First German Dinner

I have been working all week on collecting period German recipes for my A&S 50 Challenge cookbook. I have collated almost 100 recipes from several sources. Some are already redacted others are not. The plan is to work through the list cooking each of the recipes myself. So, tonight I cooked my first German redacted dishes for dinner.

I made Chicken & Pear Stew from Das Buch von Guter Spise (1350) translated by Alia Atlas.  I found a few redacted recipes for this dish online.  I ended up taking a little something from two different versions and then adjusting the spice to the taste of my family.

#30 A good food
Take hens. Roast them, not very well. Tear them apart, into morsels, and let them boil in only fat and water. And take a crust of bread and ginger and a little pepper and anise. Grind that with vinegar and with the same strength as it. And take four roasted quinces and the condiment thereto of the hens. Let it boil well therewith, so that it even becomes thick. If you do not have quinces, then take roasted pears and make it with them. And give out and do not oversalt.

My Redaction:
6 chicken breasts on the bone
4 pears
1 cup Breadcrumbs
½ tsp Ginger
¼ tsp Black Pepper
Sea Salt to taste
Pinch of Anise
3 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
3 cups Chicken Stock

Roast chicken pieces, covered, in a medium oven (375F) for about half an hour. Core pears and cut into quarters or eighths leaving the skin on for added flavor. Remove cover from roasting pan and add pear pieces to the pan, making sure they pick up the meat juices. Continue roasting uncovered until the chicken is brown and the pears are soft.

Remove from oven and allow chicken to cool slightly so you can cut it up and debone it without burning your fingers. Remove flesh from bones and cut into bite-sized pieces. Mash pears into a lumpy consistency and put chicken and pears into large pot.

Soak breadcrumbs in vinegar and 2 cups of stock. Grind the spices and add to breadcrumb mixture. Deglaze the roasting pan with stock – heat slightly to make sure you get all the juices off the bottom. Add bread mixture to the chicken and pears, adding enough stock to make sufficient gravy for the meat. Cook stew slowly until gravy has thickened slightly and meat has heated through again.

I served this over buttered egg noodles sprinkled with parsley.

I also made Sautéd Mushrooms from Ein New Kochbuch by Marx Rumpolt and translated by Gwen Catrin von Berlin.

196. Mushrooms. White bitter Mushrooms wash off/ pepper and salt (them)/ then one lays them on a Grill/ roast (fry) and baste them with Butter. And when they are roasted (fried)/ then give them warm on a Plate/ strew them with Pepper and Salt/ thus are they all the more better.

I didn't find an existing redacted recipe for the mushrooms but it is pretty straight forward. This is my redaction:

1 lb White or Cremini Mushrooms
3 tbsp Butter
Sea Salt
Black Pepper

Cut mushrooms in half or quarters depending on size. Sauté in butter over medium-high heat. Season with salt and pepper.

Both dishes were very good and I look forward to cooking more for my future cookbook.

One other thing to note today is that the beeswax I ordered came in today.  I think tomorrow I will try to make my tablet weaving cards.