Culinary traditions in Middle Earth

[Nogrod]

This first is an easy one. One that is overtly deemed junk-food. But after all, eating good sausages' and taters' isn't bad at all, especially, if you serve them with lots of fresh sallad!

Sausages and potatoes from the Bree-land

You will waste your time in trying to find a more “Bree-like” bar-food than this one. The Breelanders are famous sausage-makers and their repertoire includes several kinds of sausages – each one more delicious than the others. In order to catch the original flavour, you should use a couple of different sausages: the better the sausages, the better the portions’. Don’t use sausages where the ingredients-table lists water and flour as the first components! Otherwise the choice of sausages is relative to your taste: you can use chorizo, bratwurst, salami, lamb-sausage, or any local fleshy sausage you come up with. This is a dish where the ingredients really count.

- 2-3 small potatoes / person
- Enough sausages (100-200g. / person), at least two different sorts, cut into bite-sized pieces
- The juice of ½ a lemon (for two or three persons’, with more people and ingredients’, the amount of the lemon-juice should be increased)
- 1 small onion / person (if you are making the dish for several people, you can change every other onion for a red onion or a couple of shallots), cut into rings
- Thyme & oregano, preferably fresh, but dried will do
- Salt and pepper
- Butter & Olive oil
- Tomatosauce (see recipe below)
- French mustard (Dijon or other similar kind of strong, not sweet mustard)

1. Wash the potatoes carefully – do not peel them, if they are not having a dragon-like skin over them! Chop them into boats (1/4 or 1/8 part, depending the size of the taters’). Put the taters’ into a ovenproof pan, and season them with plenty of salt and pepper, thyme, oregano, lemon-juice and olive oil. Stir well, and put them into the oven, pre-heated to 200C (400F).

2. Soften the onion-rings in a casserole, with a light heat (with some butter and olive-oil). Sauteé them, do not brown! Some ten minutes'. Set the onions aside.

3. Heat up the pan. Add oil if needed (propably not). Fry the sausages, in batches, if needs to be.

4. Take the potatoes out of the oven (if the wedges' are small, 20-30 minutes' of overall cooking-time will suffice, if they are larger, you should count some extra time with them). Stir well. Add the onions above the potatoes, then the sausages over the onions'. From the onions and sausages above, will come nice amounts of grease that will juice the potatoes and make them more delicious.

5. Let the portion cook in the oven for 5-10 minutes more– don’t let the sausages burn (put a folio above the set if they are in danger of burning).

6. Serve with tomatosauce (recipe below), good mustard, and strong ale (Bock for example). You could almost think of sitting at the table at the Prancing Pony!

Breeish’ tomato-sauce:

Take one can of tomato-pureé (about 1-2 tablespoons’), pour over some 1 tbs. of olive oil. Add some freshly ground salt, black pepper, thyme, ground coriander, ground cloves and ground ginger (+ ground jeera & some chilli, optional). Stir well, and let stand. This should be done first!

[Nogrod]

This one continues the quite heavy standards of a northern Middle Earth kitchen. I’ll promise to bring forth some lighter recipies in near future. Just made this today, and got an inspiration to share it.
Indeed this one is a kind of a variation from the famous “Kiev chicken”, and the slavic mentality is followed in the side dishes, f.ex. the usage of canned peas, gherkins & smetana (russian sour-cream, quite near creme fraiche). But as the Kiev chicken is pretty hard to make – it requires handcraft skills – this one is relatively easy, even though there is quite a lot of work in it. But that should be fun, even to a beginner (getting everything ready at the same time will require some thinking). Making it twosome is even more fun. The recipe uses dried herbs, but fresh ones are alway preferable, just remember to cut them well and use a little more of them.

Erebor chicken

This recipe comes from Esgaroth. The name of the dish doesn’t in the first instance point to the lonely mountain as such, as it contains a pun of sorts. The famous herb “dragon” is the pivotal point here, for it is used in almost everything that is served with this dish. This is a typical winter-food, using preserved ingredients and having relatively nice amounts of butter & cream in it. And in part just because of the latter, it tastes wonderful.

