Stuffed and Roast Mutton; Called "The Complete" [or "The Inclusive"]
Take a plump skinned ram; make a narrow opening in the belly between the thighs and take out what is inside it and clean. Then take as many plump chickens, pigeons, doves and small birds as you can; take out their entrails and clean them; split the breasts and cook them, each part by itself; then fry them with plenty of oil and set them aside. Then take what remains of their broth and add grated wheat breadcrumbs and break over them sufficient of eggs, pepper, ginger, split and pounded almonds and plenty of oil; beat all this and stuff inside the fried birds and put them inside the ram, one after another, and pour upon it the rest of the stuffing of cooked meatballs, fried mirkâs and whole egg yolks. When it is stuffed, sew up the cut place and sprinkle the ram inside and out with a sauce made of murri naqî', oil and thyme, and put it, as it is, in a heated tannur [clay oven] and leave it a while; then take it out and sprinkle again with the sauce, return to the oven and leave it until it is completely done and browned. Then take it out and present it.Redaction:
How to Cook Medieval Andalusian Lamb
http://www.ehow.com/print/how_2080041_cook-medieval-andalusian-lamb.html
By Jennifer Walker, eHow Contributor
One of my favorite parts of recreating the Middle Ages is exploring the different foods a Medieval
cook would have had available and the ways they put them together. This recipe for "Stuffed and Roast Mutton; Called 'The Complete'" is from a 13th Century cookbook known as the "Anonymous
Andalusian." I first made it as part of a four-course feast for more than 100 people at a Medieval event.
This dish was incredibly well-received: probably the favorite course of the evening!
In the original recipe it calls for an entire ram to be stuffed with meatballs, flat bread and egg yolks as
well as various types of poultry that had been fried and stuffed with bread and almonds and then
roasted whole! While this may wow your dinner guests, it exceeds the scope of most everyday cooks -- myself included. Instead, I've adapted it to serve 10 to 15 guests as a stuffed leg of lamb.
Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions:
Things You'll Need• 6to 8 lb. Leg of lamb
• 1/2 lb. Chicken breast
• 1 cup Bread-crumbs
• 2 Eggs
• 1 tbsp Pepper
• 2 tsp Ginger
• 1 cup Almonds, ground
• 1/2 cup Chicken broth
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp Olive oil, divided
• 1/2 cup Soy sauce
• 2 tbsp Thyme
• Kitchen twine
• 1 Leg of lamb, ready to be deboned.
Debone your leg of lamb.
The best way is to start at the knobby hip-joint on the meaty end of the leg and make
several short cuts through the thinnest portion of the meat to the 'knee'. There will be a
slight change of direction here down to the thin end of the leg. Once boned, set aside.
• 2 Roast and shredded chicken breast.
Roast your chicken breasts until completely cooked. You could even go so far as to boil
them with vegetables to make your own stock for the next step, or you could truly cut
your time and microwave the chicken breasts. Once cooked and cooled, shred the
chicken breasts and place them into a large mixing bowl.
• 3 Stuffing ingredients
Combine the bread-crumbs, eggs, pepper, ginger and ground almonds with the shredded
chicken and then add as much chicken broth and oil (up to 2 tbsp.) as needed to get a
good mixture that sticks together but is not soupy or thin.
• 4 Ready to roll!
Lay out your boned leg of lamb and arrange it into as rectangular a piece as you can with
the smoother side of the meat face down. Spread the chicken mixture evenly on top of
the lamb and then, starting with the long edge, roll the lamb into a cylinder.
• 5 Once it is sprinkled with the sauce it is ready for the oven.
Place kitchen twine around the lamb-roll about 3 inches from one end and tie a knot,
leaving a very long tail. String the twine to half-way down the roll, hold this in place and
loop the tail under the roll and under the section you're holding and pull tight like you're
wrapping a package. Repeat this about 3 inches from the other end of the roll, tie a knot
and trim away the extra twine.
• 6
Combine the soy sauce, olive oil and thyme.
• 7
Put the stuffed, trussed lamb into a roasting pan, sprinkle it with the sauce and place into
a 350 degree F oven for 1 1/2 hours or until the temperature in the center of the roll
reaches 165 degrees. Baste the roll periodically with the soy sauce mixture while it is
cooking.
• 8 Good enough to eat!
Once the roast comes out of the oven, let it rest for 10 minutes, remove the twine and
slice into 1-inch thick portions for serving.
• Tips & Warnings
• Take your time carefully cutting the meat away from the bone doing your best to keep the leg in
a single piece to make it easier to roll up later.
