Wassail is an Old English beverage made of hot mulled cider. It means “Good Health.” It is traditionally drunk as an vital part of Wassailing. (Singing, drinking and refilling the bowl as the folks travel house to house in their village.)
Wassailing is a Medieval Yule English drink ritual to provide a healthy cider apple harvest for the following year.Folks would go wassailing from door to door throughout their village, it was considered a lucky sign to have them show up at your door.
Wassail is concocted by mixing in apple brandy, apple juice and other fruit juices. Winter spices include, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, mace and cloves.
Fruits are roasted such as small apples, kumquats and oranges then added to the Wassail mix. It is served out of large twelve handled apple-wood or silver bowl and ladled into silver or pewter goblets decorated with tied ribbons around the bottom of the goblet.
Wassail was also used as an offer to the apple tree spirit, it would bless their orchards, increase their harvest and drive away evil spirits.
I want the recipe for the mustard-roasted potatoes, and if it’s any good, for the chicken and dumplings. If you please, kind sir.
IT IS. He is my culinary avatar. It was either that one or
I’ll post the mustard potatoes recipe if it turns out to be any good. The chicken and dumplings is more of a procedure than a recipe, it’s for the pressure cooker, but I’ll check in with Sci and see if she’s ok with me posting it.
Sci’s Mostly Fudged Recipe for Chicken and Dumplings for your Electric Pressure Cooker
(I use bone in chicken thighs, 4-6 of them for this recipe, because they are cheap and plentiful and I like dark meat better. You can easily use chicken breasts, but if you use boneless, I’d reduce the cook time a bit)
-Roll chicken in poultry seasoning, salt, pepper, thyme and whatever other seasonings you have and like. Let this sit in the fridge while you get the pot ready and get things going.
-Roughly chop an onion and a stalk of celery if you have it, including the leaves.
-Turn pressure cooker to sauté, add butter or oil just to shine the bottom of the pan. Saute onions and celery, then remove from cooker.
-If your oil/butter is gone, add a little more. Add chicken, brown on both sides. Cook in multiple batches if you need additional room.
-Remove chicken from the pot and add 3-4 cups of chicken stock or broth, a tablespoon of soy sauce and a splash of Worcestershire if you have it. This will both help the taste and also make the gravy look less… Anemic. Stir pot to make sure that any browned on bits are removed from the bottom of the pot and won’t end up burning. If you have fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, ect) chop up a few leaves and toss ‘em in with the broth. Add veg and chicken, make sure that the broth covers the chicken. If it doesn’t, add a little more liquid.
-Close lid and lock, closing the steam vent. Set pressure cooker for 20 minutes.
-When time is up, quick release the steam, open the lid, and remove the chicken from the pot. Put the cooker back to ‘saute’ and bring the broth to a boil while you pull chicken off the bone or shred boneless chicken.
-Make dumplings from favorite recipe. I use bisquick’s, because I’m lazy. Consider replacing some of the liquid in the dumplings recipe with some of the broth, especially if you’ve added herbs, because it results in a much tastier dumpling.
-Once the broth has been back at a roiling boil, drop dumplings by small spoonful into the liquid. They will puff and spread almost immediately. Try to space them out a bit.
-Close lid and wait about five minutes with the pressure cooker on sauté and the steam vent closed.
-Open cooker, remove a dumpling and cut into it to make sure it’s cooked all the way through. If it’s not, put cover back on for another minute or two. If it is, remove dumplings to a plate or bowl. The broth should’ve absorbed some of the starch/flour from the dumplings and be closer to gravy now. If it’s not thick enough for you, stir a bit of milk into a tablespoon or two of cornstarch and add to broth to thicken. If it’s too thick, add just milk.
-The gravy will be a bit lumpy and not particularly attractive because of A. bits of dumpling and B. the veg. But dang it tastes good.
-Eat over rice, mashed potato, or just with the dumplings. You can toss frozen vegetables into the hot gravy at the end, or serve with roasted carrots, or a salad. Works well as leftovers.
