To paraphrase 'The Sound of Music'' how do you solve a problem like a medieval
knight who won't stop killing people? One answer is a tournament,
and today we'll cook something that might have been served to King Pellinore just before
a joust, chewtes on flesshe day or meat pies. So thank you to Porter Road for sponsoring
this video as we make a Medieval meal to go, this time on Tasting History. So there are lots of recipes for these little
pies and they're all a little bit different so I'm actually going to be pulling from
several Medieval ]recipes but the one that I'm reading is from the "Liber core cocorum"
from 1430 and I'm doing it because it's a poem. "Take liver of pork and carve it
small, for a pie be hewen hit shall, and hence therewith do all in a pan,
and fry it well as thou well can, make a coffin as for a small pie, and that
therein and yolks thereby of hard eggs boiled and also thou take powder
of ginger and salt to bake. Carve it and fry it in greaseful good, well
pinched served at last by the rode, here endsour cookery, that I have spake,
of pottage, hasteletes, and meat I bake, and sauce thereto, without lying.
Christ must our souls to heaven bring." So a meat pie with pork and chicken, though there are also recipes that
call for veal or other types of beef, some with fish that are meant to be eaten during
Lent and others that are sweet pies with fruit though the fruit would be cooked. For in the
words of 'The Book of Kervynge" from 1500 "Beware of green salads and raw fruits
for they will make your sovereign sick." Well there is one recipe for
salad from The Forme of Cury so clearly not everyone took that to
heart. Now like I said there are lots of other recipes and several of them
say that you can use any piece of pork rather than this one which specifies pork
liver, well I don't like pork liver so I'm going to follow one of
those other period recipes and use just some other cuts of pork though
even these cuts are a little odd. They're interesting cuts like pork wings and pork
neck that I got from our sponsor Porter Road. Now I often do recipes here
on the show that call for . shall we say intimidating
cuts of meat and they can be really hard to find even at most butcher shops, but Porter Road is an online butcher based in
Tennessee that can supply both traditional cuts like pork chops or chicken breast, but also those
interesting cuts like merlot steak, or pork wings and I love them because they work with local
farmers who pasture raise their animals and practice responsible
animal husbandry which actually affects the quality and the flavor of the meat, and you can order individual cuts online
or you can sign up for a subscription and the meat arrives fresh direct to your door.
In addition to the pork wings and the pork neck I got some pork chops which I
had for dinner just last night. They were so tender and flavorful that other
than a little bit of salt and some butter they didn't need anything else
to be absolutely the bee's knees, or in this case the pork's chop, and
since you're watching Tasting History with Max Miller you get 15% off of your first
order by clicking the link in the description and you get free shipping
on any orders over a $100. Now that we know where our meat came from let's figure out exactly how much we
need for these chewtes on flesshe day. One pound or 450 grams of pork. Like I said
I'm using pork wings and pork neck but any cut will do and that goes the same for the
one half pound or 225 grams of chicken, five hard-boiled egg yolks, one teaspoon ground
ginger, and one and a half teaspoons of salt. So cut up your pork and chicken
and set them in a pan to fry. You want to have it completely cooked through
and that's going to depend on how small you made your pieces but probably four to five
minutes to make sure that everything is done. Also you want the pieces
to be rather small because it's going to be easier to put them into your pie. Then put the cooked meat in a bowl and mash
your egg yolks and add them to the meat. Then add the ginger and the salt
and mix everything together. Now when it comes to the pastry it's
really up to you what you want to use. There was no standard for something
like this in Medieval England. They used everything from very bland just
water and flour. You weren't really supposed to eat it. It was just a holder to kind of fancier
pastries that would have had egg yolks and butter or milk in them. Now they didn't have puff
pastry but I'll tell you it actually works really well for these so you can use that.
What I'm going to be using is something akin to a hot water crust pastry but
frankly it's even easier to make. You need 3 cups or 400 grams of flour,
a half cup or 113 grams of butter, 2/3 cup or about 150 grams of lard, and
1/3 cup or 80 milliliters of boiling water. So make a well in the center of the
flour and add the lard and the butter, then pour the boiling water over it. Then
using a fork work the fat and flour together. If it's not forming a dough then just add a
little bit more water. Once it does form a dough set it out on a lightly floured surface
and use your fingers or the heel of your palm to kind of smear the fat in through
the dough until well incorporated. Then let it rest for a while either in
the refrigerator or you can just leave it out for 20 or 30 minutes until
it comes to room temperature. At this point take small pieces and roll them
into rounds and then set a bit of meat in the center of the dough and fold it over
to create a pie crimping the edges. Depending on the size of pie that you're making it
should make about 12. Now it comes to cooking them and for this I'm going to have
you join me over at camera 2. So we don't have a- we don't- I guess we don't have a camera 2.