For the “salad”:
- gherkins (salt preserved cucumbers, particulary russian thing: if you can get the original ones, the better) and canned peas (salt preserved too, but more common than the cucumbers around the world), 1/3 gherkins vs. 2/3 peas. The exact amount should be decided by the number of eaters.
(- radish, as much or little less than gherkin, optional)
- smetana (or any thick sour-cream)
- ground white pepper
- dragon, marjoram, parsley

Side dishes:
- 1-2 potatoes / person
- ½-1 carrots / person
- salt & pepper
- dragon, parsley
- smetana

- 1 medium yellow onion / person
- salt & currypowder

The chicken:
- 2 small breasts of chicken / person
- butter
- salt & pepper
- dragon, parsley
(- fresh rosemary, optional)
- flour & breadcrumbs
- ground paprika
- 1 egg (for 2-3 portions, more as needed)
- about ½ ltr. / 2 cups of oil, for deep-frying

1. About an hour earlier, pound the chicken breasts in between a folio, baking paper or whatever you can find (use a meatpounder, a bottom of a bottle, a casserole, or anything). Just try to make them as thin as you can without breaking them (the most important thing being: Don’t break them!). Fit them as pairs, two against one another. Then season every two of them from the “inside” = rub herbs into one side of every breast, then add seasoning, to the same side, then put thin wedges of butter over one half of each pair. Place the non-butter breast over the other, so that all the seasoning & herbs & butter is left inside this “cake”, outsides being clean. Take cocktailsticks, toothsticks etc. and secure them against each other. Just as starting a needlework and leaving the needles in (some 4-5 sticks / portion should do).

2. Take some flour and pour it to a plate to form a “cover” over the plate. Turn the tied-together chicken breasts over in the flour, a couple of times. Set the chicken aside to dry for a second. Meanwhile dust extra flour off the plate and replace with breadcrumbs, season with pepper and paprika, stir. Break one egg (or more, if needed) and whisk it in another plate. Turn the chickens in the beaten egg first, then carefully roll them in the breadcrumbs, so that they are totally covered. Cover and refrigirate for an hour.

3. After about an hour, begin making the salad. Cut the gherkins in small bits and combine with the peas in a bowl. Let rest a minute or two. If there is a lot of liquid in the bowl after that, discard of it. Pour in about 1 tablespoon of smetana / person over the peas & gherkins and stir. Season and stir again. Put a folio or something over the bowl and put into the fridge.

4. Put enough water to boil for the potatoe-carrot mash. Wash and peel the potatoes and carrots. Cut the carrots in very small bits and add to the water immediately (they need more cooking time than the taters). Season with dragon & parsley, salt & pepper. At this stage, bring the deep-frying oil to heat up in a separate pan. Also turn the oven on, 150C (300F). Then cut the taters a bit rougher. Add the taters after the carrots have boiled a couple of minutes. (If you are having a big dinner party, the boiling of the water might take a while: in that occasion, put the taters into a bowl and cover them with cold water; that way they will stay fresh before cooking).

5. When the oil is hot enough (try with a piece of white bread, it should turn nicely brown in a minute), put the chicken portions in to the oil, 1 or 2 at a time (depending on the size of the vessel: do not “overcrowd” the thing, for the oil will cool down and the frying won’t be good). Boil for several minutes, about 3-5. Watch them carefully not to brown them too much, they should be mild yellow-brown in colour.

6. While the chicken are frying, peal the onions, and cut them into rings. When the chicken have a nice colour, take them from the oil and rest them over a householdpaper or something (to suck the extra oil). Meanwhile pour the onionrings into the oil. Put the chicken in an ovenproof vessel and into the oven. They should be ready in 5-10 minutes. (While chicken should not be eaten raw, an overcooked chicken is dry and tasteless – so be careful with the timing, and check)

7. As the taters are beginning to feel soft, pour out the water – and according to your hurry, cover and let rest, or mash immediately. You should have an eye for the onions too, and stir them time time, and be careful not to burn them. But in any order. Mash the potatoes (do not use a machine, for it will produce “clinical” results: better to have something to bite in a mash). Add smetana and taste fot the seasoning. Pick the onions with a slotted spoon and put them over a paper or towel. Season the onionrings with salt and currypowder.

8. After all is done – and hope someone else has laid the table ready, you should go on serving. The “salad” should be served from its own bowl. You may pour the onionrings over the mashed potatoes/carrots or serve them separately. And last but not least, the chicken portions should be served, straight from the oven, to each plate.

9. Even though north seems to be the ale-country with Tolkien also (and the russian origins of this meal would underline it), feel free to have some cold, dry white wine or fresh ice-cold water with this one.

[Nogrod]

This thread seems to be gaining in sightings, but not in comments or other suggestions. Well. I'll nevertheless push on, and try to translate recipies as the time allows. Let's see how it turns out. But any help, comment, criticism etc. would be of help. And welcome anyway.

Not to mention the discussion of the prinicples...

