Food In The Fort

I had planned to try out a couple of new things this Christmas to post here on Food In The Fort. Unfortunately, I fell on the ice this morning and I’m in a good bit of pain and don’t feel like cooking. So here’s a recipe of a different sort. This originally appeared on my Posterous blog where I share what I’m reading, watching or listening to online and make half-assed observations.

Take two ounces of virgin’s wax (pure beeswax), two ounces of hog’s lard, half an ounce of spermaceti (sperm-whale wax), one ounce of oil of sweet-almonds, two drams of balsam of Peru, two drams of alkanet root cut small, six new raisins shred small, a little fine sugar, simmer them all together a little while; then strain it off into little pots. It is the finest lip salve in the world.

Via Lucy at The Lay Scientist, we have Hannah Glasse‘s recipe for lip balm. Hannah was sort of the Julia Child of her day and wrote the wildly influential The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (for which she received little compensation).

I enjoy looking through old recipes, including recipes for old folk remedies. The ingredients are often astonishing, such as the full two ounces of hog’s lard in Hannah’s recipe (gross!). This particular recipe intrigues me. It must have had an interesting scent. It was probably a pretty good lip balm too (assuming one didn’t have an allergic reaction to the Myroxylon balsamum (balsam of Peru). Certainly with all that wax and lard one’s lips must have been hermetically sealed against the elements. Indeed, one imagines it would have also made a damn fine window caulk.

Just one question… Wouldn’t “new raisins” just be grapes?

A few weeks ago, Kroger had a BOGO (buy one – get one free) offer on bay scallops. I love scallops (and most seafood) but they’re so expensive I usually can’t indulge so I seized the opportunity and bought two 12 oz. packets (apparently the mysterious grocery shrink ray has struck the seafood aisle now too and instead of getting a full pound of your fishy faves, it’s only 12 ounces).

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good idea of what I wanted to do with them. Searching for recipes didn’t turn up anything that really floated my boat and most recipes I could find on the net were for sea scallops. Sea scallops of course are much bigger than bay scallops so they lend themselves well to things like breading and frying but bay scallops usually just turn into very expensive and soggy balls of fishy goo if you do that to them. We’re very anti-fishy goo in this house. Thus there they’ve sat in the back of my freezer taunting me, “We’re damn expensive and delicious, and you’re still not eating us!”

Now, I’ve been doing of lot of rather meat intensive dishes of late (meat loaf, meat ball sandwiches, meat roast, vegetable meat soup…) so it seemed a good time to give my arteries a rest and maybe do something a bit lighter. And being really hungry I was also feeling quite impatient and, dare I say, reckless so I threw caution to the wind and thawed out the scallops deciding I’d just throw something together. Edible or not, it would get eaten. But my gamble paid off and handsomly, allowing you, dear reader, to benefit from my careless ways..

As with all my unrecipes, please don’t take measurements or even ingredients as gospel. I don’t really measure things most nights I”m cooking and whatever I list here are just approximations. Don’t want so much garlic? Cut it down. Want it fishier or richer? Add more scallops or butter. Substitute fake crab meat for the scallops and rigatoni for the pasta if you want, and add a little heavy cream to the sauce. Hell, make a yucky face and order a pizza if you want. It’s all good. Read the rest of this entry »