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 I confess that I sometimes do "performative shopping." That is, buying something because I want to support the vendor/creator, rather than because I had an existing desire for the product. So because Penzey's Spices is an outspokenly progressive organization and because catherineldf is a big fan of theirs and posted a link at a time when I was primed for some performative shopping, I went hunting on their site for interesting spices that would be fun to buy (sufficient to hit their free shipping limit). The somewhat awkward part of this was that it was in the middle of my big "sort through the spice shelves" event, back around the beginning of quarantine. But I quickly hit on something interesting enough to justify to my self: varietal cinnamons. They have an entire website page just for varietal cinnamons and cinnamon products.

So I picked up the four varieties they offer (they also have a blend for general use, but I skipped that one): Ceylon, China (Tung Hing), Indonesia (Korintje), and Vietnamese.

Now, I'm not a beginning to varietal cinnamon because I've gotten in the habit of keeping a jar of cinnamon sticks sitting around as a "my mouth is bored" sort of thing. And I experimented with both true cinnamon (somewhat weak in flavor and very splintery) and Cassia (what's sold as generic cinnamon, the very thick, rolled cinnamon sticks, stronger in flavor). But I figured for my first venture into specific-origin cinnamon, I'd do a comparative taste test. Hence, today's breakfast: mini-monkey bread with varietal cinnamon. I make easy, small-batch monkey bread by taking canned Pillsbury biscuits, cutting them in small pieces with my kitchen shears, and cooking them in silicon muffin cups. Usually I just do a sugar and cinnamon mix to toss the snippets in, but this time I figured I'd do the full recipe with tossing them in melted butter first. You know, just in case key elements of the cinnamon are lipid-soluble.

I numbered the cinnamons 1-5 (including a regular version from Shilling as a control), set the key aside and tried to forget which was which, then plated the resulting monkey-buns with small dabs of chocolate sauce as counters to keep track. My palate cleanser is my morning coffee. Afterward I looked up the identities, and did a smell and taste test of the pure spice (given in the second paragraph for each number, but remember I did this part after the entire blind taste test).

1. Very light in flavor, though I may need to revisit this after tasting more because I think I may have gone too light on the cinnamon to compete with the butter+biscuit taste. Complements the sweet. Maybe a little floral?

This is the generic Shilling brand cinnamon (so: Cassia). A direct whiff is very sharp/spicy and it has a bit of a bite on the tongue. Since this is the cinnamon I'm mostly exposed to everyday, it's hard to describe it in specific terms.

Overall: maybe unsurprising that this was hard to identify as a specific taste, given that it would be my "background cinnamon".

2. Definitely slightly different in taste. I'd say "sharper" but not in a very intense way. (Again, I think I should have simply used more cinnamon. It's getting drowned out by the other flavors. Not in a bad way as a pastry, but not optimal for a spice taste test.)

Ceylon Cinnamon - Scent is sharp but a little earthy and peppery. Complex. Taste seems milder than #1? Like it's more diluted? Cinnamomum verum, "true cinnamon".

Overall: "milder, more diluted, earthy" matches the impression I've gotten from using this as chewing sticks.

3. The predominant sense is "sweet" again. I mean, there's sugar in the mix, so this isn't surprising. But it's more like the cinnamon in enhancing the sugar rather than the other way around. Very light in flavor.

China Cinnamon (label also says Tung Hing) - Scent is definitely different. I'm going to go all synaesthesia and say it smells reddish? More undertones compared to the sharp notes. Taste is *very* sharp on the tongue. Strong and lasting in the mouth. That's where all the sharp notes went! (This is Cinnamomum cassia, or Cassia, the most common commercial cinnamon.)

Overall: Given how strong this was in a direct taste test, I'm not sure what happened to it in baking. Maybe I really did use less? I"d say this would work nicely in savory dishes and spice mixes.

4. This one is much darker on the pastry. I don't know if that means I used more than the others (I was just doing "a few shakes") or if it's naturally darker. Another distinctive flavor: more earthy/savory? Even though it's in the same sugar matrix, it doesn't taste "sweet" in the same way. EIther it's stronger in flavor or I really did shake out more.

