Posted by Bruce A Clarke on August 06, 2000 at 07:49:42 from 203.149.1.60:
In Reply to: Re: Picts and Martyrs Oddities posted by Alan Hakim on August 04, 2000 at 23:07:54:
1. BRAWN: This is a jellied meat. It is sometimes made with ox tongue, or other meats. James Beard the American food guru gives a recipe using a pig's head but I prefer this simple one from the Presbyterian Cookery Book first published in Australia in 1895 so probably available to the Beckfoot cook.
This is from the 1989 edition.
Ingredients:
3 veal knuckles
250 g gravy beef
salt to taste
½ teaspoon of mixed spice
1 teaspoon hot sauce
Method:
Cover meat with water and salt and boil until tender (about 3 hours). Take meat from the bones and pack in a mould (a deep basin is ideal) , picking out any gristle. Keep back sufficient stock in the saucepan to cover the meat in the basin, if there is too much liquid reduce to half. Add spice and hot sauce and more salt if necessary, pour over the meat in the mould, easing with a knife so that the stock will go to the bottom of the mould. Cool and refrigerate as necessary. Do not cut until it has set.
Can be decorated with chopped parsley and boiled egg in the bottom of the mould before putting the meat in. Any stock left over can be used as soup.
To serve:
Place the mould in warm water for a moment ( a JIFFY or two) and turn out onto a plate
These days I add garlic (3 cloves chopped) and quite a lot of pepper when cooking the meat as otherwise it is a bit bland.
TREACLE: From the days when I worked in the sugar industry in northern Australia I can tell you that when making sugar, after crystalisation the raw sugar is spun. The initial liquid which comes off is Molasses, this is black, has a strong burnt flavour and smell an cannot be eaten. It is used as a cattle feed supplement and sold to distilleries to be made into rum. The sugar is washed again and Treacle is recovered from the centrifuge (spin drying). This is a far more pleasant product which is sold as a sweetener and as a food colouring. It is further refined to Golden Syrup.
Golden Syrup Pudding.
Ingredients:
3 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt
1 ½ tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons of Golden Syrup
½ cup of full cream milk
Method:
Put soda, flour and salt in a basin. Melt the butter and golden syrup, add milk and beat into the dry mixture. Put in a greased basin and steam for one hour.
Serve with ice cream and custard.
5. FORTNIGHT: How the Americans forgot this most useful of words is amazing.
10. Schooling:
The children appear to go to single sex, boarding schools. At these schools, in 5th grade primary they would commence French and Latin/Greek. They would also start Chemistry in 6th grade. Most of the interesting chemical experiments are done in the first year and this was also well before atomic theory etc.