Nanny Ogg's Cookbook.htm
Page 6
Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the egg, a little at a time, beating well after each addition.
Gradually stir in the flour until a soft dough is formed. Stir in a generous tablespoon of the jam until you get a ripple effect.
Using about a dessertspoonful of the mixture for each devil, spoon the mixture into the bun tin. Gently pat down and place a dollop - about half a teaspoon - of jam on the centre of each one.
Bake in the top part of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown on top.
Dried Frog Pills
According to the Bursar of Unseen University: 'Spoon! Give it to Royster! I do not take you up, sir, indeed I don't, for there's a thumb under the girdle or my . name's not Trucklebed! I'll have two slices, if I may!' Extrapolating from this, the Archchancellor of | Unseen University, Dr Mustrum Ridcully, tells us: 'It f was clear to me shortly after I joined the University as Archchancellor that the Bursar was as mad as a goose, and none of my efforts to jolly him out of it (by means of practical jokes and so on) seemed to work. Then young Ponder Stibbons, our wizard who is very much up on modern thinkin', came across some > old research that suggested that the skin of some types of frog caused hallucinations, and he reasoned that, ,. if it was possible to isolate the active ingredient and adjust it a little, it might be possible to cause the Bursar to hallucinate that he was completely sane. A commendable leap of imagination, that man. It seems to work, and provided he remembers the pills, our dear Bursar certainly passes for sane by the standards of universities.'
Editors' note: We have removed the frog-based ingredient from the following recipe because its
inclusion would result in a) cruelty to frogs and b) outbreaks of homicidal sanity amongst the readers.
0 frogs
1 small egg white
30g icing sugar (sifted)
1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon rum flavouring
1 teaspoon green food colouring
CAREFULLY TAKE NO frogs, and do not dry them. Whisk the egg white until stiff. Gradually beat in most of the sugar using a wooden spoon. Sift in the cinnamon, add the
rum flavouring and the colouring and stir until well blended. Add enough of the remaining sugar to form a mixture that doesn't stick to the fingers when patted. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, roll the mixture into pea-sized balls, place them on the tray and leave to set for 8 hours.
Take one whenever the world gets too much, or when the voices tell you to.
Pteppic's Djelibeybis
It's a funny thing, language. There's a country on the river Djel, which flows into the Circle Sea, called 'Child of the Djel' and, fancy, it sounds just like our word for 'rubbery sweets in the shapes of small children'. But then, in Uberwald the city of 'Ankh-Morpork' sounds just like their words for a ladies' undergarment, which is just as well because one of their main cities is pronounced Bonk.
Oddly enough, jelly babies are now very popular in Djelibeybi, having been introduced by a former king, who was educated in Ankh-Morpork and enjoyed a joke. They're considered to be very good for fertility, but once again I haven't been allowed to include the special ingredient, worse luck.
175^ stoned dates, finely chopped
1—3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon cinnamon
/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
60g walnuts, finely chopped 4 tablespoons clear honey, warmed ground almonds for rolling
BLEND THE DATES with a little water to make a paste. Pteppic's servants would use a pestle and mortar; you could use a wooden spoon and bowl if you want to do it the hard way, or a food blender if you're rich and lazy. Stir in the spices and then mix in the chopped walnuts. Shape the mixture into little bite-size balls, or into authentic 'Djelibeybis', brush them with a little of the warmed honey and then roll them in a plate of the ground almonds to cover. Alternatively, put some ground almonds into a bag and then shake the Djelibeybis gently in the bag to coat them.
Figgins
oo
No one ever seems to know what a Figgin is or if they want theirs toasted, but one meaning of the word is the handy snack described below. To my mind, all the ingredients are optional except the brandy (most of which vanishes in the cooking, but if you want to pay to have a drunk oven, that's fine by Yrs Truly).
MAKES APPROXIMATELY 18
(making it in two separate batches is easier in a small kitchen)
155g ready'-to-eat figs 155g stoned dates 85s currants
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7—8 tablespoons brandy
1 heaped teaspoon mixed spice 750g shortcrust pastry a little melted butter, milk and brown sugar for sealing and glazing the pastry
CHOP THE FIGS and dates finely and mix the fruit, brandy and spice together in a bowl. Cover and leave overnight in a cool, dark place.
Next day, preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6-7. Roll out half the pastry into a 25cm square. Cut into nine equal squares and spread a little melted butter along two sides of each. Spoon about one large teaspoon of the filling onto each square, fold along the diagonal to form a triangle and press firmly along the buttered edges to seal. Repeat with the remaining pastry and filling. Brush each with a little milk and sprinkle with brown sugar. Gently pierce each with a fork, place them carefully on a greased baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.
DWARF COOKERY
GREAT TRADITIONS OF cookery, as I have pointed out, have their origins in scarcity. Any idiot can make a good meal out of prime steak, but when your raw material is cow hooves and sheep lips, well, that's when you really learn cookery. And the art of translation, of course, since many people will put into their mouth something in a foreign language that they wouldn't even feed to a dog in their native tongue.
Dwarf cookery was created originally from what the dwarfs found underground - rats, snails, worms (useful protein), bits of stone and so on.
The common rat plays a major role in good old-fashioned, down-hole dwarfish cookery, and most dwarfish families jealously guard their recipes for the various relishes, chutneys, pickles and sauces (because dwarfs are not stupid, and only some kind of halfwit would eat a rat without something to take away the taste).
THE «ROI>LJ OF DWARF BREAD
THE MAKING OF bread and its consumption play a pivotal role in dwarfish history. Not for nothing is the Low King"" crowned on the Scone of Stone, which is more than fifteen hundred years old and, it can be said with complete certainty, is as edible now as it was on the day it was baked. Defnit'ly.
