Shakespeare's Kitchen (11 page)

I especially like the taste boost apple cider vinegar gives to the squash.

1 teaspoon butter

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 small butternut squash, thinly sliced lengthwise

1 small acorn squash, thinly sliced in rounds

1 red apple, sliced in rounds

Salt and freshly milled black pepper

2 tablespoons French apple cider vinegar

1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves

1.
    Melt the butter in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large sauté pan over low heat, add the onion, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the squashes and apple, cover, and cook for 5 to 6 minutes, or until the squash is tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and sprinkle with the vinegar.

2.
    Heat the remaining 1 cup of olive oil to 350°F in a small saucepan. Place half of the parsley in the oil and fry for 10 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Repeat the process with the remaining parsley and season with salt.

3.
    Place the squash, apple, and onion in a shallow serving bowl. Sprinkle the fried parsley around the sides of the bowl and serve immediately.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

Other ways [to butter gourds]

Fry them [gourds] in slices, being cleans’d & peel’d, either floured or in batter; being fryed, serve them with beaten butter, and vinegar, or beaten butter and juyce of orange, or butter beaten with a little water, and served in a clean dish with fryed parsley, elliksanders [buds of the alexander flower], apples, slic’t onions fryed, or sweet herbs.

THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660

Sweet Pea Purée with Capers

SERVES 4

S
IR
A
NDREW
A
GUECHEEK
: Faith, I can cut a caper.
S
IR
T
OBY
B
ELCH
: And I can cut the mutton to ’t.

TWELFTH NIGHT,
1.3

 I
N THIS QUOTE
Shakespeare is making a pun on “caper,” which means both to leap and the pickled flower buds of the caper bush. As Shakespeare also notes, caper sauce was often eaten with mutton.

The combination of mint, peas, and capers in this recipe creates a light side dish, perfect for the spring and summer when fresh mint is plentiful. It is an especially nice accompaniment to lamb or fish.

1 pound peas (fresh or frozen)

½ cup coarsely chopped mint

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons butter

¼ cup capers, rinsed and drained

Salt and freshly milled ground pepper

2 sprigs of mint

1.
    Place the peas in boiling water and cook for 5 minutes, or until done. Drain the peas and place in a food processor with the mint, parsley, and butter. Purée until smooth. Add the capers and pulse twice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

2.
    Spoon the pea mixture into a serving bowl and top with the mint sprigs.

Fowle

CHAPTER FIVE

ROASTED PHEASANT WITH CURRANTS AND WINE

CAPON WITH PEPPERCORN AND ONION STUFFING

CHICKEN WITH WINE, APPLES, AND DRIED FRUIT

CHICKEN AND ARTICHOKES

STUFFED TURKEY BREAST “FRENCH FASHION”

CORNISH GAME HENS WITH SAGE

CHICKEN PLUM PIE

DUCK BREAST WITH GOOSEBERRIES

ALMOND SAFFRON CHICKEN IN BREAD

CHICKEN WITH SORREL PESTO

Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain …

THE TEMPEST, 4.1

 
Peacock,
long a symbol of nobility and immortality, was one of the most esteemed feast foods in Shakespeare’s time. Served roasted and placed back in its feathers, it was then dusted with real gold. Metal rods were inserted into the bird’s body so that it remained upright and seemingly alive. The peacock would be made to appear to breathe fire by the cook’s trick of placing a bit of camphor-soaked cotton in its mouth and lighting it just before serving. Despite these elaborate preparations, peacock was not considered tasty. Wrote one 1599 author, “Peacocke, is very hard meate, of bad temperature, and as evil juyce.”

Roasted Pheasant with Currants and Wine

SERVES 4 TO 6

 I
N SHAKESPEARE’S DAY,
the pheasant’s drumsticks were tipped with gold leaf, and the prettiest feathers from the bird were added for a festive touch. For elegant dishes such as pheasant, the serving platter was often garnished with carved vegetables and fruit cut to look like flowers, baskets, or animals.

¼ cup currants

¼ cup white wine

4 ounces pancetta, diced

4 ounces ground pork

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon ground mace

1 teaspoon salt

6 whole chestnuts, roasted and peeled

2 artichoke bottoms, cooked and diced

2 tablespoons pine nuts

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped pistachios

1 large egg, beaten

1 pheasant (3½ to 4 pounds)

Salt and freshly milled black pepper

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1.
    Soak the currants in the wine for 1 hour.

