Prandial Delights

Until yesterday afternoon, I hadn't cooked a meal beyond making a sandwich nor been grocery shopping in about a month and a half. And so it was with glee that I went to the store. While there, I ran into Marv and invited him over for dinner. To celebrate the end of life on the road, I cooked up Cormarye. Cormarye is a medieval pork roast. Here's the recipe from the 14th century:

Take colyaundre, caraway smale grounden, powdour of peper and garlec ygrounde, in rede wyne; medle alle þise togyder and salt it. Take loynes of pork rawe and fle of the skyn, and pryk it wel with a knyf and lay it in the sawse. Roost it whan þou wilt, & kepe þat þat fallith þerfro in the rostyng and seeþ it in a possynet with faire broth, & serue it forth wiþ þe roost anoon.

It's basically like a roast anyone today would make but the big difference is that coriander is used. The recipe called for red wine so I used up a couple open bottles that were lying around - a California merlot & some Wisconsin cranberry wine. It turned out quite well and was very tasty. To go along with it, I roasted some potatoes. I improvised and came up with seasoning for them which had me mashing up cubebs and some super-funky Slavic sea salt that was very coarse in my mortar & pestle. And I also cooked up some peas that were in the freezer. To drink, we had Botham Uplands Reserve, a local vintage. It had a pleasant fruity taste which took the edge off the dryness which I appreciated as I'm not a big fan of dry wines. For dessert I had bought some Zanzibar Chocolate ice cream. This stuff is dope! It's made with not one, not two but three (3) African cocoas and is super rich and creamy and addictive like crack. As some folks may recall, I brandied some cherries this past summer so I busted out a pint of those to put on the luscious chocolately goodness. It was the first time I'd ever preserved fruit in booze and, while they turned out alright, I didn't use enough sugar so they've give the tongue a kick. I would lap up a good portion of the ice cream with the spoon and then grab a piece of cherry. Eating it was like biting into one of those cherry cordial candy hoolies. You get a rush of creamy African chocolately goodness which segues into a sharp brandy-cherry burst. Mmm-mmm good! To finish things off, I busted out the bottle of traditional brackett (or braggot) that I'd bought at the White Winter Winery up north. It was extremely delicious! You taste the maltiness of the beer first and then the honey underneath. It wasn't very sweet. Indeed, the I found the flavors to be well balanced. When the bottle was empty, I found myself wanting more. I am not sure if anyone in town carries White Winter's brackett or any brackett for that matter but I shall have to look.

Later this week I'm planning on making lasagne with the pasta being made from scratch as well as stewing a pheasant in mead. The pheasant will probably be for the holiday dinner that Stevie, Becca, and I will be having on Friday. We shall see how that turns out as I've never cooked pheasant previously.