Wednesday Movie: Time Bandits

Every Wednesday, a group of us get together to eat food and be ridiculous. Usually this means some sort of movie and a potluck themed around the flick, with interesting results.

We've had 'space food', italian, fried chicken, and chili. But tonight is going to be different. Ryan chose the theme and we ended up with something by the name of 'Time Bandits'.

From wikipedia, describing the beginning of the film:

"Kevin is an 11-year-old boy whose parents ignore him in favour of keeping up with the neighbours by purchasing all the latest gadgets. Without their attention, Kevin has become a history buff, particularly of the Ancient Greek period. One night, Kevin is awakened from his sleep by a knight on horseback bursting through his wardrobe and riding off into a forest that has appeared in place of his bedroom wall. When Kevin investigates, he finds nothing amiss in his room. The next night, he is again woken by sounds from the wardrobe, but this time six dwarves stumble out. The dwarves discover that the bedroom wall moves, and as they push it along down a long hallway, the Supreme Being shows up and chases them. Kevin escapes with the dwarves, and as the hallway ends, they fall into the blackness of space..."

And then they proceed to wander around in time and space, meeting Napoleon (Ian Holme), Robin Hood (John Cleese), and Agamemnon (Sean Connery). It's a little bit mad, and not really all that easy to figure out what we're cooking.

Eventually we decided to put French, Greek, and Medieval into a hat and have everyone draw for what they were going to make. I drew Medieval, B drew greek, and Sam picked up some of the slack and decided to go with French... So we have a couple interesting things for you tonight.



Cormarye

The recipe can be found at Medieval Cookery, but I thought I'd repost the original transcription here:

"Cormarye. XX.II. XIII. Take Colyandre, Caraway smale grounden, Powdour of Peper and garlec ygrounde in rede wyne, medle alle þise togyder and salt it, take loynes of Pork rawe and fle of the skyn, and pryk it wel with a knyf and lay it in the sawse, roost þerof what þou wilt, & kepe þat þat fallith þerfro in the rosting and seeþ it in a possynet with faire broth, & serue it forth witþ þe roost anoon."

So, basically, a pork tenderloin roast. Cool... I can deal with that.

The Kitchen of Despair was a wierd mix of smells during this. In one corner we had B making pita, Sam was getting her lemony Hummus on, and there was an overwhelming smell of Chianti, garlic, and Coriander coming from the bowl I was working over.

Also, the pork turned a brilliant purple color and looked like some sort of alien when I opened the thing up to baste. Totally awesome. We also added some raspberries (leftover from yesterday's cake) to sweeten up the sauce, which was super salty.

Verdict?

The pork was amazing. Juicy with a slight red wine/garlic flavor. The sauce was really salty, so just a tiny bit of it was perfect.

Hummus

What We Used:

• 1 can chick peas
• A lemon
• 3 cloves garlic

Juice the lemon (remember to beat your citrus) then toss everything into a food processor and mulch away. Tasty with pita.

Sam was determined to teach me how to make Choux Pastry, so her contribution (the hummus was in conjunction with B's stuff) was going to be homemade Cream Puffs.

Sam's Cream Puffs

What We Used:

• 1 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1 tsp white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup water
• 4 large eggs
• A Large Piping Bag
• A large Piping Tip (we used a cupcake flower tip)

Filling

• 2 cup whipping cream
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp white sugar
• A smaller piping tip for getting the cream into the pastry later.

Sam started by mixing the flour, sugar and salt together, then setting aside. We would've pre-heated the oven to 400, but there was currently a pork tenderloin doing it's thing.

On the stovetop in a saucepan, sam mixed the butter and water and brought it to a boil. After that, she removed the pot from the heat and stirred in the dry ingredients vigorously. After returning it to the heat and stirring until it pulled away from the sides, she put it in a bowl and beat the steam out of it with her electric beaters. Once it was just warm and not terribly hot, she added four lightly beaten eggs and beat with the beaters until it formed a smooth paste.

After that, the dough was shoved into a piping bag (you can do this with or without a tip. I personally used the large flower tip because it makes the puffs into a pretty shape.) Sam piped it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, each glob of dough a few inches apart, then popped it into the oven.

Bake the puffs at 400 degrees for fifteen minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 and bake an additional 30-40 minutes, or until the puffs are a golden color all over and hollow inside.

After they cooled, sam whipped the cream and loaded it into the other piping bag with a smaller star tip attatched. She inserted the tip into the bottom of the cream puffs and filled them with cream. Fun times.

Verdict:

Cream puffs. They are cream puffs. I love cream puffs.



There wasn't much noobly stuff that I learned tonight...except for perhaps pitas needing to be cooked in an outrageously hot oven. Now... I need to run and watch a movie. Cheers!

-Jesso