Don't Try This at Home

It is not too often that I will publish a recipe and tell you not to try it for yourself. This is one of those occasions. But, then this is not a normal day out our house. My youngest son, a sophomore, is preparing for a living history event for his Medieval History class tomorrow. He researched authentic recipes from the middle ages, and came up with a dish with a deceivingly simple name--"Oranges".

It is actually pork meatballs designed to look like oranges. After spending all afternoon working on this medieval delicacy, we have decided that the nobles of England and France must have had no idea what an orange looked like. Try as we might with countless dips into egg white and egg yolk, our meatballs simply do not look much like citrus to us! Granted, they are low carb and fit effortlessly into our eating plan, but those medieval cooks must have more time to spend around the spit than I do!

Poume d'oranges

TRANSLATION FROM TWO ANGLO-NORMAN CULINARY COLLECTIONS:

Take pork, neither too fat nor too lean, and cut it up raw; grind it in a mortar and add raw egg yolk; then take broth and bring it to a boil; then take the white of an egg and rub it on your hands; then take out the meat and make round balls, like an onion, as many as you wish, and boil them in the broth; then take them out and arrange on spits so that they are not touching and put them to roast on the fire; and take two dishes and put the white of an egg in one and the yolk (in the other) and coat the "oranges" when they are rolled therein; take sugar and sprinkle it over them when they are removed from the spit, and then serve.

- Hieatt, Constance B. and Robin F. Jones. "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii." Speculum vol. 61, issue 4 (Oct. 1986): 859-882.


All this, and I still need to carve a boar's head out of chopped ham lunchmeat. Yes, I am crazy. Don't try that one either.

So in case you choose not to spend your weekends with SCA crowds, just what can I recommend you eat? Tonight we are having a burger buffet. John is graciously flipping burgers on the Foreman grill. Tomorrow, I will have a multiply meals waiting to pop in the oven after the Feast. So glad cooking is not on my schedule!