An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery (2 page)

You can use whatever savory ingredients you have around. Substitute home made sausage for the bacon. Delude yourself into pretending you’re having a healthy breakfast by tossing in a handful of cubed, roasted cauliflower. Sweeten the dish by chopping up a cooked carrot from last night’s roast. The key is making sure everything you throw in is already fully cooked and cut into pieces about the same size.

8 slices bacon

3 c / 300 g leftover baked potatoes cut into cubes*

2 c / 150 g mushrooms, diced

1 onion, diced

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 tsp coarse salt

½ tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp kitchen herbs (optional)

Fry your bacon in a cast iron skillet. If you know you can’t resist fresh, hot, bacon, add in a couple extra strips to munch on while the hash is cooking.

While the bacon crisps up, peel any leftover baked or roasted potatoes from last night and cut them into rough cubes. Don’t use mashed potatoes. You need a little more solidity than that. In a pinch, you can always chop up leftover Boxty (pg 125) or Pan Fried Tater Cakes (pg 71).
T
he point is to use up your leftovers while making a hot breakfast. Once you’re done contemplating last night’s potatoes, peel and dice the onion.

Dice up a cup of whatever leftover mushrooms you have from last night. The flavor of the spices or sauce they were cooked in will add to the hash. If neither dinner nor supper left you with any leftover mushrooms, go ahead and dice up some fresh ones. You’ll want to finish the dish with some kitchen herbs (thyme and basil work particularly well) to bump up the flavor.

Remove the bacon. You should now have a pan of delicious grease. Turn the heat down to medium. Add your diced onion and stir well. Let it cook for 2-3 minutes or until it turns translucent.

Now add in the diced potatoes, salt, and pepper. Give it all a good stir so it plays nicely together and let it cook for a couple minutes while you crumble up the bacon. Once the bacon is in pieces, fold the salty crumbles and your mushrooms into the potato and onion mix until you have a beautiful, aromatic mess. Press down hard on the mixture to flatten it out. This will result in a crunchy bottom crust with tender potatoes on top.

Now here is the hard part - walk away for a couple minutes. Don’t fuss with it or check it or stir it. Just let your hash sizzle away over a medium heat for about 10 minutes. When you come back, it should be beautifully browned on the bottom and warmed all the way through to the top.

If you used enough bacon grease, the hash should slide right out of the skillet in one piece and onto a waiting plate. If you have some seasoned mushrooms leftover from last night, sprinkle them on top now. If not, sprinkle your fresh hash with 1 tsp of your favorite kitchen herbs (thyme, basil, or rosemary) along with a pinch of coarse salt to bring out the flavors.

To keep yourself from burning your mouth on the deliciousness of fresh hash, fry up a batch of eggs in the last of the bacon grease while the hash itself cools enough to eat.

VEGAN VARIATION

Instead of bacon, heat 4 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Cook the chopped onion for 2-3 minutes, or until it turns translucent. Add 1 cup of vegan crumbles from your grocer’s freezer section and cook until the meat substitute is warmed through. Go ahead and add in your potatoes and mushrooms, give it all a good stir, and press down hard to flatten it out. Let it cook undisturbed for 10 minutes or until it’s crispy and brown on bottom.

This isn’t a good dish for substituting seitan or tofu as they’re both prone to falling apart in the pan from all the stirring and squishing. However, it’s a great dish for any leftover cooked vegetables from last night’s dinner. Just make sure they’re cut the same size as the potatoes and are included in a ratio of no more than 1 part random veggies for every 3 parts potato.

Unlike proper sausages, which were a great way to preserve meat before refrigeration, country sausage was a way to make good use of odd scraps and fatty bits, odd cuts, and leftover meat. All you needed to do was change the texture and add some aromatic herbs to cover any lingering smell.

The key to getting the texture that separates hamburger patties from breakfast sausage is to run the meat through the finest grain of a meat grinder. Don’t be afraid to ask your butcher to put ground meat from the case through a second, finer grind.

2 1/4 lbs / 1 kg finely ground, somewhat fatty pork (or a mix of pork, beef, or the meat of your choice)

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tsp fresh sage leaves

2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

½ tsp fresh rosemary leaves

1 tsp fennel seeds

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp cloves

1 ½ tbsp dark brown sugar

This couldn’t be easier. First, mix everything but the meat into a spicy paste. Then spread the paste over the surface of the meat, coating as much of it as possible. Finally, knead the spices into the meat. Really dig your fingers in there. You want to integrate the spices as thoroughly as possible.

Pack the spice infused meat into a tidy ball, cover it, and let it rest in your fridge for up to an hour, preferably for at least six. Honestly, the best way to make this is to mix your meat and spices before bed. Let them rest overnight and they’ll be ready for you to cook first thing in the morning when you’re still brain dead and waiting for your first cup of tea.

Heat a skillet to medium-high. Rip off golfball sized wedges of meat and squish them into discs. Let the meat cook for about five minutes on each side, or until browned on the exterior and completely cooked through the middle.