Indonesia Cinnamon (label also says Korintje) - Scent is very light and somewhat floral, almost perfumey. Taste isn't as sharp as #3 but stronger than the scent. Complex and lasts on the tongue. Cinnamomum burmannii, not one of the common commercial cinnamons.

Overall: Similar thoughts as for #3. Might work well as a sole spice if I used more, or in otherwise delicately flavored desserts.

5. Another very light, barely there taste. Hard to say anything about it.

VIetnamese Cinnamon - Scent is mild and not as characteristically "cinnamony" as the others. It keeps reminding me of something but I'm not sure what. A little fruity, maybe? Taste is sweet -- the sort that works really well in unsweetened spiced teas -- but not very sharp. Cinnamomum loureiroi, again not one of the common commercial cinnamons.


Overall: I'll stick with my assessment that this would work very well in contexts where you're using it to give the impression of sweetness as well as spice.

In closing, I'd like to recognize the ways in which the Western desire for spices like cinnamon contributed to colonialism in Southeast Asia and other regions. The history of the spice trade is fascinating but spattered with blood.

I don't think I've blogged here (as opposed to on facebook) about my experiment in growing medlars. This is an interesting fruit with a long history in Europe that has essentially no commercial viability due to its ripening behavior. In short: to become edible, the fruit must undergo a process known as "bletting" which is a sort of edge-of-going-rotten state in which it becomes very soft and mushy. Before bletting, it isn't edible; after bletting, it isn't shippable.

So when I was brainstorming fruit trees it might be fun to try, I settled on medlars because they met my key criteria: foodstuffs appropriate to pre-1600 Europe where I can reasonably grow a sufficient quantity for use and that it is difficult to obtain commercially.

I planted two bare-root trees two years ago, and was somewhat surprised to get half a dozen fruit in the first year. This was just barely enough to share around for tastes with a bunch of historic-foodie friends last year. This year, the two trees presented me with a generous four dozen or so and I was able to make some more general observations about how to handle and treat the fruit.

The fruit are around the size of a ping-pong ball, brown and with a very prominent sepal-end that's prone to splitting under some circumstance of growth yet to be identified. Last year, I picked them when I saw cracks begin to develop on one of the fruits, then stored them in a cool dark place (in a cardboard egg carton in the garage) for about a month. As I recall, they were soft, a couple had split (which makes them prone to mold), and maybe three looked to be edible. I carefully peeled the thin rind, leaving about one tablespoonful apiece in seedy pulp.

This year, I picked them when I first spotted a fallen fruit (since one of the traditional bletting methods is to leave them on the tree through a frost). A couple fruits were already soft, but the rest needed to sit for a while. I simply piled them in a basket in the kitchen (not too warm, but not cool) and checked them every couple of days for softness, transferring the soft ones into a separate container. (This was more to monitor the progress than from any expectation that the bletted and unbletted fruits would affect each other.)

When I first picked them, I tried the few that were soft and discovered that a much more efficient method of processing is to gently split the rind from the stem end, then scoop out the soft part of the pulp from this back end. This avoids having to pick out remnants of the sepal area which greatly increases the labor. The result is about 50:50 pulp and largish seeds and I simply ate it plain, straining the seeds out with my teeth.

I can see why the taste is described as a sort of "apple custard" taste. Definitely an apple-ish flavor, but the bletting process seems to add an overlay of "oxidated apple" (what you might expect if you let apple slices brown overnight). This is probably a fairly accurate description of part of the results of bletting, as the bletted flesh is also a medium brown in contrast to the more whitish unbletted flesh. It's a very mild, subtle flavor.

When all but about half a dozen of the rest of the fruits were soft, I scooped out the pulp into a bowl. At least, I did that for the properly bletted ones. Successful bletting seems to require a completely unbroken rind, for the fruits that had developed cracks around the sepal area were a bit dried out and spongy but not soft and pulpy. It may be that picking them earlier will prevent this, but it's also possible that watering and temperature conditions during ripening are relevant. At this point, the remaining half dozen fruits probably will not blet properly as they're beginning to shrivel a little without general softening.

