Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Poterous: A New Hope

So, a new try on Poterous.

This time I used finer and hotter salt. My mistake was to re-use some salt from the last time. It turned brown in the oven, but it made it look more period, so no problem. The result was not as pretty as last time.

Here is the salt ready to be put in the oven to heat it up. Still white...




And here is what will be put inside it. Just plain eggs, no spices.












And out of the oven! It made some bubbles, so the result is not as pretty as it could be. The salt turned brown and there is not those big and pretty chrystals as before. I wonder if I should add some more coarse salt on the rim, just to decorate.








On the serving plate. I made it with only three eggs in order to save our tasters (me and hubby) from too much food.











The results. The finer (and hotter, mind you) salt did not make the crust thinner, quite the opposite! But it made it hard and dry, so it was easy to eat only the eggs and leave the salt crust on the plate. You can see the crust in the middle of the picture, with the already "loosened" eggs on top of it. Too bad that the recipe doesn't tell us anything about how the dish should be eaten, but I would bet they left the crust un-eaten.

I am now sertain, that the original recipe mentions "the coffin" only because of "the pie crust" formed by the salt. There is no dough involved!

This dish could be used as a part of a feast, but you would have to mention to the guests that they are not supposed to eat all that salt!

Oh, and during the cooking my hubby complained about the slight smell of hydrochloric acid in the air. He said it is propably caused by salt and acids from the eggs being heated together. I hope there was not too much of it.

2 comments:

  1. Greetings again.
    Could it be, that the heat of the oven is to high? Also maybe need a small cup of water in the oven so that the salt not get to dry?
    I´ll tortur my brain for your problem.
    In service
    Helmut zu Juelich

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  2. Greetings again.
    I forgot to introduce my self. I am Helmut zu Juelich (u with dots on top ;-)), native german. I was one of the founder of the Shire Drei Eichen and rised Drei Eichen to a Barony with me and my wife as foundingbaron/ess. I did fighting heavy and fencing. Also, as a professional cook, I did a lot of feastocrating with period medival german recipies. My highest challange was a 36 remove feast, but that´s many years ago. IN 1999 I quit SCA for some reasons, ask the "old Drachenwald dinosaurs", they can tell you more about me and my wife. By and by I sneek around in SCA and I got more and more hunger to the SCA. But I am not ready yet to have my "come back". So if you need held don´t bother me to ask for help. I guess, I can help you with any problems that is related to period cooking.
    Maybe I can meet you in not so far future at an event. In service.
    Helmut zu Juelich

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