When I was in high school I thought I wanted to do PR for a living. OBVIOUSLY I thought I would be like a spin doctor for the misdeeds of some hard-partying punk band or something. At the end of my senior year, all jazzed up about it, I left school for a week for an internship with a PR department for a large public health government agency.
That week I spent a lot of time looking at binders and generally being ignored by people putting out fires who had no time to babysit a teenager. They all looked miserable. I hated it. I was the only person who came back to school from the internship week who had completely changed their mind. It wasn’t sexy, it was mundane and bureaucratic. But, we learn from our missteps and that’s an important part of the process too, I GUESS.
This experiment from Forme of Cury reminded me of that. I did the experiment and the helpful insight that I gained is that it wasn’t what I thought and I didn’t like it.
Usually I’m very confident in the kitchen. I really know what the fuck I’m doing when it comes to cooking and baking, feeling like I’ve tried to do most things at least once. Cooking from Forme of Cury really has put me in my place and I’m stuck eating humble pie, which in this case is a pastry called Comadore.
This recipe is very English. Imagine poached pears crossed with mince pies? This is sort of in that arena. It tasted like Christmas and felt very wrong for a spring day. I hated it. I had one bite and it was not for me. I also don’t see the rest of my family fighting each other to get to the rest of them, so I’m glad I only made a small batch.
As usual, the Forme of Cury does not give you much to go on in terms of ingredients or measurements. In this case, it was really clear about all of the ingredients except for one, “gode past”. Gode past, I could only assume, was meant to be good paste - but is that pastry, is it dough, is it batter?
My god I wish it had been a doughnut.
Anyway, I consulted with a wonderful man on Twitter who told me, in fact, it’s pastry dough.
Up until this point I was sure it could only be a batter, like a corn dog, or a dough, like a filled doughnut. Nope. Noooooope. It’s a fucking pastry dough and the Forme is vague because you’re supposed to be skilled and experienced enough to already know what it means. The helpful man on Twitter also let me know that a short crust pastry did not use butter in the 14th century and so suggested using egg yolks.
I didn’t even know you could do that.
So, I made the stupid filling. I cooled the stupid filling. I made the stupid pastry and I cooled it too. I assembled and fried it. And I hated it. I hated it even when I was doing it.
I did a taste test. Like I said, it’s sort of like a mince pie (having never had a mince pie that I didn’t make myself). If you filled a mince pie with poached pears would be a better approximation. It was sharp and a bit ascerbic, likely from the wine, but also because the figs were meant to be the sweetener (I assume) instead of added sugar or honey and they weren’t up to the task (for the modern tongue). The pastry was actually really nice once it was fried and much more delicate than I would have guessed.
But, it isn’t for me and I’m moving on.
Was it magic, again, to taste something that people 700 years ago ate? YES. Did I like the recipe or feeling like a dummy? No. Was it worth it? Yeah, sort of. I believe in getting through it and knocking out bad work before you find your groove and do good work.
So, Comadore is a stepping stone to (hopefully) more successful recipes in the future and kind of a cute reminder about how England really likes its fruity dessert things even after all this time.
Comadore
1c dried figs (I used black figs)
1/2c raisins (I used jumbo crimson raisins)
4c wine (I used whatever I didn’t drink last night during my cheese and Kanye marathon)
1 tsp dried ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp galangal
1/8 tsp mace
1/8 tsp cloves
2 peeled apples, diced (Granny Smith)
2 peeled pears, diced (Anjou)
1/4c pine nuts
2c flour
9 egg yolks
2 tbsp sugar
1/3c water
In a pot, over medium heat, cook figs and raisins in wine until they are very soft, mashing occasionally. I used an immersion blender and continued to cook until thick. Strain out the larger chunks. Stir in spices. Transfer to a pan with oil, add apples and pears, and fry until softened a bit, being careful not to burn. Stir in pine nuts. Pour into a dish and refrigerate.
In a food processor, pulse together flour and sugar. Pulse in egg yolks until crumbly. Pulse in water until a dough forms. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Roll out the dough to approximately 1/8” inch thick. Cut cooled fruit mixture from its pan in the size of a “small finger”. Wrap with pastry. Deep fry in oil. Drain them and enjoy, if you’re into that sort of thing.