| Original |
Take
parsel, sawge, garlec,chibollas,onyons, leeks, borage, myntes, porrectes, fenel, and ton
tressis, rew, rosmarye, and purslayne. Lave, and washe hym clene: pyke hem, pluck hem
small with thyne honde, and myng hem wel with rawe oyle. Lay on vinegar and salt, and
serve hit forth.
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| My version |
- 3 bunches of green leaf lettuce
- 3 large bags of spinach
- 3 bunches "Italian" flat parsely
- 4 or 5 large leeks
- 2 or 3 bunches scallions
- 2 handfuls fresh mint leaves
- 2 handfuls fresh sage leaves
- 2 handfuls fresh basil leaves
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup kosher salt
- 1 to 1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil
Rinse and pick out the stems from the herbs
and spinach. Rinse and cut (or tear) the lettuce into smallish pieces. Clean the scallions
and leeks, removing the sand, and coarsely chop up the green parts and only a little of
the whites.
Mix everything and distribute into 14 large bowls. Splash on the oil, and sprinkle with
salt. Just before serving splash with the lemon juice, toss and serve.
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| Notes |
The Common
wisdom around my Barony is that salads are not usually eaten, that often almost as much
salad is returned to the kitchen uneaten as is sent out.
I hoped that that would not be the case, as I wanted to have a green in every course. My
philosophy was to have each course more or less complete, with meat, at least one green,
and at least one starch, and one sweet thing.
There are only so many servings of boiled green stuff that I would eat, so I wanted a nice
salad in the second course as a contrast. Since there were no sallet recipes in the source
book that I was using (Heiatt and Butler's "An Ordinance of Pottage" which is
entirely taken form a single document in Yale's Beineke Rare Book Library), I turned to
the roughly contemporaneous "Forme of Cury", and got a nice recipe there.
Here were another couple of the evening's glitches: I used up too much of the Vinegar in
the Cameline sauce in the frst course, and was therefore forced to substitute the lemon
juice (which I had on hand), and I forgot to put in the rosemary!!
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