2.
    Preheat the oven to 375°F. Cook the pancetta in a small sauté pan over medium heat for 1 minute, or until some fat is released. Add the pork, cloves, mace, and salt and cook for 5 minutes, or until the meat is done. Remove from the heat and stir in the chestnuts, artichoke bottoms, pine nuts, pistachios, and egg.

3.
    Season the outside and cavity of the pheasant with salt and pepper. Gently pack the stuffing in the cavity and under the neck flap. Brush the pheasant with the olive oil, place on a rack in a roasting pan, and roast for 1 hour, or until the leg juices run clear and the internal temperature is 160°F.

4.
    If you wish, decorative foil tips can be used to re-create the gilding that would have capped the drumsticks.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

Other forcing for any dainty Foul; as Turkie, Chickens, or as Pheasants, or the like boil’d or rost

Take minced veal raw, and bacon or beef-suet minc’t with it; being finely minced, season it with cloves and mace, a few currans salt, and some boiled bottoms of artichocks cut in form of dice small, and mingle amongst the forcing, with pine-apple-seeds, pistaches, chesnuts and some raw eggs, and fill our poultrey, & c.

THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660

Chefs strived to entertain guests with their culinary feats, creating such whimsical concoctions as the mythical creature the “cockatryce,” a combination of capon legs and the body of a suckling pig. Robert May, the author of
The Accomplisht Cook,
amused diners by baking deer-shaped baked dough filled with red wine so it appeared to “bleed” when pierced. He also built a table-size battlefield with dough battleships and tiny dough cannons ignited by real gunpowder and even provided the ladies with eggshells filled with scented water to be thrown on the floor to dispel the scent of the gunpowder.

Ring, bells, aloud; burn, bonfires,
clear and bright,
To entertain great England’s lawful king.

KING HENRY VI,
PART II, 5.1

Capon with Peppercorn and Onion Stuffing

SERVES 6

Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein
neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it?

KING HENRY IV,
PART I, 2.4

 T
HIS ORIGINAL RECIPE
was for a bread-based sauce for roast capon. Wood and cooking fuel were costly, so the working class often purchased already roasted meats from shops and street vendors. Cookbooks frequently contained recipes for sauces for these ready-made foods.

In this modern version, the sauce ingredients are used to create a spicy stuffing for the capon.

1 capon (about 6 pounds)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Salt and freshly milled black pepper

1 tablespoon butter, melted, plus 1 tablespoon cold butter

2 large Vidalia onions, small diced

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine

3 cups cubed whole-wheat crusty country bread

Zest of 1 lemon

¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice

½ tablespoon five-color peppercorns, coarsely ground

1 cup
Renaissance Stock

1.
    Sprinkle the skin and cavity of the capon with the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Brush the skin with the melted butter.

2.
    Preheat the oven to 400°F. Sauté the onions in the olive oil over low heat for 20 minutes. Raise the heat to high and cook for 2 minutes, or until the onions are golden brown. Add 2 tablespoons of the wine and cook for 1 minute, or until the wine is absorbed. Remove from the heat and fold in the bread cubes, lemon zest, orange juice, and peppercorns. Season with salt and spoon the stuffing into the capon.

3.
    Place the capon on a lightly buttered roasting pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 20 minutes, depending on the weight of the capon, or until the leg juices run clear. Baste with the pan juices every 10 minutes for the final 30 minutes.

4.
    Deglaze the pan with the remaining ½ cup red wine. Cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes, or until reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve and return to the pan. Add the Renaissance Stock and cook for 5 minutes, or until reduced to about ½ cup. Remove from the heat and whisk in the cold butter.

5.
    Place the capon on a serving platter and serve the sauce in a small side dish.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

Sauces for a roast Capon or Turkie

To make an excellent sauce for a roast Capon; you shall take Onions and having sliced and pilled them, boile them in faire water with pepper, salt, and a fewe bred crummes: then put unto it a spoonfull or two of Claret wine, the juice of an Orenge, and three or fowre slices of Lemmon pill; all these shred together, and so powre it upon the Capon being broke up.