• Chicken is done when it reaches a temperature of 175 degrees F
• Medieval bread crumbs were made from hearty bread leftover from the previous day that were
then grated into smallish pieces. This sort of bread crumb tends to soak up a lot of moisture but
it also helps stretch more expensive ingredients.
• The original recipe calls for "split and pounded almonds", so leave yours somewhat coarse.
• Using a flexible cutting mat or placing the lamb on a sheet of aluminum foil or plastic wrap can
help with the rolling process.
• Soy sauce is being used as a substitute for the Andalusian condiment murri naqi, which is a
salty, fermented sauce of grain and seasonings.
• Once trussed, the lamb can be wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil and frozen for up
to two months with no loss of flavor. Defrost the lamb slowly in the refrigerator before roasting.
• To round out the meal, I suggest couscous and turnips seasoned with soy sauce, walnuts and
caraway seeds.
• The 'knee' may seem a little tricky to bone around, but use a thin, sharp blade and take your
time: the result will be worth the effort.
• Excess fat on the outside of the lamb can cause flare-ups and smoke once in the oven. Trim
away most of the excess fat from the leg as a safety measure--the taste will not suffer!
• Do not over-stuff your lamb! If there appears to be too much filling for your leg of lamb,
discard the extra before you truss it. An overstuffed lamb will fall apart when sliced and make
serving very difficult.
• If the lamb begins to brown too much before it is done, place a foil tent over the roll to
prevent further browning while it finishes.
I made a few changes to this redaction and to the original recipe in making this dish. First I decided that a lamb or even a leg of lamb was too expensive for me or for the Barony since I was looking for a roast dish to do for our upcoming January feast so I got a good sized Beef roast. I added 2 tsp ground fennel seed to the basting liquid because I feel that fennel seed brings out the lamb flavor and can make things that aren't lamb take on a little more of that flavor. I had tried to find a Beef recipe but the only one I found for Andalusian Beef was a Spanish recipe for a roasted beef that is cut up and made into a casserole with onions, bacon and wine (to name a few things). Both the Jews and Muslims don't eat pork and Muslims aren't supposed to drink wine (although there are exceptions). Also, for the feast we will most likely be serving stews and I thought a casserole would be too close to a stew. I also liked the idea of roasting a big stuffed chunk of meat, even if we didn't use it for the feast it would look good at the October 2012 meeting.
The other things I did were follow the original recipe and add meatballs or rather browned meatball
mix which contained ground beef, fennel seeds, panko bread crumbs, rolled oats, egg, kosher salt dried basil, and Italian seasoning. I'm sure if we do this for a feast we will use ingredients that would be more likely to be found in Andalusia than Italian seasoning but that is what I had mixed up in my refrigerator already. I browned the meatball mixture in Extra Virgin Olive Oil until quite brown and crispy (I find that also increases the flavor. I also altered the ground ginger-pepper ratio to less than 1/3 of the pepper which I ground fresh. Since I was doubling the amount of stuffing I used 1 TBSP of ground ginger. I also left the almonds out of the stuffing and made my own chicken broth by boiling chicken breasts, chicken leg quarters, carrots and onion slices with a little kosher salt. I didn't skim off the chicken fat from the broth since it seems it wasn't skimmed off in most medieval recipes. I used breadcrumbs I had made from some bread that didn't rise because I had to substitute red wine for the grape juice in the Roman Sourdough Bread recipe I had used (yeasts don't like alcohol). The bread had turned out quite dense but nice and moist because I used plenty of Olive Oil in it, it made great bread-crumbs.
I cut the roast open so that I could spiral stuffing into it. I stuffed it and tied it with kitchen twine and
put it in a roasting pan covered with foil and kept it there for a couple of days until it was the morning
of the meeting. Since I had doubled the batch of stuffing I mixed roughly ground slivered almonds into the rest and put it into a separate baking dish so we could compare the stuffing with and without the almonds. They were both great but different.
On the morning of the meeting I got the roast out and let it sit at room temperature for up to an hour, it roasts better if you don't start it so cold. I basted it with the basting liquid called for mixed with the
ground fennel seed and started it at 325 degrees Fahrenheit. I lowered the temperature after about 20
minutes to 275 degrees so that I would have time to get ready before it was done. About 20 minutes
before it reached temperature I poured the other half of the basting liquid over the roast and returned it to the oven to finish cooking. I got it a little more done than I was wanting but it still tasted good. After I took it out of the oven and put it on a serving platter and covered it with foil I decided to pour the liquid into a container to serve it with the meat like a sauce. I got comments that it was good that way.
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