Mrs. Wooley's Bread - the Finale and Meat Men Three

This will be a Friday night entry with a couple of topics: first, a review and some pictures of Mrs. Wooley’s 17^th century Bisket Bread and, second, some thoughts on episode three of Meat Men.

So if you remember the continuing saga of the bread instructions in Hannah Wooley’s The Accomplisht Ladys Delight, then you will recall that her recipe calls for the bread to be sliced, sugared and dried in the oven, two days after baking.  Last night was the two-day mark, so I worked my way through what were by then two fairly crusty loaves.  I tried some at this stage and despite being very dense and highly spiced with fennel and coriander, it was was surprisingly edible, especially if you like aniseedy-type flavours.

There were no temperature instructions for drying the slices, so I put the oven on the lowest setting and let them sit through the evening (about 4 hours,) then turning off the heat, I allowed them to sit in the oven overnight.  What I got was the consistency of biscotti, though not as good unfortunately.  The spices had intensified even more and for this modern palate they needed more sugar (if they were going to be like biscotti.)  Having said that, they’re designed to “keep…all the Year” and they just might.  The strong flavour also could mask any staleness, mould or critters that they might collect in storage.  Those Early Moderns, always thinking.  Overall though, this was probably more of an academic exercise than a culinary one.

Meat Men part three was decent if unmemorable.  The focus was another custom burger mix and this time Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors had the challenge of matching, with their mechanical process, a burger that an eatery called Resto made by hand.  The prize was the being the supplier for all the restaurant’s meats.  After two failed attempts, Resto threw another test at the gourmet butchers: they wanted a Mangalitsa pig for a VIP customer that night.  (The Mangalista is a heritage woolly breed of pig that was bred first by Hungarian Royal Archduke Jozsef in 1823.  They are prized for their fat, which can be whipped like butter.)  Pat finally delivered the burger recipe and delivered the pig, carrying it in whole through the dining room.  He seemingly impressed the client.  One thing that was informative about the burger mix in the episode was that it included pork fatback for flavour, something very bad for you that you should probably try some time.  There was also this side plot about trucks and Pat Sr. which had very little to do with meat and to be honest I didn’t pay much attention.