This is an indexed Masterpost of all the recipes that appear in the Recipe Wednesday posts from @steve-rogers-new-york. Unlike the previous Recipe Wednesday masterlist, this version is ordered by the recipes themselves. Each recipes is grouped and sorted based on food type, then linked to the post they appear in.
The below are the real period recipes that have appeared in the weekly Recipe Wednesday posts, each taken from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle— a local newspaper that would have been accessible to Steve, his mother, and Bucky during their time in Brooklyn. The recipes range in content from dinner meals, snack, condiments, and desserts — and feature an image of the recipe as it appeared in the newspaper, a link to the digitised copy of the paper, and transcriptions of the recipes.
I LOVE THIS YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW MUCH. So much of the kinds of things they ate are like SO DIFFERENT than now, and I can just vaguely have some kind of long-distance-call telephoning to this in my own life, when you know, like, fruit cups with no fresh fruit in them and sort of eggs and noodles TOGETHER were still served! Like, NYC diners still served this food for a long long time afterwards and just the names of the dishes bring me right back there I mean the upside down cakes and the Stroganoffs, ffs. I think I posted at some point some of the real menus for the 20th century limited; so awesome. Thank you @steve-rogers-new-york!
Real Irish Food: 150 Classic Recipes from the Old Country by David Bowers (2014 paperback edition, ISBN-13: 9781629143149) is my favorite Irish cookbook for Americans. If you are an American and want to get yourself an Irish cookbook, make it this one.
Booklist’s starred review explains a lot of why it is such a good cookbook:
“Destroying long-held perceptions isn’t necessarily the aim of today’s cookbook author, yet that’s exactly what transplanted Dublin chef Bowers does, along with some very seductive photographs of his own. Through his personal introduction and an enjoyable narrative in every chapter’s upfront section, and every recipe’s preface, we learn, for instance, that corned beef and cabbage is a poor representation of Irish cuisine (and fish and chips, for that matter). Instead, expressing the same sentiment as his counterparts throughout the world, he insists the best prepared “native” foodstuffs rely on locally sourced, seasonal ingredients that nod to special traditions. A hearty breakfast defines the Irish heritage; he goes a few steps further than the porridge and Irish sausage routine by featuring tailored-to-contemporary-tastes vegetarian fry. Every one of his dozen topics, in fact, melds the past and present of the best in Irish culinary lore, along with explanations galore (e.g., “We’re not so big on little fiddly sweets … we tend to like our sweets a bit more understated”). Recipes aren’t necessarily compact or time-compressed or calorie-conscious; the final dish, though, will more than meet eaters’ satisfaction, regardless of nationality.”
From the blurb
People in Ireland are sometimes mortified by what Americans think of as “Irish food.” That’s because the real thing is much subtler and more delicious than any platter of overcooked corned beef and mushy cabbage could ever be. Real Irish food is brown soda bread so moist it barely needs the yolk-yellow butter; fragrant apple tarts with tender, golden crusts; rich stews redolent of meaty gravy and sweet carrots; crisp-edged potato cakes flipped hot from a skillet directly onto the plate. Forget meatloaf or mac and cheese—this stuff is the original comfort food.
Real Irish Food is the first comprehensive cookbook to bring classic Irish dishes to America with an eye for American kitchens and cooks, and with tips and tricks to help reproduce Irish results with American ingredients. Transform plain white fish by baking it with grated sharp cheese, mustard, and crumbs. Discover that celery takes on new life when sliced, simmered in chicken stock, and served in a lightly thickened sauce.