I wanted to see if I could find a way to separate the pulp and seeds easily in order to do something more interesting than simply direct eating. First I tried squeezing it through several layers of cheesecloth. This might be successful and efficient for larger amounts of pulp, but for what I had (about one cup in all), too much of the pulp was staying stuck to the seeds. So I switched to the very inefficient method of squeezing the seeds out of the pulp between my fingers and periodically wiping the pulp off my fingers into a container. This took maybe 20 minutes for the cup of pulp. It occurs to me that mixing in a bit of water and agitation to separate the pulp from the seeds may help. Next year I hope to have enough fruit to try several options. At the moment, I popped the half cup of de-seeded pulp into the freezer to contemplate what I want to do with it.

The literature suggests that unbletted fruits can also be used to make jelly and I may try this option some year when I have a large enough harvest for it.

One of the two large groceries most convenient to my house is a "Ranch 99" which, for those of you not resident in one of the four states the chain appears in, specializes in groceries for Chinese cuisine (and a number of other SE Asian cultures). One feature that definitely distinguishes it from your average American chain grocery is the variety and selection of animal species featured in the meat department. (This is where I got the whole kid that I roasted last year at the WAT cooks' play-date.) I've had a mind to start working my way through the non-chicken poultry offerings, so for the picnic dinner at yesterday's Crosston Dance Ball, I picked up a partridge. It did not -- alas -- come with feet attached (although you can get chicken and duck in that form) but did come with head affixed. This was part of the attraction: a major aspect of the esthetics of medieval roast birds in art is that they are served with feet and head intact.

There are plenty of recipes for roast partridge in 14-15th c. European cookbooks but they are all quite simple.  See e.g., Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks p. 78:

• Partrich rosted. Take a partrich, and sle him in the nape of the hede with a fethur; dight him, larde him, and roste him as thon doest a ffesaunte in the same wise. And serue him forth; then sauce him with wyne, pouder of ginger and salt, and sette hit in a dissh on the fuyre til hit boyle; then cast powder ginger, anell, thereon, And kutte him so; or elles ete him with sugur and Mustard.

Relevant to this is the directions immediately preceding for roasting pheasant:

• ffesaunte rosted … kutte away … the legges by the kne and putte the kneys in at the vente, and roste him ….

Since the market had already taken care of the slaying and dighting, and this was a domestically raised bird so there was enough subcutaneous fat that it didn't need larding, I simply tucked the ends of the legs into the vent as directed for the pheasant (I had to wedge the end of the bone into the hollow of the pelvis for them to stay -- this made the legs splay out a bit). I dusted the outside with a little saffron salt and then roasted at 350F for 60 minutes on a rack. Because I was being a little lazy and had a small jar of honey-mustard sitting around, I went with the "sugur and Mustard" sauce.

Several of us were having an impromptu shared meal at the Ball so I carved the bird up into a dozen or so tasting portions and served with mustard or plain as requested. Everyone declared it quite tasty and definitely not "just like chicken". I found the taste pleasantly a bit stronger than chicken and vaguely reminiscent of duck, but in a much milder way. The roasting time may have been longer than necessary and the wings and drumsticks were turning a little on the dry side.

My imagination is contemplating the concept of a medieval dinner with as great a variety of bird species as I can lay my hands on.

This is a French cow's milk cheese in the general "brie-like" family with a white mold rind and a ripened, creamy, almost runny paste. Like many in that family, the taste will no doubt vary depending on the precise amount of ripening time. The one I picked up was definitely on the side of nearly liquid but without any tinge of the ammonia that can develop in some cases. It almost dissolves on the tongue with a very buttery mouth-feel. The main taste is a mild milkiness but with a little acidity around the edges.  When smeared on a plain whole-wheat cracker, it goes very nicely with an acidic dried fruit (e.g., berries or cherries) or even a bitter orange marmalade. It needs some sort of contrast of that type to avoid being insipid. For similar reasons, I'd recommend pairing it with a fairly acidic red wine, but since my prejudice leans heavily to reds, this recommendation should be suspect.

