Today I tested a medieval recipe from Harleian. It was supposed to be meatballs disguised as apples. The diner would bite a green apple and be surprized! The trickery! The cunning joke! Ah, we have to try this.
Here are the meatballs already cooked. The meat mix is made from ground beef, raisins, dates, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, eggs and ginger. The meatballs are then boiled.
Up next it colouring them green. We'll use parsley, finely chopped and minced and the juice is squeezed out to make a green liquid in the picture. That small amount of colour, about three table spoons, took a big bush of parsley.
Then a batter is made from flour, eggs and ginger and it is coloured green. The recipe tells us to use the whole eggs, but I'll use only the whites next time, as othervice it will be too yellow and the green will not be bright enough. Then the apples are fried and the dough is sprinkled on top of them. They should be roasted on a spit. I used a frying pan, and that showed.
Next time I should make the dough thicker, so that it can be molded on the meatballs, or deepfry them with the thinner batter. The colour was nice, light green, like apples.
And the taste? Delicious! Slightly sweet, spicy meatballs. I only have to get the dough right and these will be an exelent dish for a feast. And they are so filling, that if served first no-one will complain about smaller portions served later. I'll try using spinach for colour next time, it is cheaper, you can always find it frozen in grocery stores and it is already chopped, so I'll save time and energy.
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