Recipes include: – Homemade Irish Sausages – Potted Shrimp and Potted Salmon – Finglas Irish Stew with Dumplings – Whiskey Chicken and Roast Goose with Applesauce – Boxty, Cally, Champ, and Colcannon – Apple Snow, Almond Buns, and Summer Pudding – Elderflower Lemonade, Black Velvet, and Ginger Beer – Cherry Cake, Custard Tart, and Brandy Butter
From hearty roasts to innovative vegetable dishes, from trays of fresh-baked scones to rich, eggy cakes, and from jams bursting with tart fruit to everything you can do with a potato, there’s no food so warm and welcoming, so homey and family-oriented, so truly mouthwatering as real Irish food.
not combat rations, thats for sure. ive had enough of those for a lifetime.
but my latest food hit has been pretzel bites. pretzels are an awesome food but rarely available fresh when i want to eat them, which is usually when i’ve woken up in the middle of the night. they’re relatively labor-intensive to make, which is good once the insomnia sets in. keeps me busy. plus, pretzels are sweet on the inside, salty on the outside, just like me. except im also salty on the inside. dont listen to steve.
when i make pretzels, it’s by the metric ton, so the recipe i have makes approximately a million of them.probably you will not want this many, because you don’t have thor or steve to help you eat them. or clint. probably you could just shove some into a vaccum cleaner instead, thatd be about the same. so divide the recipe in half or quarters for normal human consumption. take 11 cups of flour, 1 cup of brown sugar, ½ cup of oil and mix. 4 cups of warm water gets 11 teaspoons of yeast and sits for a bit, then goes in the flour mix. then mix it and let it rise for about an hour. the dough should be sticky to the touch and absolutely awful to get out of your metal fingers. while you wait, wander your living area for some poor sucker to rope into helping you, because stage 2 is easier with help. or you can sit down and wonder why you talk yourself into doing things like this. consider your choices. it’s already too late to go back to sleep; youve got dough rising.
get a deep fry pan or sauce pan and fill with about two inches of water. bring it to a rolling boil on the stove and add in three or so tablespoons of baking soda. you really can’t do too much of that, as long as the water’s not getting super cloudy. preheat the oven to 400 degrees. wake steve up and tell him he has to help.
get a couple egg yolks in a bowl with a basting brush, and find some kosher salt or sea salt. grease up a few pans.
flour a surface and roll the dough out until it’s between ½ and ¼ in thick. get your poor unsuspecting minion to cut out bite sized bits. i use an inch and a half circle cookie cutter, but you can use whatever you want, really. tony used a laser cutter last time i let him help, which was…not ideal.
drop the cut outs into the boiling soda water, and let them sit for a few seconds, then fish them out. you can use your robot hand for that, but again, you’ll be getting dough out of it for days. i let them drip dry on a cookie drying sheet, but you could also drop them on a clean dishtowel i guess. you just dont want them to be wet when you put them on the cookie sheet.
they’re not gonna expand a ton, so just stuff em up close to each other on the sheet. paint the tops with egg yolks and sprinkle with salt. pop em in the oven for 10-15 min or until golden brown.
repeat the boiling-and-baking until you want to die, then keep going until you run out of dough. while the last batch is baking, take a half a stick of butter, a quarter cup of flour and make a roux in a saucepan. add two cups of milk and two cups of cheddar cheese, some salt and pepper to taste, and a quarter cup of mustard, give or take. im showing you how much to use with my hands but you cant see it. sorry, i dont really measure stuff most of the time. heat and stir till it’s melty and amazing, and dip pretzels on in there.
by the time you have completed this process and eaten as many pretzel bites as you want–and there will be enough. it’s a dang big recipe–you will want to enter a food coma and sleep forever. or for 70 years or so.
there. insomnia fixed.
It’s 4:30 am and I am, yet again, making a quadruple batch of insomnia pretzels, this time with barbeque cheddar sauce. There are 16 people currently asleep in my house; I would be shocked if these things lasted more than 12 hours.
For those who don’t have a million people to feed, a normal-sized batch of dough is as follows; follow all other instructions as-is.
2 ¾ (ish) cups flour
¼ cup brown sugar
1/8 cup oil
1 cup warm water
3 teaspoons yeast
If you’re not feeling salty/cheesy pretzels, you can also coat these in brown sugar & cinnamon and dip them in icing.
Special thanks to Nimitz, The Terror Of The Underbrush, She Who Eats Egg Whites, and to Ben, the fellow insomniac/night shift guy/provider of hard ciders/oven checker.
