A Flight of Chickens: A Tasting Workshop

So in my research into various sheep breeds looking for a SCA period fleece type, I also started discussing with people about whether or not different types of sheep tasted differently.  Which made me remember my father telling me as a child about how the chickens in Taiwan changed.  Then of course, I found a paper on the subject. The original chicken type in Taiwan was the Taiwan country chicken (土雞), which he and his brothers loved, but then American broilers were imported to improve meat and egg production and the chicken no longer tasted as good.  However the hybrids of the American and Taiwan chickens tasted better, but not as good as the original.  This started me wondering about different breeds of chicken and how they taste and how that would affect a period medieval dish.  So I talked to a friend and we decided to have a chicken tasting workshop.

This is the general plan:
We are going to poach and taste at least four chickens.

      Our Flight:            (Subject to availability, number of participants, and the shopper’s (me) whim)

1. Commercial chicken
2. Cornish game hen (probably commercial)
3. A free range organic one
4. Silkie chicken (烏骨雞) Black bone chicken

The “Lab Manual”

Hypothesis:     From various anecdotal accounts from people who have raised chickens.  The taste difference will not come so much from the BREED of chicken but from the diet and how the chicken was raised and possibly the age of the bird.  I personally think Cornish Game hen and especially silkies taste differently from Perdue broiler.  Dad remembers a distinct taste and texture difference between Taiwan country chicken, caged chickens from American broiler stock, and crosses between the 2 that were free ranged (this might be due to diet).

Procedure:

1.      Examine/weigh chickens

2.      Label/Tag the chickens

3.      Cook chickens

4.      Chop up chickens.

5.      Examine sample cooking broth,

6.      Combine cooking broth and simmer.

7.      Discuss chickens.

8.      Make the rest of dinner.

9.      Eat dinner with various condiments for chicken.

worksheet
	Control	Cornish Game Hen	Organic Free Range	Silkie Chicken
Raw
Weight
Appearance
Price
Price/lb
Cooked
Cooking Time
Weight
Fat film on broth
Taste of broth
Taste
White Meat
Dark Meat
Texture
White Meat
Dark Meat
Bones
Appearance
Strength/Density

Notes: silkie chickens are really not a good example of any general type of chicken, be it period, modern, Asian, or European.  It's too much of a strange mutation.  However, due to the distinctive appearance, (feathers, black skin bones and flesh).  Even this non poultry expert can easily say this is the chicken Marco Polo was referring to.

Conclusion: (?) Your guess is as good as mine!

Questions to keep in mind while tasting:                            

1. Do the chickens taste different enough that it would affect a "period" dish?            

2. How would we compensate? (cooking time, more/less oil, etc)                      

                                         

3. Does it make a large enough difference?                                 

Different venues:                                           

A&S competition                                           

Feast at a cooking event                                            

Feast at a general event                                              

Obviously there is a difference or else fancy restaurants wouldn’t advertise free-range on the menu.        

Just as obviously we're here to find out why and how. :)                 

                                         

4. Cost effectiveness (Keep the damn receipts and weights to compare per lb)             

5. What types of prep would you use for the various kinds chickens.

6. How would condiments/prep etc affect/mask the taste. 

7. One thing that has been mentioned in my rare breed sheep class is that, we have no idea what shifts and adaptations occur once an animal is taken out of it's native habit and fed a different diet.

 Sources

Colonial Williamsburg Rare Breeds Program http://www.history.org/almanack/life/animals/pr_rare.cfm

Wikipedia on various chicken breeds, the silkie article is actually fairly accurate based on what I was taught about them as a child.

Oklahoma State University’s Livestock Breed Information site.  http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/poultry/  This is my usual go to place information about sheep, so I figured it couldn’t be that far off for chickens.

My pet chicken http://www.mypetchicken.com/.  This website sells small lots of days old chickens mostly to people who want urban or suburban chickens.  But that have a nice website about various chicken breeds.

Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens: Care / Feeding / Facilities by Gail Damerow.

http://www.angrin.tlri.gov.tw/INRA/o11.pdf this paper is about Taiwan country chickens.  Some stuff that my Dad said about how chicken tasted different with the importation of American broilers to the Taiwan chicken population started me down this research path.  This paper while not about a period European breed, does show the difficulty the Dr. Lee had in trying to locate a breed/type of chicken that was common in Taiwan in the 70’s.  At the time the article was written that was about 30+ years ago.  This article shows some of the assumptions he had to make in pinpointing a pure breed chicken.  So I’m using it as a guide for some of the pitfalls we can encounter in assuming a chicken that has the same name as a “period” breed or even if it’s found in the same geographic area may be very different from the period version.

