Dish IV & grinding

As part of the investigations about grinding with the handquern, I wished to investigate how different sizes of grain could be used for different results. While flour would have had to be ground five to seven times before being possible to be baked the coarser qualities could also be used. Traditionally groats of either oats or other grains would have been crushed or coarsely ground which would facilitate making a porridge of them even if one could not soak them overnight.

Considering the sizes of the grains ground in an earlier stage of my experiments I found the grains that had passed through the quern twice to be of an optimal size for making porridges.

In order to try my theory I planned to cook another variety of the savoury porridges I had made before. Using the same inspiration as in one of the earlier dishes, I took my starting point in one of the groats that can be found in the recipe collection called “Liber cure cocorum” I started by boiling a few cans of water with some larger pieces of bacon. The bacon were then removed and cut up finely. In the water/baconbroth I poured the ground grains. This was allowed to cook for about an hour after which the grains were soft enough to be served. To the barley I added a sour apple, a few juniper berries, some of the local leek, butter and the bacon I cooked before. The sour apple was not really soured enough, as I would have preferred to use either a crab apple or a bramley apple

This dish actually turned out quite well, the texture of the cooked barley were quite nice and the dish as a whole turned out to be rather wellbalanced and tasty.

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Meals & dishes IV

Based on one of the recipes that I tried earlier (https://eldrimner.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/meals-dishes-ii/) on barley porridge, I attempted to make a more tasty porridge using the method of the former recipe as a base.

In about 100 grams of butter some finely chopped seierslök (Allium Victorialis) were boiled, after giving the butter some taste I poured in a few handfuls of barley seeds. These were first allowed to soak in the simmering butter after which I added some of the stock from an earlier day, a small amount of salt and just enough water to keep it from boiling dry.

As it was more or less finished I added an extra knob of butter and some of the cheese I made the previous day. The cheese gave the whole dish a welcome addition of a slightly acidic taste. The finished dish was quite nice but could have done with some pieces of meat with in it.

Though this would work perfectly well to serve, I am convinced that if barley were cooked into a savoury porridge the grains would have been pounded in a mortar or a similar implement beforehand (http://godecookery.com/afeast/kitchens/kit021.html).