My new house came with an apple tree. When I took possession, the tree was rather sad from underwatering and the little green apples on it had a tendency to drop despairingly to the ground untimely. Not having any idea what variety it was, I wasn't sure what signs of ripeness to look for, but today I gathered up the dozen or so apples still remaining on the tree and decided to do some investigation.

One of the problems turns out to be that it's a green apple -- that is, green when ripe. A few of the fruits have a yellowish cast, but I think that means they're over-ripe. Some minor speckling on the upper side. I cut and peeled the nicest-looking of the bunch and gave it a taste test. Crisp and firm; sweet -- definitely not meant to be a pie apple. It's a pity I have something of an aversion to eating apples plain and raw. (I think it's a childhood trauma from too many tasteless, mealy Red Deliciouses in the lunch box.) I've peeled and cored the rest of the lot and turned them into applesauce (plenty of cinnamon, no added sugar).

Assuming it's a common variety, it seems likely to be a Golden Delicious, but if it's an unusual variety I'd need someone more expert to narrow it down. I'm still debating what I might want to add in the way of apple trees. (This would be as part of the pre-1600 fruit trees plan.) Something that would be a good cooking apple would be nice.

Follow-up to Part 1: The noodles from last night that I marinated in my balsamic/soy salad dressing and then had as part of my lunch salad soaked up the dressing like a sponge and were quite tasty. I can see that combining them with low-cal highly-flavored sauces will be a useful approach.

Part 2: Shirataki-tofu noodles (fettucini style)

Rather than being translucent, these are visually quite similar to egg noodles or regular wheat pasta. The instruction again call for draining them then boiling in fresh water, then draining again. This time I had the noodles plain, tossed and heated with a small amount of pesto.

Results: The texture is still definitely not pasta. (In an odd way, the mouth-feel is more like a meat product, like flavored collagen or non-fishy cephalopod.) But they take up the sauce nicely and are quite pleasant as long as I'm not expecting them to be something they're not. From a psychological viewpoint, they fulfill the desire to spend time chewing something. I can't help but feel some sort of artificial guilt about eating a fairly processed foodstuff that is designed to be, in essence, non-nutritive. Somehow it's different from, say, eating celery. But as I say, I think this is a manufactured guilt.

Reality check: The 8 oz package (both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 came in this size) claims to hold "2 servings" but for me one package is a normal meal side-dish amount. The plain noodles (Exp. 1) are 20 calories per 8 oz. while the ones with tofu (Exp. 2) are 40 calories for 8 oz. The 2 Tbsp of pesto that I tossed them in add another 150 calories.

If I have the time, tomorrow I may try turning the solid block into something lasagna-like.

A year and a half ago, I posted some reviews of commercial almond milks with an eye to their potential usefulness in medieval cooking. One of the complaints I had at the time was that all the ones I could find included added sweeteners. It wouldn't be that critical if you were using them for a sweetened dish, but it was non-idea for savory dishes that didn't want that level of sugar.

Passing through the relevant aisle at the Berkeley Bowl West market today, I noticed that several brands were now featuring unsweetened variants of their almond milks, so I thought it might be time for some further comparisons. (Amusingly, one of them also promotes itself as "low fat" and yet has essentially identical fat content to the other two brands.) I didn't do a direct comparison of these with their corresponding sweetened versions, but I did make up a basic home-made version (one part ground blanched almonds to two parts hot water, blend several times then strain).

Pacific Natural Foods "Organic Almond Non-Dairy Beverage"

Ingredients: Filtered water, organic almonds, organic rice starch, sea salt, organic vanilla, natural flavor, carrageenan, misc. vitamins. 35 calories/cup.

Color: ecru -- the only one of the set that was noticably off-white. Aroma: Alas, the vanilla really stands out. Nothing else is particularly notable. Texture: only slightly thicker than water, probably about the same as milk. A little chalky. Taste: meh. No real almond flavor. Not even much vanilla flavor.

Almond Dream "Unsweetened Almond Drink" (Original flavor)

Ingredients: Distilled water, almonds, tricalcium phosphate, natural almond flavor with other natural flavors, sea salt, gellan gum, misc. vitamins. 30 calories/cup.