The chicken recipe: Gervaise Markham, The English Housewife, ed. Michael R. Best, McGill-Queens University Press, 1986, pg. 79, #51 of cookery

Thanks to my friends on G+ also helped with the chicken search.

And thanks to my friend for passing on information from emails going around the SCA-Authentic Cooks yahoo group.

Seafood Pasta in a White Wine Sauce

A couple of weeks ago, I had some friends over and I made a seafood pasta dish.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but apparently it was a rather interesting fusion of Italian and Asian cooking and ingredients.  I just always thought it was my version of the Italian seafood pasta dish, but tossing in the idea of a one bowl meal, I tend to throw some veggies into mix.

Anyway this is the general recipe it makes about 10 - 12 servings.

Ingredients:
    The seasonings:
           1 small head of garlic minced fine
           olive oil
           red pepper flakes to taste
           a bunch of fresh Thai basil
           white wine (I used pino grigio)
           lemon juice
     The seafood:
          2 lbs cod filet (or other mild tasting fish) cut into 1" - 2" chunks
          1 lb clams
          1 lb mussels
          1 lb scallops
          1 lb shrimp
     The veggies
          2 lbs of snow pea shoots (or other tender leafy greens)  broken into bit sized pieces
          2 tomatoes diced
     Other stuff:
          Flour or cornstarch (can be seasoned)
          One box of pasta: I usually use fusilli, gemelli, or bowties, pasta that takes a while to get soggy

1. Boil water for pasta.

2.  Coat all the "soft" seafood with flour or cornstarch.  I usually just add cornstarch to a ziplock baggie and shake until coated, for speed.

3.  Add pasta to the boiling water, let cook until about 5 minutes before al dente.  Drain pasta and rinse with cold water.

4.  Heat up a pan and add enough olive oil to coat the bottom.  Add some garlic.  Once the garlic is sizzling sear the "soft" seafood on both sides.  It is VERY important that they are only SEARED and not cooked all the way through.  Remove the seared seafood and set aside.  Keep repeating until all the seafood is seared.

5. Heat up more olive oil, garlic and some red pepper flakes.  Add the clams to the empty pan.  Toss in the basil leaves and some lemon juice.  Add enough wine to steam the clams.  Stir.  Cover the pot and let cook for about 5 minutes depending on the size of the clams

6.  While you are waiting for the clams to cook.  Saute the greens with a little garlic and olive oil.  Place in the bottom of the serving dish.

7. Toss in the mussels and stir.  Check the level of the liquid.  Add more wine if needed.  Cook for another 3 minutes.

8. Add the pan seared seafood except the fish.  Stir.  Add the pasta stir.  Finally add the fish and carefully fold it in so it doesn't disintegrate.  If you don't want to risk it you can just leave the fish sitting on top.  Cover the pot and let cook for about another 5 to 10 minutes.

9.  Pour the seafood pasta on top of the greens.  Mix gently.  Top with the chopped tomatoes.

10. Eat.

Just FYI, the reason the seafood is cooked as a multi-step process is because the different kinds of  seafood cooks at different speeds and in order for everything to be done at the same time you need to vary the cooking times.  Also, the most important thing for a yummy seafood dish is that the seafood is fresh and not overcooked!  There is nothing more disgusting than scallops with the texture of erasers.  My suggestion if you are unfamilar with cooking seafood is not to use all these ingredients at the same time at first.  You can make this dish with only one type of seafood.  Once you get used to how the various types of fish cook you can better balance how to mix them together.

I prefer Thai basil to Italian basil because it has a stronger peppery flavor.  However, they do need heat to release it's flavor unlike the Italian basil.

If you do not have time to cook the greens, you can always pour the seafood on top of the greens and just let them wilt.  I like adding fresh tomatoes to this dish, because I like the freshness it adds to the dish.

Anyway, this is my version of seafood pasta in a white wine sauce.

Enjoy!

       

Baked Roast Pork Buns (叉烧包）

Last week, I had a roast pork bun workshop at Harry's house, the baked version.  This is the recipe that Carol Smith has managed to deduce from my rather lackadasical measurements, because my cooking style follows my general life philosophy of OOH SHINY!  Thx Carol! :)

This recipe came about because while I normally make the steamed version last Pennsic (XV), I made the baked version since Harry had his portable firepit with him and I had wanted to play around with my dutch oven.  They came out very nicely, with a sweet crisp yeast dough bread and nice savory/sweet filling.  OF course my friends who came to dinner that night wanted the recipe! The problem with this of course is once I got home I actually had no idea what the internal temperature of the dutch oven was since they don't exactly come equipped with thermostats and instruction such as place a small layer of coals under the dutch oven.  Then place coals on lid.  There should be more coals on top than on the bottom.  Bake for about 12minutes they should be light golden brown at this point.  If not, add more coals to adjust temperature.  Well instructions like that don't really help in a conventional kitchen.