If you used a good, fatty meat, you’ll now have some delicious grease in your skillet, just waiting for you to crack in an egg or fry some potatoes. If you used lean meats, you may need to smear a little butter in the skillet to keep the sausage from sticking during the cooking process.

Country sausage patties are best hot and fresh, but they’ll stay good in the fridge for at least two days or in the freezer for up to 3 months. Reheat them in a warm buttered skillet or crumble them up to use in other recipes.

This pruney dish would’ve been a favorite of grandparents and curmudgeons of any age when Tolkien was a boy. The Victorians adored their cheap sugar, but their grandparents would’ve still had a palate for the more naturally sweet dishes of their youth. This old fashioned dish is based on medieval recipes combining the natural sweetness of apples with the natural sweetness of prunes plus a bit of wine or alcoholic apple juice. People with a strong sweet tooth could add a tbsp of honey. The sweet taste, soft texture, and high fiber made it a go-to dish for anyone endowed with more wisdom than teeth.

1 c / 250 ml sweet white wine or hard apple cider

10 dried pitted prunes

4 whole cloves

1 inch /2.5 cm piece cinnamon stick

3 tart green apples

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp honey (optional)

Add your wine or cider, cloves, cinnamon stick, and salt to a medium pot and bring them to a boil.

While you’re waiting for your pot to boil, quarter the apples and cut out the cores. No need to skin them. They add a nice bit of texture.

Once the liquid is boiling, add the apples skin side down. Top them with the prunes. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the apples are tender and the liquid is mostly absorbed. If you’d like, you can stir in an extra tbsp of honey before serving.

Stewed apples and prunes weren’t just limited to breakfast. Sure, they make a fantastic oatmeal porridge topping, but they’re equally good served over freshly toasted day old bread. Historically, breakfast leftovers might have also shown up at dinner with a bit of cream as a dessert.

Serving meats and sweets together has gone out of fashion, but they were an incredibly popular combination from Medieval through Victorian times. If you want another way to experience a taste of the era, this recipe makes a fantastic tasting yet stealthily healthy topping for baked pork chops or bone-in chicken thighs.

If you use it as a meat topping, increase the liquid by ¼ c if baking in a covered dish or ½ c if baking uncovered. Once your pork chops or chicken thighs are completely cooked, remove the meat and collect all the extra liquid from the bottom of the pan. Mix in 1 tsp of coarse salt. You now have an excellent sauce for the grains or carbs of your choice. Cooked barley would be well loved by Hobbits, but visitors to the Shire could toss the fruity liquid in their rice, couscous, quinoa, or mixed grain blend (all of which would’ve been quite novel to Hobbits). This makes a sweet and easy complimentary side dish. If your modern family finds it too repetitive to have their meat and carb coated in the same sauce, you can store the liquid in the fridge for a few days. Reheat it to add a little quick and easy flavor to grains, carrots, or green vegetables.

Since you have all those tasty stewed apples and prunes sitting around, why not make some hearty porridge to go with them? Porridge was a generic term for any boiled grains made soft enough you could eat them with a spoon. Since it was mostly a breakfast staple eaten while half asleep, people used whatever grains were cheapest. In Tolkien's day, that usually meant oats in the north or wheat in the south, though semolina, bulgur, or barley weren’t uncommon.

While it wasn’t a taste sensation, porridge was known to be pretty forgiving. It was easy to reheat if you didn’t have time for a new batch, easy to thin out if you had unexpected guests, and easy to dress up with other flavors when you needed a little morning excitement.

Porridge:

1 tbsp butter

1 c /100 g porridge oats

3 c / 710 ml boiling water

3/4 c /180 ml whole milk + extra for serving

½ tsp coarse salt

Topping:

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp chopped raisins, sultanas, or dates (optional)

The key to really tasty porridge is toasting the grains first. If you’ve only had oatmeal from a packet, prepare to be shocked by the difference.

Melt your butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Pour in the oats and give them a good stir until they’re completely coated in butter. Keep stirring continuously for the next two minutes. You want to get all the oats nice and toasty without burning any.

Once the oats are toasted, drown them in boiling water, add your salt, and give them a good hearty stir. Turn the heat down to medium low. Put a lid on the pot and let them simmer for 25 minutes. Resist the urge to fuss with them. Oats really are this easy.

Come back 25 minutes later and pour in the milk. Gently stir the milk into the porridge. Keep cooking for another 10-12 minutes, or until the porridge reaches your desired thickness.

Ladle the hot porridge into bowls. You can top it with leftover cooked fruit (such as the stewed apples and prunes or leftover roast apples from last night’s dinner) or just add some brown sugar, cinnamon, and whatever dried fruit you have around the house.

While oats were the grain of choice in the north, people in the south preferred wheat. Since The Shire was based on a village square in the middle of the country, Hobbits would no doubt get to enjoy both.

On a day to day basis, most people in the south would’ve eaten the same style of porridge as northerners, substituting wheat in the place of oats. Only the wealthy could regularly afford to add expensive yet tasty ingredients like saffron and pine nuts. That meant for working class households, frumenty was usually only served around Christmas as a special holiday treat.