Fretoure of Fayre Applys

Upon getting home from work this evening, I immediately began cooking. It was time to do something with some of the goodies from the garden. One obvious tasty treat to make would be pico de gallo.

Tomatoes. We've got tomatoes. My pico ended up with the trifecta of cherry, Roma, and beefsteak toms. On the pepper side I had picked green Bells and Hungarian wax(?) and several ended up on the chopping block. Lastly there was that red onion which I had bought at Lapacek's Orchard. To finish it off, I put in lots of garlic, lime juice, and no cilantro because I didn't have any despite thinking that I did. It turned out rather colorfully and it sits in the refrigerator as the marriage of the flavors is consummated.



With that being done, I set out to recreate yet another medieval recipe – Apply Fretoure. Here is the original:

Take whete floure, Ale 3est, Safroun, & Salt, & bete alle to-gederys as þikke as þou schuldyst make oþer bature in fleyssche tyme; & þan take fayre Applys, & kut hem in maner of Fretourys, & wete hem in þe bature vp on downne, & frye hem in fayre Oyle, & caste hem in a dyssche; & caste Sugre þer-on, & serue forth.

I'm not sure of the date but hails from sometime in the first half of the 15th century and is, as you can see, an English recipe.

To start, heat a bit of beer (Viking Weathertop Wheat, in this case) so it's just warm and add your yeast. Just look at the wee yeasties in their bath!



Here's the beer and saffron. Bruise the saffron in a small amount of hot beer.



Throw all your beer in a bowl along with flour, salt, and sugar. Mix it up and you've have a smooth, wonderfully aromatic batter. Let it rise for a spell.



With the batter doing its thing, I reached into our magic pantry and grabbed the first bag of apples I saw – Zestars. Dip your apple bits in it, and fry. I cut my fruit into bite-size chunks – finger food.



I topped them off with powdered sugar & cinnamon.



They were really tasty! I called The Dulcinea, who was out with a friend, to tell her just how good they were. The batter fried up nice'n'crispy yet fluffy and the flavors of the apples melded incredibly well with the saffron.

The recipe was certainly not 100% authentic. Fried in vegetable oil? Perhaps next time I'll use a mixture of oil and lard. The Zestars are a very new variety of apple as they were developed, methinks, in the early 1990s. Lastly, a wheat beer most certainly wouldn't have been used. Hops was introduced to England around the same time this recipe was transcribed so it's likely that an ale flavored with herbs was used. As Wikipedia notes:

In the past, other plants have been used for similar purposes; for instance, Glechoma hederacea. Combinations of various aromatic herbs, berries, and even ingredients like wormwood would be combined into a mixture known as gruit and used as hops are now used.

The recipe notes that the batter is the same as that made on meat days ("in fleyssche tyme") so these fritters were likely meant to be eaten during Lent or, at least, on Fridays. Being a godless heathen, I say they're good anytime.