<\/p>\n
I was just falling asleep the other night when the Book of the Week came on the radio.\u00a0 It was Heston Blumenthal.\u00a0 I nearly fell out of bed when he mentioned King Richard II.<\/p>\n
What?!<\/p>\n
All became clear.<\/p>\n
It was because the heavenly Heston has written a book about cooking through the ages and is recreating some of the best recipes.\u00a0 It so happened that King Richard commissioned the first ever English cookery book from his master chef in the Palace of Westminster.\u00a0 What made it especially astonishing to me was that the previous week I’d made a few notes from that same book, The Forme of Cury.<\/p>\n
As Heston mentioned, they used some curious\u00a0 ingredients, almond milk being one of the most popular.\u00a0 English cookery was renowned at this time.\u00a0 Cooks used ingredients from all over the known world.\u00a0 Heston chose risotto as his typical medieval dish.\u00a0 Rice was frequently eaten and was imported via Genoa from the middle east until Italy started to grow it commercially.\u00a0 Other popular dishes were sweet and sour, using far more spices and herbs than we seem to use today.\u00a0 There were no potatoes, of course, but soups were thickened with breadcrumbs, flour, blood and ground nuts.<\/p>\n
There was something called blancmanger (familiar?) but this wasn’t pudding.\u00a0 It was made from rice and almond milk with shredded white meats and spices and there was another version called mawmenee which was the same thing but with added pomegranate seeds, spices and coloured with red wine.<\/p>\n
Colour was important in medieval times-\u00a0 they ate in technicolour –\u00a0 and I wonder if Heston colours his dishes?\u00a0 I think saffron must have been cheaper in those days. \u00a0 As for gilding with gold leaf?\u00a0 Five star restaurants may do so even now but what did ordinary mortals eat?\u00a0 Plenty, according to the records.\u00a0 Brewetts for instance, a combination of boiled and fried meats, sweet fruits and spices, all simmered in a rich gravy and thickened with cheese and eggs.\u00a0 Sounds good to me.<\/p>\n
I love some of the names of these dishes:\u00a0 gyngawdry, macrows, chysanne, chawdon for swans and many more.\u00a0 A keen cook will get a lot from King Richard’s unnamed master cook.\u00a0 I’m off to try nysebek for to make pom dorryes.\u00a0 Bon apetit!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was just falling asleep the other night when the Book of the Week came on the radio.\u00a0 It was Heston Blumenthal.\u00a0 I nearly fell out of bed when he mentioned King Richard II. What?! All became clear. It was because the heavenly Heston has written a book about cooking through the ages and is recreating some of the best recipes.\u00a0 It so happened that King Richard commissioned the first ever English cookery book from his master chef in the Palace of Westminster.\u00a0 What made it especially astonishing to me was that the previous week I’d made a few<\/p>\n[Read More...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}