Check this out: A new cookbook by BVC authors
Click through and you will find a list of all the recipes by author. The recipes are presented in a highly individual way! Or, I mean, the recipes themselves are presented in a relatively standardized format for measurements and abbreviations and so on, but the text surrounding the recipes is highly individual. Some of us dropped in recipes with a paragraph or two of description per recipe, but also one recipe is presented as the culmination of a short story, and other recipes are written kind of as poetry.
I read the whole thing in draft — I love cookbooks and read them cover to cover — and this one is chock-full of genuinely inviting recipes. I’ve made a good handful of recipes from this book already and bookmarked a bunch more. If you like cookbooks, highly recommended. I don’t see a paper edition, but I would like one. Maybe one is in the works. In the meantime, here’s the ebook.
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No! There’s a recipe for membrillo? I mean, I have a recipe I got off the internet that worked well last year, but I also have SO MANY QUINCES from my neighbor’s trees this year. Ooh, I see there’s also recipes for persimmons – I have a tree that will shortly be bearing if I can keep it alive this winter (I have an obsession with weird, unusual, or unknown fruits and seeing if I can grow them in my area). Thanks for the recommendation!
I’d never heard of membrillo before, now this is the second time within a week or so https://mas.to/@RantyHighwayman/111318650198571850
Maybe I should suggest making it to my sister who has a quince tree, it looks as if it’ll taste lovely.
It’s also known as cotignac, if that helps. readers of Dunnett’s Lymond chronicles might recognize that.
I acquired an Elder Scrolls cookbook recently which had at least three recipes that the whole family likes – this is amazingly rare. It also has a very good seasoning blend for a chicken dish that combines things I’d never have thought of: mustard grains, fennel, dill and grains of paradise/alligator pepper.
Elaine T, could you share the seasoning blend? I don’t have grains of paradise, though I’ve heard of them. Maybe I’d get some and try this.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I have no memory whatsoever of cotignac being mentioned in the Lymond chronicles. Also, I’m peeved because when I had a quince tree — it died, alas — I never happened across a recipe for membrillo / cotignac.
The seasoning blend:
a teaspoon is 5ml for people reading this who don’t use teaspoon measurements.
1 tsp dried dill (doesn’t specify seed or plant, I used seed.)
1 tsp powdered mustard
2 teaspoons fennel seed
1/2 teaspoon grains of paradise. Which I’d never heard of, and had to buy online, it isn’t available locally.
grind it all together – I acquired a ‘finamill’ spice grinder for the purpose and store the blend in the grinder pod. My mortar & pestle didn’t do well with the seeds. The grinder doesn’t always get the seeds very finely ground either, but it’s (a) quieter and (b) faster, and I can regrind easily enough.
The grains of paradise are also a hit in scrambled eggs, and hot cereal, placed in the cooking water to steep before adding the cereal.
the particular recipe for chicken that uses it is for ‘dumplings’ or I call them turnovers as it’s a filled pastry: rye dough with the seasoning blend filled with shredded chicken, leeks (officially, I can’t eat them, and substitute green onion) garlic, carrot, the seasoning blend, cream (as with leeks I substitute coconut milk ) cheddar, (I don’t melt it in but grate it and add to everyone else’s filling as I fill the pastry) salt & pepper. make the pastry, cook the filling, make turnovers, bake.
Poisoned contignac is a plot element in the second Lymond book, my least favorite, even it if does set up a bunch of elements that play out through the rest of the series.
Thanks, Elaine! I’m going to get grains of paradise and try this!
And yes, now I’m not surprised I don’t remember the contignac, because when I’m re-reading the Lymond series, I skip the entire second book.