells. Roughly chop the lobster meat and toss with the vinaigrette.
3.
Place a lobster tail in the center of each plate and spoon the lobster meat into the shell. Sprinkle the flowers over the lobster and arrange the lemon slices around the plates.
Scallops in Berry Glaze
SERVES 2
T
HE ELIZABETHANS ENJOYED
sweet and tart sauces and made use of various flavored vinegars in their cooking. The natural sweetness of scallops is perfectly offset here by the light tartness of fruit vinegar. This recipe is exceptionally delicious and very simple to prepare.
1 tablespoon butter
2 medium shallots, minced
½ cup fruit vinegar (raspberry, blackberry, or elderberry)
2 whole cloves
⅛ teaspoon mace
8 ounces sea scallops
Salt and freshly milled black pepper
¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
¼ cup finely chopped mint
2 scallop shells, cleaned
1.
Melt the butter in a sauté pan, add the shallots, and cook over low heat for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the shallots are translucent. Add the vinegar, raise the heat to medium-high, and boil for 3 minutes, or until the mixture is thickened to a glaze. Reduce the heat to medium-low, add the cloves, mace, and scallops, and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, or until the scallops are opaque and cooked through. Remove the whole cloves and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2.
Combine the parsley and mint and sprinkle around the edges of the scallop shells. Spoon the scallops into the shells and top with the berry glaze.
ORIGINAL RECIPE:
To stew Scollops
Boil them very well in white wine, fair water, and salt, take them out of the shells, and stew them with some of the liquor, elder vinegar, two or three cloves, some large mace, and some sweet herbs choped small; being well stewed together, dish four or five of them in scollop shells and beaten butter, with the juyce of two or three oranges.
THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660
Cod Steaks with Onions and Currants
SERVES 4
C
ARP WAS
often served whole with an orange in its mouth and then plated to appear to be swimming. Many feasts occurred during Lent and on non-meat days, so fish was frequently on the menu, served roasted on a spit, baked, simmered in wine and spices, or cooked over coals.
The original recipe was also used in the soup chapter, for
Seafood Soup with Rosemary Croutons
. Since it was neither a true soup nor a fish dish I included both interpretations.
½ cup currants
½ cup white wine
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 white onions, thinly sliced
1 sprig of rosemary
3 sprigs of flat-leaf parsley
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of marjoram
2 whole mace blades (do not use ground, omit if whole is not available)
3 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
4 cod steaks (about 7 ounces each)
Salt and freshly milled black pepper
1.
Soak the currants in the wine for 1 hour.
2.
Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan, add the onions, and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, or until caramelized. Tie the rosemary, parsley, thyme, and marjoram sprigs together with kitchen string. Raise the heat to medium-high, add the tied herbs, currants, wine, mace, vinegar, sugar, and ¼ cup of water, and bring to a boil.
3.
Season the cod with salt and pepper. Add the fish to the pan, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 5 minutes, or until the fish is firm and opaque. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4.
Spoon some of the onion mixture in the center of each plate and top with a cod steak.
ORIGINAL RECIPE:
To seeth a Carpe
First take a carpe and boyle it in water and salt, then take of the Broath and put in a little pot, then put thereto as much wine as there is broath, with rosemary, parseley, time, and margerome bounde together, and put them into the pot, & put thereto a good many of sliced Onyons, small raysins, whole Maces, a dish of butter, and a little Sugar, so that it be not to sharpe nor to sweete, and let all these seeth together: If the wine be not sharpe enough then put thereto a little Vineger, and so serve it upon soppes with broath.
THE GOOD HUSWIFES JEWELL,
1587
Mussels in Pastry
SERVES 4
… Thy food shall be
The fresh-brook mussels …
THE TEMPEST,
1.2
T
HIS RECIPE WAS
originally a covered pie of minced mussels, but the mussels are more beautiful left whole and served in an open puff pastry. Mussels and leeks are a classic combination savored for hundreds of years. The English first noted these mollusks in the 1200s when the mussels attached themselves to the stakes seamen planted in the sand near shore. Mussels, although inexpensive in Shakespeare’s day, were also prized by the rich and can be found in English cookbooks as early as 1390.
2 tablespoons butter
2 large leeks, thinly sliced (white part only)
½ cup finely chopped assorted fresh herbs (such as flat-leaf parsley, mint, tarragon, or basil)
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
½ cup white wine
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Salt and freshly milled black pepper
2 pounds mussels, cleaned
2 hard-boiled egg yolks
4 large frozen puff-pastry shells, baked according to package directions
1 orange, peeled and thinly sliced
1.
Melt the butter in a large sauté pan or wok. Add the leeks and sauté over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the herbs, nutmeg, wine, orange juice, and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil and add the mussels. Cover and cook for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the mussels open.
2.
Remove the mussels from the pan with a slotted spoon. Remove the mussels from the shells, discarding the shells.
3.
Mash the egg yolks in a small bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the liquid from the pan and stir until it forms a smooth paste. Add the egg mixture to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the sauce thickens. Add the mussels and stir until combined.
4.
Place 1 of the puff-pastry shells on each plate and spoon in the mussel mixture. Arrange the orange slices around the plates.
ORIGINAL RECIPE:
To Make a Muscle Pye
Take a peck of muscles, wash them clean, and set them a boiling in a kettle of fair water (but first let the water boil), then put them into it, give them a warm, and as soon as they are opened, take them out of the shells, stone them, and mince them with some sweet herbs, some leeks, pepper and nutmeg; mince six hard eggs and put to them, put some butter in the pye, close it up and bake it, being baked liquor it with some butter, white wine, and slices of orange.
THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660
The Banquet
CHAPTER EIGHT
SWEET BEETS IN PUFF PASTRY WITH CRÉME FRAîCHE AND GINGER
APPLE TARTS WITH CANDIED ORANGE CRUST
BAKED APPLES WITH CINNAMON “STEMS”
CHEESECAKE “IN THE ITALIAN FASHION”
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last …
KING RICHARD II,
2.1
Since the 1300s,
the nobleman’s meal has ended with a sweets course called the “banquet.” At first it included simple honey- and spice-sweetened wines and wafers, but by the 1500s it had expanded to include candied fruit peels (suckets), marmalades, biscuits, candy-coated spice seeds (comfits), and elaborate gingerbreads. Also by the 1500s, cream and cheese, long relegated to the tables of peasants, had regained a place at the nobility’s feasts.