Step 1: Selection of recipe
Selection of the recipe sounds like it should be an easy task, but that is not always the case. Once I know when and where I want to be redacting from, I find my resource and start reading for a recipe that seems to be:
- Achievable: Not every recipe can be redacted. There may be missing text or some of the ingredients might not be available (for some reason, my local zoo doesn’t want to help out with some of the meat supply for some of the Mongolian dishes in my favourite text). Also, I look at the cooking technique. Some techniques are not within my skill set.
- Accessible: Not every recipe is appropriate to today’s taste profile. Why spend hours of redaction work and cooking to make something that no one is going to eat because it smells weird or looks like sludge?
- Appropriate for my menu: Obviously, if I do not need further meat dishes in my menu, looking into another chicken dish might not be the best use of my time.
Step 2: Ingredients
After selecting a recipe, I create a list of needed ingredients. This is easier for some recipes than others. If the words used in the recipe are unfamiliar, then I go about researching what they might be. Note that in this recipe, the amounts of some ingredients are listed. I will look at these amounts and make sure that I understand what they mean as well. If I don’t know, then it is time to research.
So, our recipe calls for:
Ingredient |
Amount |
Notes |
Mutton |
Two legs, the head, a set of hooves |
Mutton is difficult to get. I might be able to get hogget. Lamb could be substituted but lamb is much sweeter and not as gamey as mutton. |
Tsaoko Cardamoms |
Four |
|
Cinnamon |
Three liang |
We will talk about liang in the next blog. |
Sprouting Ginger |
Half a jin |
We will talk about jin in the next blog. |
Kasni |
As big as two chickpeas |
Cichorium intybus |
Water |
One *telir |
We are going to get to this in our next blog…but what the heck is a telir??? |
Pomegranate Fruit |
One jin |
These need to be prepared. |
Black Pepper |
Two liang |
We will talk about liang in the next blog. |
Salt |
A little |
|
Vegetable Oil* |
One cup |
We will be investigating this later. |
Asafetida |
A lump the size of a garden pea |
For some reason this reminds me of my grandma's cookbook. |
Ingredient |
Amount |
Notes |
Jiaxiang [Turbo cornutus] |
||
Chinese spikenard [Nardostachys chinensis] |
||
Kasni |
||
Butter |
- Boil ingredients into a soup using one *telir of water.
- Pour into a stone top cooking pot.
- Add a jin of pomegranate fruits, two liang of black pepper, and a little salt.
- The pomegranate fruits should be baked using one cup of vegetable oil and a lump of asafetida the size of a garden pea. Roast [i.e., cook dry ingredients] until a fine yellow in color, slightly black.
- Remove debris and oil in the soup. Strain clean.
- Use the smoke produced from roasting jiaxiang [operculum of Turbo cornutus and related spp], Chinese spikenard [Nardostachys chinensis], kasni, and butter to fumigate a jar.77 Seal up and store [the Se-aBru Soup] as desired.
Now, I look at the line by line break down of the method in the recipe. Sometimes this is tricky.
- Boil the mutton, tsaoko cardamoms, cinnamon, sprouting ginger, and kasni in the water.
- Pour the cooked ingredients into a smaller cooking pot (I am assuming that this is because you are removing the bones from the cooked meat).
- Add some additional flavour.
- Oh dear, here we go. Cooking pomegranates. So many assumptions. So many things to go wrong.
- Get rid of the extra stuff in the dish that are not needed. Extra oil, the extra bits from the fruit and spices (An assumption here is that we would need to cool the dish to be able to strain the oil off).
- I am not going to do this part of the redaction as I won’t be potting the meat. At some time later, when I have more time, I will be trying this ‘fumigation’ to see how well it works to sterilize a jar. I am quite interested in this step, but I still have a few more redactions from Cloud Forest to complete this month, so this investigation will just have to wait.
Next time we will have a look at how I research so that I can complete my redaction.
~ Natal’ia