A mess of pottage

[igenlode]

Inspired by sallymn, I decided to concoct a mess of pottage for my evening meal :-)

I stewed half the beef 'soup bones' I got from the butcher's stall on Saturday (at £4 a bag, I suspect they were more expensive than offal -- gone are the days when people gave that sort of thing away for free), 'seething' them with 'herbs' (half an onion, half a carrot and half a stick of celery, a bay leaf, some thyme and some sage leaves), then added split peas and barley to the broth, along with peppercorns and some entirely inauthentic Worcestershire sauce! (Apparently the peasants used to use plenty of herbs to compensate for a lack of salt, but I'm afraid after tasting the result I added a good half-teaspoon or so of salt as well.)

I then mashed the vegetables and left the stew in a haybox to improve, and half an hour or so before serving brought it back to a simmer and added chopped cabbage and the other halves of the celery and onion. (I'm not that keen on carrot, so I didn't want that element to be detectable -- ideally I'd have had some other root vegetables and/or some nettles or sorrel to add to the mix!) I also added a pickled gherkin, on impulse, since I imagine they had preserved vegetables in the Middle Ages. No fat at all, other than what came off the meat.

The split peas were pretty much disintegrated and the barley had gone glutinous, but the bones weren't boiled quite as clean as I'd hoped; I fished out the two where the meat had pretty much come off, and left the third in to wait for a further reboiling for the next serving. I ate half, and put the other half back in the haybox ;-)

I don't think I'd give up my birthright for a thick soup of flavoured split peas and barley, but it was pretty tasty. My main complaint would be that it really didn't go very far; six hours' preparation for two helpings isn't a good investment of time. I thought I did put quite a lot of peas and barley in, but as I don't have particularly generous supplies of either I may have been a bit too mean -- they didn't bulk up as much as I was hoping/expecting.

These days it's easier to rely on potatoes to fill 'the potato-shaped space'™ [Katharine Whitehorn], i.e. the necessary intake of carbohydrate. However, one can see how they managed perfectly well without.

Comments

[sallymn]

Fascinating, though you are right, that does seem to be a lot of work.

Potatoes are one of those things my head knows they didn't have in medieval times but (as with tomatoes, coffee and chocolate) my taste buds don't want to know that...

[igenlode]

I have to admit the result is extremely visually unappealing (the only thing that stayed green was the gherkin, and the big chunks of bone poking out of the gruel don't improve its appearance).


Like lentil soup, it does taste good, though; I used peas and barley because I felt they were more authentically English, but I've seen recipes online that aim at reproducing the Esau story, and those are comprised of Middle-Eastern spices and lentils.

Potatoes are one of those things my head knows they didn't have in medieval times but (as with tomatoes, coffee and chocolate) my taste buds don't want to know that...

One of the more fanciful of the online sources for pottage asserted confidently that tomatoes formed a staple part of the diet in Ur of the Chaldees, presumably based on modern-day eating habits in that region ;-p
(They probably think the Romans ate pasta and tomato sauce...)

[sallymn]

It does look wonderfully medieval :)

[igenlode]

My mental image of 'mediaeval' was more along the lines of stuffed peacocks and boar's heads on platters, I'm afraid ;-D

[sallymn]

{g} I imagine both the highs and lows, since when I think up stories, a lot of the folk in them are ordinary-ish (like, well, me) although with a helping of anachronistic fantasy to take off the brutish side.

[igenlode]

I really must get round to reviewing "Spellfire", which (among more generic things) is very much a depiction of what it's like to grow up and exist in a D&D type world (with 'adventurers' running round, and dangerous magical ruins a few days' travel from villagers' homes) from the perspective of an ordinary real person...

[watervole]

The peas and beans add to the protein, as well.

I like hay box cookery. We usually use a thick towel, but both work.

[igenlode]

Well, technically speaking my 'haybox' is towel cookery; it consists of an expanded-polystyrene crate supplied by the greengrocer, which formerly held 'iced broccoli' -- and is just long enough to hold a saucepan plus handle, or just wide enough to hold a large round casserole -- plus a nest of towels in the bottom into which the hot pan can be snuggled and covered over ;-)