So last month I tried to recreate the buns in my kitchen.  I think it was too cold in kitchen and the yeast dough wasn't that successful.  Nevertheless, I did have buns, just not as good as the ones I made while camping.  But at least now I had a general idea of temperature and cooking time.  

After some discussion with some local and not so local friends we decided on a date and location to have a roast pork bun workshop.  

And here are the results:

Roast Pork:

Marinate the meat at least overnight the day before roasting.


Whole pork loin (about 7 lbs or so), cut into thirds so that they look like roasts, then quartered to make long narrow strips.   Place in large (2.5 gallon) ziplock bag for marinating.

Marinade:

2 small heads of garlic
1.5 jars Lee Kum Kee brand Char Siu Sauce
0.5 jar Lee Kum Kee brand Black Bean and Garlic Sauce
2 sauce jars of ketchup
1 sauce jar of Shao Xing rice cooking wine (rinse sauce jars with wine to remove any sauce left behind)

Mix garlic and the liquid ingredients together in a large bowl.  Add to meat in baggie and mix thoroughly to coat.  Let marinate overnight to two days in refrigerator.

Pork can either be grilled or roasted.

To grill, sear meat on all sides with grill on high.  Reduce heat on grill (turn one side of grill off and turn other side as low as possible.  Cook slowly on the side without direct heat with lid closed. Check and turn every 20 minutes.  The edges will start to char.  Baste with marinade from bag while cooking.  (You will have less marinade to add to pork buns when they are grilled than if they are roasted.)

Broil 5 minutes on each side, then slow roast on a rack @ 300 – 3250 for 20 minutes, then flip and roast another 20 minutes.  If not fully done, raise the heat to 350 or higher and for another 10 to 20 minutes until meat is cooked through.  You may want to baste with the marinade when turning, but save the drippings.  If the pork is not getting that charred outer coating you may want to baste with honey.  The sugar helps the outside caramelize.

See this link for a more “authentic” recipe and cooking style

 Filling, part 1:

1 pkg dried shiitake mushrooms (the 7oz packages)

place into pot and add hot water to cover.  Let sit while making dough to rehydrate and soften.


Dough:

1 5 lb bag of all-purpose flour plus a little
2 1-quart packages of skim milk
1 quart plus a little of warm water
¼ C sugar
3 Tbsp yeast
4 beaten eggs
½ lb butter, cut into small pieces

Dissolve sugar in water and add yeast.  Set aside to proof yeast; when it foams, it’s ready.  Mix skim milk powder and flour together and add liquids.  Mix together until smooth and elastic.  Knead several minutes, using a little more flour if necessary.  When dough is smooth and elastic, it’s properly set.  Let rise, covered with damp cloth or paper towels, until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour or a little more.


Filling, part 2:

Onions 3 lbs or more, to taste
Fried scallions/onions/shallots (these are very small pieces of what Michele said was actually scallions, but any of the three may be used)
Dried shiitake mushrooms (see above)
Cooking oil
Roasted cooled pork

Cut onions into about ¼ - inch pieces.  Heat up the oil in the pan and add some of the fried (whatevers) and let it heat, when you can smell the fried shallots add the onions and sauté until translucent.  If meat was roasted, place the cooked onions into roasting pan with drippings when soft.

Cut reconstituted mushrooms into about the same size pieces and follow the procedure above.

Cut the meat into about the same size pieces and add to the remainder of the filling.

Sauce for filling; USE ONLY IF NOT USING THE MARINADE FROM ROASTING:

Oyster Sauce                approximately 5 ½ oz weight
Corn Starch                  approximately ¼ oz weight
Rice cooking wine            approximately 3 oz weight
Water                           approximately 1 cup

Mix these ingredients together and add to filling mixture.  On top of stove, toss together and cook until sauce is thickened and all ingredients are coated.  This is important; if the sauce is too thin, it will leak through the bottom of the buns.

IF USING LEFTOVER MARINADE, make sure it boils as it started with uncooked pork.  Make the sauce if pork is not used the same day it is cooked.

Set aside until dough is ready.

When dough has risen, punch down and form into cylinders about 4” diameter.  Cut into circles by cutting the cylinder into 4” pieces, turning the dough before each cut. Roll dough out into a circle from the outside to the inside, so that there is a slightly thicker section in the middle of the dough.  Fill with about 2 Tbsp of filling, seal the edges together, and place upside-down on a cooking pan, allowing space for rising.  (This puts the thicker middle on the top of the bun.)  Paint with an egg wash of eggs and a little water to provide a glossy crust.  Let rise about 15-20 minutes and bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for about 14 minutes.

Makes about 60 buns with leftover filling for about 20 more.