Oh and there's nobody else here so I'm just talking to myself but that's
okay because we need to talk.. It is important to stay humble. Remember Caesar
thou art mortal and today I was reminded that I art mortal. The recipe that I tried to follow says
to fry these and I tried to fry them. I tried three different doughs, I had different
types of fat at different temperatures. I've fried things before and it's worked
but today my kitchen was like no no, you are going to fail at every attempt that you
make and you just have to be okay with that. So after some hours of frustration and
despair I decided to bake them and that is okay because in two other recipes
from the two 15th century cookbooks it does call for them to be baked but I did
try to fry them so I failed and that's okay. So while I encourage you to try to fry
them if you want to bake them like I did put on a nice egg wash and
then pop them in an oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 200 degrees Celcius for about 20 minutes. Now while those bake and you leave me
a comment of support or more likely a comment letting me know what I did wrong let's
escape to Medieval Europe where the nobility and the church were having just as much trouble
taming their knights as I did taming these pies. There's an old saying an idle
mind is the devil's workshop, well an idle knight would spend
a lot of time in said workshop. So it was important to keep them busy. See early on in the Medieval period
a knight's job was destruction and in the 10th and 11th century especially in that part of Europe that had
been the Carolingian Empire they took that job very seriously.
There were constant private wars being fought between minor lords and
when there was a break in the fighting these knights tended to practice on the
peasantry and the Church. Easy targets I suppose. So in an attempt to curb the rampant violence
the Church introduced the Pax et Treuga Dei or Peace and Truce of God. The peace of God was
first proclaimed in 989 and it sought to protect Church property and unarmed clerics. A general agreement that "I will not infringe on the Church in any way. I will not
hurt a cleric or a monk if unarmed. I will not steal an ox, cow, pig, sheep,
goat, ass or a mare with a colt..." Not much help for the little guy but at least
the Bishop's cows were safe. However it was expanded when Robert II of France agreed not to
ransom servants or merchants or to root up fines. Nor would he "burn a house down
unless there was a knight inside.... I will not attack noble ladies traveling
without husband nor their maids, nor widows or nuns unless it is their fault. From the beginning of Lent to the end of Easter I will not attack an unarmed knight." Kind of
implies that he had been doing these things. Now the Church took that last part,
not attacking a knight during Lent, and expanded it into the Treuga
Dei, or the Truce of God in 1027. This put a lot more restraints
on the timing of violence. No violence at all during Lent
or on Sundays or during pentecost and at certain times battling could only take
place Wednesday through Saturday, seems sensible. Now between the Peace of God and the Truce of
God you'd think that a lot of things got better but you'd be wrong because while some people
followed these these edicts most people did not. It tended to be a case of what are
you going to excommunicate all of us, and the answer tended to be no. So the next ploy
to curb violence in Western Europe was just to move it a few thousand miles to the East. It was called the First Crusade. Now there were a lot of reasons
for the Crusades and it's a far more complicated topic than than
we're going to talk about here but one reason was to occupy the ever-fighting
knights of Europe and it worked... at least until they got back. But once they
did get back there was a new way to control their behavior called chivalry coming from
the old French chevalier or horse soldiery. Now what was chivalry exactly? Because it
wasn't always the pious and virtuous ideal set out by late Medieval and Victorian authors.
Sometimes it was, or at least that was the goal, but not always and one of my favorite Youtubers
Shadowversity does an excellent video on the intricacies and misconceptions of chivalry so
I'll put a link to that in the description but essentially it was a code of conduct but it wasn't
always the same code of conduct for everyone. See everyone had their own idea of
what would make a knight chivalrous under any given circumstance. An extreme
example might be that archbishop Thomas Beckett's idea of chivalry might be
a knight's devotion to the Church. A true Miles Christi or knight of
Christ but Henry II's ideal was that a knight should have 100% loyalty
to their lord and so when he orders a knight to go kill the Archbishop
those two concepts are in conflict. And that kind of conflict actually
probably happened a lot but it was a good way to control your knight. So between the Peace of God, the Truce of God the
Crusades and the ever-evolving code of chivalry there was actually a lot less fighting at
least in comparison with previous centuries but when there is no
fighting what's a knight to do? For "that which ceases from use has
prepared the way for its own retirement. We knights are being kept from
action like unskilled clodhoppers; this long interval of sitting around, which
prevents the practice of knightly exercise, gives one kidney stones." But the lords of Northern France and
eventually of all Europe had an answer: tournament. "The recreation of a tournament
is healthy and delightful, and it is held among knights for good
reason, since those who are fit to be called to a tournament in time of peace will be
all the more able to withstand enemies in war." Though when these tournaments first started around
the end of the 11th century they were brutal. They were a far cry from the archery and
blunt jousting tournaments of later centuries. It was basically a mock battle on horseback called
a melee and the idea was to knock your opponent off of their horse but instead of
a gentlemanly 'hear hear old chum, better luck next time' as
you help them to their feet you would beat them mercilessly and then take