@copperbadge, I’m not expecting you to reply to this, but I feel like this is a recipe that is both mild enough and flexible enough that it might appeal to your supertaster and inclination for kitchen experimentation.
I’m assuming this is your doing, Hell 😀
The will of the people (at least, 52 of them) is clearly that I make pretzel bites, and I’ve got the time before I leave for the ball game at noon. I’ve always been rather nervous about trying because of the whole boiling thing, but last week I successfully made a frittata so I’m on a roll.
I have no brown sugar so we’re gonna kludge this the old-fashioned way, with white sugar and maple syrup.
Our Lemon Bliss Bundt Cake is a lovely golden lemon cake, extra-moist and nicely tangy due to its fresh lemon juice glaze. Baking this cake in a Bundt pan turns it from everyday to special-occasion, perfect for everything from birthday parties to an elegant dinner. Our thanks to Maida Heatter, grande dame of delicious desserts, for the inspiration behind this recipe.
King Arthur Flour Bundt® Cake Guide Copy & paste URL into a new tab:
The Bundt pan, first sold by Minnesota’s Nordic Ware company over 60 years ago, generated a whole new type of cake: elegant yet easy, simple yet striking. Iced, showered with sugar, drizzled with glaze, or simply left plain to showcase its graceful shape, the Bundt cake is an all-American classic.
Before you begin
First, check your recipe size A typical cake recipe calls for a 9" x 13" pan, two 9" rounds, three 8" rounds, or 2 dozen cupcakes. This size recipe makes about 6 cups of batter, and will fit in most Bundt pans.
Next, check your pan’s capacity You might have a 10-cup Bundt pan, or a 12-cup, or something in between. Bundt pans can vary in width and depth, too. Rather than try to match volume to dimensions to capacity, simply measure your pan’s bakeable capacity by pouring water to within 1&1/ 4" of the top rim. Measure the water; this is your pan’s true baking capacity.
Finally, match recipe to pan
• 10-cup Bundt pan A typical cake recipe — one calling for a 9" x 13" pan, two 9" round pans, or three 8" round pans — will fit in a 10-cup bundt pan, which has a bakeable capacity of about 6 cups. Fill the pan to within about 1&1/ 4" of the top rim.
• A smaller pan If you’re making a typical cake recipe in a smaller Bundt pan, one whose bakeable capacity is less than 6 cups, you’ll have excess batter. Again, only fill the pan to within about 1&1/ 4" of the top rim; use any leftover batter to make cupcakes.
• A larger pan If you’re making a typical cake recipe in a larger Bundt pan, the finished cake will be smaller, though still retain its pretty design. The cake may take slightly less time to bake; start checking 15 minutes before the end of the minimum baking time.
I was initially hesitant to call this Beorn’s Honey Cake at first; because, as you can see, I baked it in a loaf pan. And then when I was re-reading the recipe preparing to post it, I saw that this is, in fact, meant to be baked in a cake pan, not a loaf pan.
Luckily it has still turned out great everytime.
This is actually the dessert I baked last September 21st, for Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday. It is soooo yummy. I like it with butter, and it’s even delicious with extra honey on top.
P.S. Hi new followers! (waves dramatically) I love you already.
Beorn’s Honey Cake
Ingredients
6 tablespoons / 90 g butter 6 tablespoons / 90 mL honey ½ teaspoon / 2.5 mL vanilla extract 2 eggs 1 cup / 120 g flour 1 tsp / 4 g baking powder 2 tbs / 30 mL warm milk ¼ tsp / 1 g salt ¼ tsp / 1 g nutmeg
Directions
Cream the butter and honey together. Add vanilla. Beat in the eggs. Sift in the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Fold in the warm milk. Pour into a greased and lined pan (use a bread pan or a round cake pan; line with foil or parchment paper). Smooth the top.
Bake at 350 degrees F. for about 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.
Let sit for 10 minutes, then loosen and turn out onto serving plate. Brush with 1 tablespoon warm honey. Serve warm or cooled.
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