Frumenty

I like weekends at the moment. Our new Foxhole is far less high maintenance than the old place and so I get more opportunity to indulge in my penchant for gastronomic exhibitionism, especially my interest in historic recipes of the weird and wonderul kind.

Today it was time for frumenty, a wheat porridge eaten widely in the middle ages, so much so that it can quite justifiably be seen as a sort of medieval chips, a suitable accompaniment to all manner of dishes and palates. The savoury version involves stewed bulgar wheat with salt and seems to have been eaten by rich and poor alike. The humble Jacques Bonhomme may have enjoyed frumenty with bread or a potage of boiled vegetables, or with fish, whereas no less a personage than King Henry IV chose frumenty as part of his wedding feast, to accompany a course of roasted porpoise.

With no offence to the palates of medieval England this bland glutinous porridge didn't really appeal to my postmodern sensibilities, and so the recipe I followed was a slightly later version, a sweet frumenty which became popular in later years in the north of England as a Christmas dish.

This morning we had frumenty as part of a hearty breakfast with freshly baked bagels, turkish coffee and apple wine. Yum.

Sweet Frumenty
(Serves three foxes)
100g bulgar wheat
500ml full fat milk
handful of raisins and chopped dates
Cinamon stick
2 tbsp honey
1 egg yolk

Soak the wheat overnight in plenty of water. In the morning, drain, mix with the milk in a pan and bring to the boil with the cinnamon stick in with the it. Let simmer for 20 minutes or so then add the dried fruit, allowing to simmer for a further 40 minutes. Top up with milk if the pan drys out at all. When it is ready, remove the cinamon stick and mix in the egg yolk and the honey. Enjoy