their horse and armor to ransom back to them later. Though even this was a corruption of the
original intent according to the poet from the 12th century Henri de Laon "Tournaments were not
originally held as a way of capturing horses, but so as to learn who was manly in his
conduct and to do great deeds of arms, and so it would be known that he could wear
a helmet despite the heat and lack of air within as lightly as he would wear his
cloth cap for the man who in such a situation is soaked in his own blood and sweat. This I call the high bath of honor. Though honor seems a relative term because
there are stories in those early tournaments of one knight fleeing and going off to some village
and then being pursued by his fellow knights and that would usually end in a lot of like
burning, pillaging and and that kind of thing so you know you don't need to ransom stuff back
when you can just take it from the peasants. But Max didn't you just say that that was the point
of the tournament, to stop that kind of behavior? Yes, yes I did but it took quite a while to
do that. It took some rules to be put in place that turned the melee into more of a contest
that had prizes that didn't include ransom. Though not everyone liked that change. In a
poem written to the young King Henry III in 1220 the author laments the bygone era
of late 12th century tournaments. "But nowadays high-ranking men have
put chivalry back in fetters too; errantry and tourneying have
given way to formal contests. But if God please the young King Henry will
restore fun laughter and joy to the world." But the fun, laughter and joy of unbridled
violence was gone forever from the tournament as they leaned into the sport
and contest aspects of the event. Though that's not to say that tournaments
weren't still extremely taxing. There's a wonderful letter from an earl to
another earl basically asking for a timeout. "An earl to an earl, greetings. An assembly for the practice of knightly skills
is refreshed by a modest suspension. One should not cancel it but let
it be interrupted for a brief time for who can fight without a pause?" And even as late as the 16th century as the warrior knight was giving way to the
gentleman knight of later centuries and tournaments added blunted lances
and collision barriers called tilts. The events could still be incredibly dangerous
even king Henry VIII during a jousting tournament was horribly wounded. "The Duke's spear broke
and the King's headpiece was full of splinters." So even with the taming of medieval knights
it was still a very brutal lifestyle. I can assure you you wouldn't find me
out there on the tournament grounds. No I'd be over in the corner by the food stalls
waiting for my pork chewtes to finish cooking. So whether you fried or baked your chewtes go ahead and let them cool
and then they're ready to eat. And here we are chewtes on flesshe day. They smell great and I gotta
say they have a wonderful color. I'm glad I went with baking them... even though I was forced basically
into doing so. I'm still glad I did. Let's get let's give this a shot. So in that first bite I got a little bit of
filling but pretty much all I got was was pastry, and that's actually kind of apropo because it typically especially in a case like this
the pastry wasn't really meant to be eaten you would kind of open it up and
then eat the insides from there, so it's kind of appropriate that all I got was
pastry, and now I can indulge on the insides. I mean obviously it looks like a pasty, like a
cornish pasty which I need to do an episode on and it kind of tastes
like it too in a lot of ways. What's interesting is kind of what the
filling is. That ginger and some of the other recipes have even more spices and interesting
things like wine and ver juice added it's not overpowering ginger but just ginger on pork and
chicken with egg that is weird but it's good. I'm definitely- I don't really- I don't really get the egg. In modern pork pies they often add hard-boiled
egg and I just don't get why. I don't know. I also wouldn't mind a bit of
like gravy or some sort of sauce. It's not dry it's just there is no
there's not a lot holding it together. It's just like pieces of meat.
I don't exactly know what would- what would do well with that maybe just
dump the meat out into some gravy. Hm! :) So whether you decide to fry or
bake these just remember that when you're in the kitchen if you mess up it doesn't really matter,
just it's supposed to be fun and and I had fun making them, and I
had fun doing this episode. So yeah! So thank you again to Porter Road for sponsoring
this video and make sure to follow me on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller and I shall
see thee next time on Tasting History.
Wonderful wonderful video Max!!! Honestly, these videos are what gets me through the workday haha... Thank you!!
... Those look like empanadas! Medieval Empanadas!? lol
Particularly enjoyed this one, apart from mentioning Shad.
Tried making something like this in 2013, following a similar recipe. Just as with your first attempts, I could not get the oil to cook it, and had to bake it. I had better luck with a similar Mongolian blood pie recipe that is cooked a similar way, but requires deep frying, which makes me wonder if the frying method here requires partial/total submersion?
Failed to fry... interesting since we have empanadas that are essentially deep fried..... maybe thats the key
I'm guessing your enriched hot water crust was more fragile for frying
Enjoyed this and great timing as I’m doing medieval France with my kids (homeschool) this week! We may have to give this one a try. A teensy suggestion/request if there’s a chance Max sees this: it’s super helpful to have the recipe in the description and this one seems to be missing this. For the few I’ve actually tried cooking myself it’s super helpful to not have to go back through and write everything down 😊Thanks so much for the great content!
You morphed into a different Max at one point there.
Awesome! I know what I'm watching after work!
Always love your videos Max, thank you! I’m an Aussie and just thought that the pies would have been baked. I did laugh though when you said the frying didn’t work today. Some days things just don’t work. All the best.