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Today, I’m making a quick and easy accompaniment to any medieval Irish meals you have planned - a bowl of praiseach (pronounced: prashock)! The basis of this is a simple savour porridge, that’s then flavoured with some sautéed mustard greens! Although wild mustard (charlock) greens are usually used, any suitably pungent edible greens can be used!

In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients (for 4 portions)
Mustard Greens / Turnip Greens
2 cups oatmeal (or oat groats)
2 cups milk (or water)
butter
Method

1 - Prepare the Greens
To begin with, we need to chop some greens. Though praiseach is normally made using wild mustard (charlock), you can also use normal mustard greens, or even turnip greens (like I’m using here). They all have similar taste profiles - being pungent, slightly spicy greens - that react similarly when being cooked.

In any case, chop your greens finely, removing any untoward-looking leaves that escaped your prep-work.

2 - Sautee the Greens
When your greens of choice have been chopped to your liking, toss a knob of Irish butter into a pan, and let it melt. You can of course use local butter, I’m just totally not biased. When the butter has melted, toss in your chopped greens, and let everything sauté away over a medium heat for only a couple of minutes. Your greens may shrivel up, but this is normal! Take them off the heat when they’ve been coated in butter, and are lovely and fragrant.

3 - Prepare Praiseach
When your greens are cooling off, go start making your porridge base. Toss equal parts of oats and water (or milk, if you want to be fancy) into a pot, and place this over a medium-high heat. Keep stirring this so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of your pot.

While I used rolled oats here, which may have had a similar analogue in antiquity, whole oat groats would have been more commonly used (i.e. the whole, unhusked grains themselves, as opposed to the modern rolled, husked, and crushed grains used here). This would have had a higher fibre content than this dish.

When your oats have been cooked, but are still about 10 minutes from being served, toss in your cooked greens. Stir all of this together, and let it infuse for ten more minutes.

Serve up warm, in a bowl of your choice, and dig in!

The finished dish is quite thin and easy-going. It’s not overly flavourful, but has a nice background heat thanks to the mustard greens. By sautéing them, you cut the edge off the taste, and let it mellow out among the oats.

Oats are a wild grain, and can be grown in relatively poor-quality soils - such as those in parts of the midlands and west of Ireland - and as a result were seen as a “peasant grain” for much of the medieval period. Porridge is one of these peasant dishes that persist into the modern day, as it’s still a simple yet filling dish that can be altered with the addition of different ingredients!

@the-world-that-was

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 12:01:11

Today, I’ll be taking a look at medieval Ottoman cuisine - specifically the food seen in ottoman courts! The recipe in question is cılbır, or poached eggs with herbal yoghurt. This is a simple yet tasty recipe that is still eaten today in Turkey!

In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above! Consider checking out my Patreon if you like these recipes!

Ingredients (for 3 portions)
3 eggs
150g greek yoghurt
freshly chopped parsley (or dill, or cilantro)
2 cloves garlic
ground coriander

Method
1 - Make the Yoghurt
To begin with, we need to make a simple yoghurt for the eggs to sit on. Start this by finely chopping some fresh parsley - dill or cilantro would have also been used! Toss this into your yoghurt, along with a clove or two of crushed garlic. Mix all of this together, until it’s very well combined. Leave it to sit aside while you poach your eggs.

2 - Poach the eggs
Place a pot of hot water over a high heat until it boils. At a rolling boil, turn the heat down to low and let it simmer gently.

There’s a couple of methods of poaching eggs. I cracked an egg into a ramekin, and then dropped this into a ladle, before lowering into the water. Some of the whites of the egg became spidery and flyaway, but don’t worry! This will look amazing and silky when it’s out of the water.

Let the egg cook for a couple of minutes, before draining it and dunking it in cool water - to stop the yolk from becoming overcooked.

3 - Assemble the dish
Place a nice dollop of the herby yoghurt onto a plate, and place one of your poached eggs atop this. Sprinkle with a bit of freshly-ground coriander, and dig in with some fresh bread!

The finished dish is deliciously light yet filling. The herbs really pairs well with the texture of the egg. Although rather plain looking, it’s an easy yet luxurious way of presenting an otherwise simple dish in antiquity.

Çılbır is still eaten in turkey today, proving it’s role as a cheap yet filling meal for many throughout the centuries.

Ottoman cuisine formed as a fusion of Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and Central Turkic motifs in the early Medieval Period, which is exemplified here - using an array of culinary styles that are seen elsewhere in the region (such as Greek tzatziki being prepared in much the same way as this recipe, with the addition of mint and cucumber)

@the-world-that-was

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 12:00:42

Today, I’ll be taking a look at a Roman recipe, recorded by Apicius, which was likely eaten at contemporary roadside eateries in the Roman Empire - the simple isicia omentata - or what is basically a Roman burger patty! The end result is like a spiced and fragrant meatloaf!