Color: white. There was noticeable separation/sedimentation in the glass by the time I started the taste test, so I had to stir it up. Aroma: strong almond scent. Texture: Similar to the previous but without the chalkiness. Taste: Less almondy than the aroma. Fairly insipid.

Almond Breeze unsweetened "Original" non-dairy beverage
(I guess they don't feel the need to specify "almond beverage" given the brand name.)

Ingredients: Purified water, almonds, tapioca starch, calcium carbonate, sea salt, potassium citrate, carrageenan, soy lecithin, natural flavor, misc. vitamins. 40 calories/cup.

Color: white with no noticeable sedimentation. Aroma: very slight almond scent. Texture: somewhat thicker/more viscous than the preceding two, but smooth. No chalkiness. Taste: a slightly stronger flavor than the others. Not strongly almondy, but definitely not watery.

Home-made

Ingredients: Tap water, almonds. Caloric value undetermined.

Color: white with a little bit of sedimentation. Aroma: fresh "raw" almond scent. Very nutty. Texture: similar viscosity to the Almond Breeze. No chalkiness although there's some grittiness when you get to the bottom. Taste: The first thing I noticed was a bit of a "bite", almost an acidity. Definitely nutty and the same "green/raw" taste that shows up in the aroma.

Comparison with sweetened versions

Going back to my previous review, I had sweetened versions of the Almond Breeze and Pacific Natural Foods brands. The Almond Breeze I noted as tasting "toasted" and the Pacific Natural Foods as "more delicate and flowery". (Interestingly, the sweetened version of PNF doesn't include vanilla flavoring.) In my previous comparison I found the home-made version to be thicker in texture than the commercial milks and -- as I found again this time -- with a more almondy and "raw" flavor. (I don't mean "raw" in any negative sense, simply that it made me think of raw fresh almonds.)

So I once again come back to my conclusion that, given how easy the home-made version is to produce, there's very little reason to prefer the commercial variants. (I could see taking the commercial route if you needed very large quantities and time were short, or as something to keep on hand in a camp kitchen, since the containers need no refrigeration.) The unsweetened versions are definitely preferable to the sweetened, if only for ingredient control, but avoid the Pacific Natural Foods unsweetened because of the vanilla thing. Overall, the Almond Breeze unsweetened would be my pick for medieval cooking due to the slightly stronger nut flavor and lack of unwanted non-almond flavorings.

I went with a dish inspired by the recipe that hudebnik offered. Wash and trim about a dozen ramps (comes out to about a quarter cup in the end), slice the thick part into coins and the green part into manageable pieces, but keep the two separate. Mince a thick slice of bacon and heat it very gently in a skillet, then add a little water (maybe a quarter cup). Add the sliced ramp bulbs and cook over a very low heat (covered) until tender. In the mean time, cook about 100 g pasta in rapidly boiling, salted water. When the ramp bulbs are tender, add the greens. Instead of the pepper, I added some grated fresh galingale (kept in the freezer from a previous mystery produce adventure). Continue simmering until tender. Drain the pasta then add to the ramps and toss (still heating) until the liquid is gone. Serve with grated hard cheese.

The ramps have a very delicate, but clearly oniony, flavor. The dish was good, but not quite good enough to merit the "exotic produce" price on the ramps. If I were really into them, I'd try growing my own.

I finally got around to doing a comparative taste test on almond milks when cooking last Thursday for this weekend's event. This was purely a "drink it straight" taste test and doesn't compare the various items as used in actual dishes. The items being compared are two commercial almond milks and a simple home-made one. The biggest problem with the commercial almond milks was finding unflavored ones. Most of the groceries I frequent carry at least one variant, but it will commonly be chocolate flavored or at the very least vanilla flavored. Only the Berkeley Bowl supermarket carried plain, unflavored almond milk. Probably other "natural foods" markets would be a good bet as well.

1. Almond Breeze "Original" flavor almond non-dairy beverage from Blue Diamond

The ingredients list indicates: water, evaporated cane juice, almonds, salt, and a bunch of chemicals, vitamins, and thickening agents. 60 calories per 8 oz cup.

The viscosity was relatively thin. The taste was sweetish and slightly "toasted".

