Stacy (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} young_raven) wrote,@ 2008-04-08 15:07:00 |
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| Current mood: |  determined |
The Junket Chronicles, Parts 1 & 2
After letting it sit on the shelf for almost a year, I browsed through To the King's Taste over the weekend. It's a book of medieval recipes, mostly taken from Forme of Cury which was a 14th century cookbook written for the court of Edward II. For some odd reason it put me in mind of junket...odd because there is no recipe for junket in the book. I've never even had junket, although it is mentioned in one of my favorite books as a child, The Dragon of Og by Rumer Godden:
Junket is what country people used to eat before they had ice-cream, some prefer it still. It is like a jelly made with milk, easy to swallow and Matilda made hers sweet with honey and flavoured it with nutmeg. She made two washtubs full...It didn't sound wonderful to me as a child, but all of a sudden, I had a serious craving for junket. The intarnetz gave me the basics. This was Sunday night. Monday, after class, I acquired rennet tablets from New Seasons. The directions said that it was ok to use 2% milk, although they suggested adding powdered milk "for optimal setting". I decided I could live without optimal setting for the first batch. Unfortunately, there was no setting. Fortunately, milk with sugar and vanilla still tastes delicious. This was yesterday.
..."Delicious," said the Dragon as, cool and sweet, it slid down his throat. He ate both tubs full and, "I think I'll have some more," he said, but there was not any more until Matilda filled fresh tubs. "We shall have to buy more cows," she told Angus Og. "I am going to need gallons of milk."
I decided that I felt exceptionally stubborn, so I walked to the store to pick up some whole milk. Enter batch two. As of this morning, it still hadn't set. Grf. Maybe I let the milk get too hot. I came home from class and tried a lower temperature with batch 3. Nope. No setting. Maybe a bit of milk skin at the top. For batch four, I decided to use more rennet than the recipe called for. While the milk was heating, I re-read the directions. Whoops! I had used ultra-pasteurized milk, which the directions said wouldn't work. Who ever heard of ultra-pasteurized milk? Isn't regular pasteurized enough for this hedonistic generation? I'd blipped over it entirely before. As I said before, it's a good thing that sweet vanilla milk is yummy.
My dander is fully up and running now, so I'll be off to the store shortly to pick up whole non-ultra-pasteurized milk. Maybe even non-homogenized if I can find it. Junket will be mine!
