Ginger, medieval spices, medieval recipes with ginger, biscotti and herbal medicine

Today I decided to try and make my ginger biscotti with freshly grated ginger. I was able to get some Hawaiian ginger from my local Fort Market and pureed it as best I could. Gerald, the owner of the market and my good friend, peeled the ginger for me and minced it, but several cooks, including his lovely wife Emerald, cautioned me to mash it further and use sparingly. Now my original recipe calls for 1 to 1-1/2 cups of crystallized ginger. So I started thinking about ginger in the Middle Ages and first turned to my old friends, Robert Lopez and Irving Raymond and Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. I found the following on page 111 - Quilon ginger, wrinkled black ginger, peeled ginger and Malabar ginger. On page 352 they briefly discuss green ginger which should be clear and brittle and ginger in general, which should be of large roots, clean skin and not wrinkled, tender to the knife and white inside and firm and not thin and holey. Just for the record, my Hawaiian ginger (which I can pretty much bet wasn't on the medieval market) was yellow inside. On the medicinal side, my Medieval Kitchen by Odile Redon states that the French were inordinately fond of the ginger/cinnamon combo (who isn't? and I'm not even French!) and that most ingredients we would call spices in the modern world were considered to have warm and dry properties, except for ginger and saffron (loved by the Italians) which were warm and moist. Very important when you're prescribing to keep the humors in balance. And just in case you're interested, aside from ginger, there are mulberry granita, jasmine ice, almond granita, cinnamon granita, lemon granita, and gelato of any and all flavors. What does a mulberry taste like?

Citron, fava beans, granita, food from Sicily and blancmange?

http://www.bestofsicily.com


So I'm writing a chapter and doing research about what Bia and Ysabella would be doing in the kitchen and what kind of "stuff" would they be preserving and preparing from Leo's estate?  Check out this link above because it gives a lot of fascinating information on fava beans, citron (do you know what citron is?), blood oranges, pistachios and almonds - lots of the food known not only to Greeks and Romans, but some, like sugar cane, lemons, oranges and advanced irrigation methods, were brought to Sicily by the Arabs.  So when you're in Sicily and cooling off with a fabulous lemon granite, say a silent prayer of thanks to the Arab culture.


And one more thing perusing medieval recipes - did you know that almond milk was a staple in most medieval kitchens?  Yes, that blanc mange which I have to confess, I had to look up because I had visions of jiggly icky gelatinous pudding, and found to my relief that it wasn't.  In the medieval world, at least in Sicily, it's often more of a spiced, almond and ginger flavored rice kind of dish (as best I can make out) and all four recipes I found had a common ingredient of rosewater.  I'll have to add some rose water to my pudding some time ...

Eel Pie - a medieval recipe from France and Italy - a Christmas Treat!

The Medieval Kitchen by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi discuss French and Italian medieval recipes, ingredients and food in wonderful detail. My husband was curious and wanted to try to make an eel pie and the following is a quote from p. 151: "In the Middle Ages, the eel was the most sought-after of fishes ..." and I just found out from a friend who loves sushi that eel is one of the common offerings in modern sushi. So there you have it! Modern and medieval - who wants to tell us about eating eel? As an aside, some ingredients in a medieval eel pie? They would use butter, dates, saffron, walnuts, cloves, olive oil, nutmug, pepper and salt, almonds - you know, the usual!! Happy eating!