[eowyntje]

Might I say I love this topic and can't wait to read more of your recipes. I've never really tried to make any middle earth recipes but after reading this topic I can't wait to make some. If I come up with something good I will post it.
There is one recipe I am really interested in. I know its a cliché, but I would really like to find a recipe for good lembas. Any suggestions?

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by eowyntje

There is one recipe I am really interested in. I know its a cliché, but I would really like to find a recipe for good lembas. Any suggestions?

I think there's not enough information on what it should taste like so people end up with doing waffles and calling them lembas...

[Alkanoonion]

I always associate hobbit meals with good old fashioned English food; my favorite is as follows…

Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding cook 1-2hrs

Ingredients
Fore rib beef (about 4 kgs/9 lbs), French trimmed, boned and rolled
olive oil
salt
freshly cracked black pepper
For the Yorkshire pudding
3 eggs
115g/4oz flour
275ml/½ pint milk
beef dripping
salt

Method
1. Preheat the oven to its highest setting.
2. Rub the beef with the olive oil, salt and pepper all over.
3. Put a heavy-based roasting tray on the hob and when hot, add the beef.
4. Sear the beef quickly on all sides to colour and crisp the outside.
5. Transfer the beef immediately to the oven and leave the oven on its highest setting (about 240C/460F/Gas 8) for 20 minutes.
6. Reduce the heat to 190C/375F/Gas 5 and roast for half an hour per kilo for rare, adding another ten minutes per kilo for medium rare, 20 minutes per kilo for medium, and 30 minutes per kilo for well done.
7. Remove from the oven and place on a board or tray for resting.
8. Loosely cover with foil and rest the meat for a minimum of 40 minutes before carving, letting the precious juices that have bubbled up to the surface seep back into the flesh. Also, as the meat relaxes it becomes easier to carve.
9. For the Yorkshire pudding, mix together the eggs, flour and a pinch of salt.
10. Add the milk, stirring constantly, until you have a runny batter.
11. Leave this to rest, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 12 hours.
12. Place 1cm/½in of beef dripping in the bottom of each pudding mould, or if you are using a rectangular roasting tray, place 1cm/½in of beef dripping across the bottom.
13. Heat the dripping in the oven (at 240C/460F/Gas 8) for about ten minutes, until it is piping hot.
14. Remove the roasting tray from the oven, pour in the batter, and immediately return to the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden brown and crispy, making sure not to open the oven door for the first 20 minutes.
15. Serve immediately with the carved roast beef

wish it was dinner time yum

[Anguirel]

I stole this Lembas recipe from this very site-alas I don't remember who posted it first. All credit to them.

LEMBAS:

What Tolkien says about Lembas:
-They contain honey
-they are light-colored on the inside and light brown crust
-they are thin and regular-shaped. This implies they were made on some kind of griddle iron. The closest modern equivalent is a Krumkake iron. I used a pizzelle iron.
Some other things we can guess:
-They contain the fruit and maybe the flower-water of the Mallorn tree. I substituted oranges, although kumquats or a hand of Buddha fruit might be better.
-They probably had some kind of finely ground light-coloured nut in them. I used almonds.
-They contained some kind of nourishing flour. I used semolina flour, which is a more primitive flour, and also more nourishing.
-Galadriel probably used some kind of grinder to refine the ingredients. I used a blender.

The recipe:
3 eggs
1 cup honey (preferably wild honey)
1 tablespoon grated orange peel or three kumquats or one large finger of a hand of Buddha.
2 teaspoons orange flower water (optional)
3 oz blanched almonds
1/4 cup melted butter
2-1/4 cups semolina flour
1/2 teaspoon salt Place eggs, honey, orange peel or other fruit, orange flower water, and almonds in blender.
Blend on high for 3 minutes. Add 1 cup of the flour. Blend for 1 minute. Scrape into a bowl and add remaining flour and salt.
Whisk or stir until well blended. Bake lembas on a pizzelle or krumkake iron 15 seconds each or until lightly brown.
You may substitute a waffle iron but add a teaspoon of baking powder. (The texture will not be quite accurate in a waffle iron.)

I haven't yet tried it, but I think you'll agree it sounds mouth-watering, and not too waffly...

[Estelyn Telcontar]

The original intent of this thread was for discussion on food in Middle-earth. We already have a recipe thread here: Arda Recipe Book. Please post your recipes there to make finding them all easier.

Since this topic is more speculative than actual book discussion, I'm moving the thread to the Novices and Newcomers forum. Please continue to discuss there.

There is also a thread devoted to lembas recipes here: Lembas