In any case, lets now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video above! If you like my recipes, consider checking out my Patreon!

Ingredients (for 5-6 burgers)
500g minced meat (beef, pork, lamb would be most fitting here)
100g breadcrumbs
2 cups wine (white or rose would work best)
100g pine nuts
50g black pepper

Method

1 - Soak the Breadcrumbs

To begin with, we need to soak 100g of breadcrumbs in a cup or two of wine. This is to add some moisture to the finished isicia, and to help pad out the meat. In antiquity, stale bread would have been used here, as it was a simple way to make the most out of every loaf of bread.

If your breadcrumbs look a little dry, add a bit more wine until it’s all damp.

2 - Mix the Ingredients

Now we need to place 500g of minced meat into a bowl, along with our soaked breadcrumbs. Keep in mind that the texture of minced meat today is more cohesive than what would have been made in antiquity! A mortar and pestle would have done the work on finely-chopped pieces of meat, becoming what’s known as “forcemeat”. But modern ground meat works well!

I used beef here, but ground pork or lamb (or even goat) would have been used in antiquity. The original recipe simply calls for “meat”, so to the readers of the time, the kind of meat would have been obvious! (such as hamburgers today being made from beef)

In any case, mix everything together in a bowl. Toss in about 100g of pine nuts, and 50g of whole black peppercorns, mixing to combine.

3 - Form the Isicia and cook

When your mixture is combined, take a small handful of it in your hands and form it into a patty. Each one should be about 1/5th of the mix (based on how I made them anyway, you can make them larger or smaller than mine). Place each one onto a frying pan with a little olive oil, and let it cook away over high heat for about 5-10 minutes, before flipping them over and letting the other side cook for the same amount of time. (The time it takes to cook them depends on how thick you make them)

When they’re done, serve up on a bed of arugula or rocket, or another edible green of your choice, and eat alongside a bit of bread!

The finished isicia are super light and flavourful! Each mouthful has a bite of heat from the peppercorns, along with a sweet, nutty flavour from the pine nuts! The breadcrumbs soaked in wine gives us a bit of sharpness, depending on the kind of wine you used.

While it’s unknown exactly how these were served in antiquity, it’s not unlikely that they were paired with bread and edible greens, as both of these would be readily available and filling sides for a meat dish like this! Based on earlier Italian cuisines (i.e. Etruscan), stale bread may have been used as a plate of sorts, which would then have been eaten after the main dish (the stale bread turning soft when soaked with the oils from the meat).

@the-world-that-was

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 12:00:13

Lemon Garlic & Herb Chicken with Lemony Carrots and Potatoes

Hi Tumblrs! Happy Friday! I hope you are all having a fine summer and enjoying the start of Fall. Summer has been going by so fast! I’m shocked that the kids are back in school already. Is that just a California thing? The days are getting shorter, and nights are getting cooler. Yay, I love it. I’m still cooking, gardening and writing as much as I can. I have about 3 to 5 vegetable gardens I’m working on, in various stages of growth, harvest, demise, replanting, re-seeding, watering, weeding, fertilizing, pest and critter control etc. Anyway, all that work makes me hungry.

This is an easy dish to make if you have a busy schedule but still want some amazing home cooking. My husband and I always say “home food is best”. It’s true, not just because of price, going out to eat is expensive, but it’s way more cozy and relaxing at home. And you’ll always buy or grow better quality ingredients for yourself than a restaurant will, like free range organic chicken, the most flavorful olive oil, and organic vegetables.

Here is an easy dish perfect for chilly nights when you worked your ass off all day long and just want to throw everything in the oven and watch some smellovsision. This dish is lemony, garlicky, and deliciously savory. It’s addictive. You will find yourself eating the lemon slices from the top of the dish, they come out like tangy candy.

This is easy, the whole dish cooks in one pan. Here’s how: Wash and dry cut up chicken pieces, add to a large baking or roasting pan. Wash, clean and cut 2 to 4 potatoes into large 2 inch -ish cubes. Same with 3 or 4 carrots. Peel 1 onion and slice into large wedges. Crush and mince 5 to 8 garlic cloves. Chop fresh parsley, basil, cilantro, tarragon, dill, whatever you have, or all of them. Add all of these to a large baking dish, drizzle with about 4 tbsp olive oil, kosher salt and pepper, and 1 tablespoon palm sugar or brown sugar, optional. Cut a large lemon in half, squeeze the lemon juice on, straining out the seeds. Slice another small lemon into rounds, try to remove as many seeds as possible. Toss to coat everything. Arrange the pan with the chicken pieces on top of the vegetables, and lemon slices on top of the chicken. Add another grind of fresh ground pepper and another small pinch of kosher salt. Bake at 375 for about 45 min to 1 hour until cooked through and amazing. Yum! Home cooking is the best.

#easy recipe

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