Richard George Gottlob Moldenke, built a castle in Watchung starting in 1900. Private family photo.Įxcuse me, but a castle in New Jersey, in the United States? I knew right then I had to create our family castle. Pick any castle that has some kind of personal meaning for you. No need to make the same castle we created, one of the teachers said. Part of the 13 th-century Christmas menu we recreated highlighted a chastelet – a castle in pastry form filled with all sorts of goodies. The idea came when I took an online medieval cooking class from eatmedieval. A Pastry Castleįamily history married medieval cuisine when I baked a Christmas chastelet as the Moldenke castle. I realize the tower looks like it suffered from artillery damage, but this is my pastry replica of the family castle. With best wishes for post-Brexit Anglo-German relations, let me wish you, as the Germans would say it, einen guten Rutsch ins Neue Jahr (a good slide into the New Year). And my 21-year-old declared English blood pudding to be every bit as good as German blood sausage. He said that of all the things I made for my medieval cooking class, the blood pudding was the biggest surprise. This made for one of the best sausages (puddings?) I’ve ever eaten. Incredibly, the saffron dominated, and I mean that in a good way. It contains ginger, white pepper, and saffron. Whereas German blood sausage contains marjoram, nutmeg, and thyme, this medieval blood pudding distinguished itself with a poudre fort, or “strong powder.” Poudre fort was a medieval spice blend, and we took our recipe from 14 th-century Italian recipe collection, Libro de cucina. Piñate gif from Giphy.Īnd in that vein, may I wish you, as the Mexicans would say, un Feliz año nuevo?Ĭraig Nicholson, one of the chefs at Blackfriars Restaurant, demonstrates his cooking techniques for the eatmedieval class. So my son broke the piñata, and five minutes later he was happily dividing his treasures with his brother - a nice way to end Epiphany. Sorry, but abdication is not allowed with the twelfth night cake, right? Even if it isn’t exactly a medieval rule, my husband and I insisted it was. “What are the rules of succession?” (This is the child who used to cite the Geneva Convention against me whenever I tried to punish him as a teenager.) Adult children don’t always want to play by the rules. We were down to the last piece of cake and I was starting to worry that someone had accidentally swallowed the bean when my 23-year-old son found it. It turned out more suspenseful than we expected. Whoever finds the bean, I told the family, gets to break the piñata. And because I read that Mexicans also celebrate Epiphany with a piñata, I made one and filled it with candy, coins, and confetti. The recipe – a yeast cake studded with candied fruits and nuts – is a fluffier version of the German Christmas Stollen. Gorrk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons “I Want to Abdicate!”įor Epiphany, I baked a fava bean in a Mexican twelfth night cake. In the Middle Ages, Christians appropriated this tradition for Epiphany. The Romans baked fava beans in a cake, and whoever found the bean got to be king for the day. Celebrated during the winter solstace, it honored the god of agriculture, Saturn. A Scientific American blog post says that the twelfth night cake tradition dates bake to the Roman festival Saturnalia.
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