2. Pacific Natural Foods "Original" flavor almond non-dairy beverage

The ingredients list is identical to the Almond Breeze one until you get down to the specific ordering of the vitamins. 70 calories per 8 oz cup. Amusingly, the PNF brand advertises itself as "low fat" but the calories from fat are identical in each (25/cup) and the PNF is higher calorie overall. There's a lesson here about the usefulness of self-serving labeling.

The viscosity was similar to the Almond Breeze. The taste was sweetish again but without the toasted flavor -- more delicate and "flowery".

3. Home-made almond milk ... ok almond non-dairy beverage

Ingredients: water, almonds. Hard to know the calorie content since I don't know how much caloric value remains in the almond "dregs" after the milk is filtered off. My recipe would use 1/2 cup ground almonds to make a cup of milk, which my references tells me would be ca. 270 calories worth of almonds, so if you figure the calories end up half in the milk and half in the dregs, that would make it about double the commercial almond milks (which makes sense, since the home-made isn't processed to be low-fat).

Roughly following the proportions in one of Terrence Scully's books, I mixed one volume of ground blanched almonds (for some reason I can more reliably find blanched almonds in ground form than in whole untoasted form -- at least in volume rather than in the small packets in the baking section) with two volumes of warm water. Mix in a blender for a couple of minutes. Let sit for about five minutes, then mix again and strain. The first time I did this, I strained it through a cloth, but the second time I just strained it through a medium sieve. Both seem noticeably thicker in viscosity than the commercial milks, but the sieve-strained one moreso. (Thicker without being gritty.) The taste was relatively mild without any strong flavors predominating -- definitely more reminiscent of fresh raw almonds than the commercial milks.

Conclusions

Given how easy the home-made recipe is, as long as I'm able to obtain ground almonds, it makes more sense to make my own -- especially since I can make the specific volume I require rather than opening up a one quart box of it and then worrying about using it up. On the other hand, if I were aiming for a reduced calorie version of some medieval recipe, I might want to try one of the commercial versions. Probably the PNF unless I specifically thought the toasted flavor would add something.

As previously noted, this week's Mystery Produce Item was a peculiar Asian seed pod listed at the grocery as "drumsticks" (and located in the vicinity of the bean section). The instructions I found online (notice that I bypassed attempting to find anything useful in Joy of Cooking or Larousse Gastronomique this time) indicated that the skin was tough and fibrous and should be chewed but not eaten, while the edible part was the interior of the pod. It suggested using a peeler to scrape off any dry looking parts of the skin, then cutting the pods into finger-sized lengths and cooking in lightly salted water. When I began wielding the peeler, it seemed happy to take off the entire dark green part of the skin without doing much to the interior (sort of like a very skinny cucumber) so I had hopes that I'd reduced the inedible portion without throwing out any of the edible part. I cut them into 1.5 inch sections and simmered in salted water for about 15-20 minutes.

The web site indicated that they would then be cooked in sauce, but I went for the naked vegetable to get a sense of the basic taste. They were very mild in flavor, with just a little bit of fiber still around the edges that needed to be chewed up and spit out. (I suspect the degree of peeling that I did is exactly the right amount.) Pleasant tasting, but I can see how you might want to use them as a carrier for a more strongly flavored sauce. I can't really describe the flavor -- sort of like a summer squash or very bland eggplant, although I think my imagination is getting cross-contaminated by the texture, which was definitely in the eggplanty range. Eating drumsticks takes attention and a little effort -- sort of the same level as for artichoke, except not as messy (and without the payoff of the heart at the end). This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'll put them on my "try again sometime" list and experiment with simmering in sauce next time.

The bonus new produce this week was some fresh galingale. I grated it into a tofu stirfry (firm tofu, onion, celery, mushrooms, bean sprouts) along with ground sesame seeds and a very simply sweet-and-sour sauce (vinegar, catsup, brown sugar, soy sauce). I think I was too conservative (remembering the unfortunate results of overdoing the fresh ginger on some baked trout) -- I'm sure it contributed to the taste overall, but I didn't really notice it as anything specific. I have the rest of a rather small rhizome grated and frozen, so I'll try for a more intense experiment sometime soon.