Test-diner @ ANne's

Here a short report on my attempt to serve a 'historic diner' with 4 recipes, that I tried out today. My friends; Colette, Bernhard, Ivar and Kyra, were courageous enough to serve as a test panel. In the course of today the whole shopping process and haunting for ingredients brought to the surface interesting issues such as: which contemporary product is closest to the listed ingredients, whether or not to use a blender, to buy fillet of fish or stay as close as possible with the tradition by filleting the fish by yourself etc. etc. Most ingredients I used were ecological or biological as I figured this probably would come closest to the original taste. As the diner plan was only decided upon today, there was no time to consult the archive experts, so I decided to just go for it, and spent the afternoon in interesting spice and herb shops and on the market place.

First course
Chervil soup / Kervelsopje

All ingredients were available however, the doses in the recipe were only vaguely mentioned so the cook's sense of 'historic' mixing came into play here. My test-panel friends were in agreement about the soup or 'sopje', it was ok, the slice of bread where the soup was poured over, to make a 'sopje' was received well. However, according to our 21st century testers, the dish could use some salt and pepper. Kyra decided for a 6 mark ('average') for the soup.


Main course
Spinach / Spinagie and salmon / Salm stoven

First the spinach: the Bramley apple is not cultivated in the Netherlands anymore, see http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley%27s_Seedling
I decided to use Goudreinettes, an old Dutch apple that originally comes from Boskoop, close to Gouda. http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afbeelding:Goudreinet.jpg
Further more I used rough leaved wild spinach, fresh ginger and dry white wine. The verjuys was missing and replaced with vinegar (ass suggested in one of the English recipes).

So let's go back to my testing friends again: they all appreciated the spinach with apple and ginger very much! The substance of this dish was a bit juicy or soup-like, next time I'll consider to follow the suggestion to make pies or cookies from it. The taste reminded my friends to the old-fashioned Dutch red cabbage with apples, a plate that is still served these days as winter food in the Netherlands. Very Nice !




On the salmon dish I made some compromises as I decided to buy the fillet and not the whole fish (I hate fish bones, I know I'm spoiled and yes I understood people used to be much easier on these kinds of things before). Never the less with this slight adjustment the salmon was also really appreciated, the bread crump porridge-like substance was less appreciated (see Kyra's facial expression on the right picture above). Interesting details about all different parts of the nutmeg, as I wanted to know what foelie actually is see for nutmeg details http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootmuskaat
and 'foelie' and the Dutch VOC history http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foelie


The dessert
Rum jelly / Rumgelij

ahum... I think the cook made a minor mistake here, as it was so thick of jelly that the calculations might be misunderstood ... the taste was a bit like wine gums but too little rum, lemon and sugar, it looked good but needs a secondary try! Furthermore I'm also not sure how much 'half a small bottle of rum' actually is I found myself in front of a shell with 3 sizes of small bottles ... so here is some more work ahead for my experiment with the recipes.