Mushroom Pasty

Last night, we had a very successful evening of historical cooking and eating. More on that later, but first, here's how we made our mushroom pasty, using a recipe from this site.


The ingredients:

1 - 1 1/2 pounds mushrooms (the girls chose a mix of white button and crimini, and this is actually closer to 2 pounds)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup grated cheddar
1/2 tsp each of salt and ginger
1/4 tsp pepper


dough for one pie






We started off by sauteing the mushrooms in the oil, though I did end up adding a bit of butter, too. I cooked them until the liquid was gone.
















Then added the other ingredients and mixed it all together well.












The recipe was for a pie or tart, but I decided to make individual pasties, instead. Using small tart pans as forms, I divided the dough into 8 and rolled out the pieces to cover the bottoms of the pans. Then I added the filling.


These can be made with or without a top. A single recipe of dough, which should have been enough for top and bottom of 1 pie shell, was just enough to cover the bottoms. I didn't like how they looked, so I tucked the edges over the filling a bit, then rolled out another 1/2 recipe of dough (I'd pre-made 3 recipes in anticipation of other baking) and used a glass to cut circles. I wet one side of the circles with water before putting them onto the pasties, so that the dough would stick better.

These were then baked at 350F until golden.

The hardest part of making these was to stick to the recipe. I kept wanting to add garlic or other flavorings. I'm glad I didn't. They were so delicious, just the way they were!

Strangely, I neglected to get a photo of what they looked like when I took them out of the oven. Ah, well.

The entire meal was made up of 3 removes. The pasties were served with the stewed chicken our guests brought, which was incredibly good. They, too, had to resist adding at least garlic to their recipe. *L* Their leek soup was wonderful, too. Very light.

The most challenging part of the meal was the strawberry tart and baked apples in the third remove. The recipes were originals, not translated to modern cooking. What instructions were vague and confusing, and there was one ingredient we couldn't figure out at all. We used strawberry syrup instead. They were good, though we'd definitely change things if we made them again - like not including egg yolks with the baked apple. (One of the dishes Eldest wanted to make didn't pan out, as we couldn't find elderberry blossums for it.)

At the end of the meal, we were all quite full and satisfied. They sure knew how to cook well in the 12th century! Unfortunately, our guests had to leave rather suddenly as a storm moved in. We were on the balcony when the wind, rain and what we thought was hail started - the "hail" turned out to be pieces of a neighboring tree. The real hail started later on. Thankfully, we'd brought most of our planters in by then. The electricity flickered a bit, but we didn't have an actual power outage. We were lucky. I've spoken to one person who was without power for 16 hours, and today we saw one area where the power was still out.

No surprise about the outages, judging from the carnage we saw today. The streets were littered with broken branches, and we saw downed trees all over the place. One street was completely blocked by a huge elm - thankfully, no vehicles had been parked where it fell, and only some branches at its top hit the house on the opposite side of the street it had fallen on. An apartment block we passed had a patio and second floor balcony filled with a downed tree. Many others were seen in various parks we drove past. There's going to be a lot of clean up in the next few days. For now, the city must be focusing on those areas there the power was knocked out.

We didn't even get the worst of it. After the storm blew over us, I went onto the balcony a few times. We have a clear view of about 1/3rd of the horizon from our balcony. To the south and east, we continually saw lightning strikes that must've been outside the city. The small towns in those directions would have been hit far harder than we were. Quite a wild night!

As for our medieval themed evening, we all had a great time and really look forward to doing it again. Nothing like the combination of good food and great company! The only question is, what time in history shall we do next? Eldest brought up ancient Egypt and the pioneer area, both of which I would love to try out.

Whatever we end up doing, it's going to be a blast! :-D