Meat Casserole
You must take meat and cut it into pieces the size of a walnut, and gently fry it with the fat of good bacon; and when it is well gently fried, cast in good broth, and cook it in a casserole; and cast in all fine spices, and saffron, and a little orange juice or verjuice, and cook it very well until the meat begins to fall apart and only a little broth remains; and then take three or four eggs beaten with orange juice or verjuice, and cast it into the casserole; and when you wish to eat, give it four or five stirs with a large spoon, and then it will thicken; and when it is thick, remove it from the fire; and prepare dishes, and cast cinnamon upon each one. However, there are those who do not wish to cast in eggs or spice, but only cinnamon and cloves, and cook them with the meat, as said above, and cast vinegar on it so that it may have flavor; and there are others who put all the meat whole and in one piece, full of cinnamon, and whole cloves, and ground spices in the broth, and this must be turned little by little, so that it does not cook more at one end than the other. And so nothing is necessary but cloves and cinnamon, and those moderately.
From: Translation of recipe by Robin Carroll-Mann, Ruperto de Nola, 1529, Spain
Meat Casserole:
What I did:
- what I had ready was beef which ended up working quite well, this is cut into the size of walnuts and gently fried in bacon fat (basically your just browning it)
- cast this in a pot (it says casserole) with some meat broth, fine spices (I used cinnamon, ginger and cloves), and saffron, and a little orange juice (or verjuice, I used orange).
- cook this until the meat just starts to fall apart and the broth is fairly reduced.
- Now here it says to cast the eggs into the casserole and then stir, but for better results, I removed the meat, added more orange juice to the liquid, cooked it a bit more, then briskly stirred the yolks into the liquid and cooked them to a custard. There may have been about a cup-ish of liquid and to that I added 2 yolks. It is supposed to be thick.
- Once thickened, remove from heat (I took it off and combined the two)
- --prepare this in dishes and cast cinnamon over the top
(note: I took pictures of both the dish and just the sauce in pot/on spoon)
The picture shows probably enough for 3 or 4 people but it was so good I made a good pig of myself and ate half and could have easily eaten the whole thing! The sauce itself was good enough to eat alone as it was beefy but refreshingly orange filled, a nice combination.
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