Dwarf bread can be used for buying and selling, for ceremonial purposes - dwarf contracts are often sealed by the 'breaking of
Not a king, exactly, since you'll find a dwarf king in every dwarf mine, but a sort of chief judge, law-interpreter and keeper of history. And he's called the Low King because, traditionally, the dwarfs with the lowest (and usually richest) mines were at the top of the social scale.
Dwarfish Drop Scones
The Drop Scone was one of the most feared of the battle breads - heavy enough to do serious damage if dropped from a height of six inches, and aerodynamic enough to stun an opponent at a distance if hurled from a sling. A variant was designed to shatter on impact, scything the surrounding area with razor-sharp crumbs.
The traditional scones, like all dwarf bread, were also edible if you stretch the term far enough; folklore says the best way to turn them into a meal is to soak them in a bucket of water for a week, and then eat the bucket.
MAKES ABOUT 8, OR ENOUGH FOR A VERY SHORT SIEOE
Lancre Mint Cake
200g strong plain wholemeal flour 50g caster sugar 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda 50g margarine or butter
lOOg chopped mixed nuts 1 teaspoon black food colouring (optional)
150ml milk
PREHEAT THE OVEN to 23O°C/Gas 8-9. Mix together the flour, sugar and bicarb, and then rub in the margarine/butter. Add the nuts, stir well, and add the food colouring if required. Gradually add the milk until a firm do
ugh is obtained (use only as much milk as you need). Divide the dough into eight equal-sized pieces, roll into balls and place on a lightly greased baking tray. Bake in the top part of the oven for 15-20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
Take to battlements and drop on enemies.
The classic Lancre Mint Cake is extremely useful for mountain travellers who may occasionally need to beat trolls to death. It also, if whirled around the head on the end of a piece of string, emits a strange droning noise that can attract rescuers or, of course, more trolls. This version is for soft lowlanders who like their teeth.
25 Og wholemeal flour
1I2 level teaspoon cream of tartar
LI2 level teaspoon bicarbonate
of soda 50g poppyseeds
50g chopped mixed nuts
50g sugar
2 teaspoons green food colouring
1 teaspoon peppermint essence
water
USE THE SAME method as for dwarf bread, effectively (the products are both, after all, made by dwarfs). Cooking time can be reduced by five minutes if you bake it in four more easily portable loaves. Don't overdo the mint - a hint is all you need.
Sticky Toffee Rat Onna Stick
You really, really do not want the classic recipe. To give that to the people would be the cruellest form of entertainment since 'Bobbing for Piranhas' was a fairground attraction. This version has the look but not the taste.
MAKES 4 RATS
500g white marzipan 1 strawberry 'bootlace' 1 small jar toffee spread chocolate sprinkles small amount of black icin?
J o
brown thread (non-edible whiskm;
optional) ..;<•• • .,vuv 4 toffee-apple sticks 6 tablespoons white sugar 4 tablespoons water
BREAK THE MARZIPAN into four equal pieces and shape into rats. Trim bootlace to size and insert appropriately for tails. Coat the bodies with a thin layer of toffee spread and roll them in the chocolate sprinkles to give a fur effect. Use a small blob of icing for the eyes. If doing whiskers, cut a few 5cm lengths of thread and 'sew' them through the nose. Gently push a stick up each . . . er, rat, making sure it is secure. It's all a bit dreadful, isn't it? But still much better than using a real rat.
Now for the tricky bit. In a heavy-bottomed pan dissolve the sugar in the water and cook over a medium heat until it is golden brown. Warning: this gets very hot, so be careful! When it's ready, turn off the heat and quickly (before it sets or burns) coat the rats in it. NB: Do not use a brush with nylon bristles as they will melt, giving the result a flavour that only a dwarf could appreciate.
Place the rats in a cool, dry place to set.
Quattro Rodentt
Ankh-Morpork now has a greater population of dwarfs than the dwarf cities deep in the Ramtops and, as all gourmets know, some of the best food is created when two cultures meet and exchange recipes (who could forget curried chips, or Black Pudding Strudel?)
This has sadly not been the case with dwarf cookery, which remains as unpleasant as ever. Some dwarf restaurants do, however, provide 'dwarf-like' meals for other species, although these 'themed' places are mostly despised by real dwarfs, who object to the fake rock wallpaper and artificial hammering noises.
This is the 'human' version of one of the more successful cross-over recipes.
MAKES ONE PIZZA
pizza base
pizza (tomato) sauce
grated cheese (mozzarella is best)
and any other desired toppings •^ rr o
four plump rats or 2 medium-sized tomatoes 2 large button mushrooms 4 thin slices of rare roast beef
12 black peppercorns
4 tail-length pieces of bigolli pasta
(or thick spaghetti), cooked 8 rat-ear-sized sliced dried
mushrooms olive oil dried dill (the herb, not the pickle)
PREHEAT THE OVEN to 230°C/Gas 8. Cover the pizza base with sauce and cheese. Cut the tomatoes in half and place cut side down on the pizza at even spaces, towards the outside edge of the pizza. These will form the bodies of your rats (it gets worse . . .}.
Slice the button mushrooms in half and shape to a slight point. These are the rats' heads (see?) Place these on the hubwards edge
of the tomato pieces. Now trim the beef slices to a roughly ratty shape (allowing enough to tuck under the bodies) and lay them carefully over the tomato and mushroom 'insides' (we did warn you . . .).
Push the peppercorns in place to form eyes and noses and place the cooked bigolli to form the tails. Make small incisions into the 'heads' and stick in the dried mushrooms to form ears.
Brush each rat lightly with olive oil and sprinkle with a little dill, for a furry effect. Add any other desired toppings and cook in the oven for around 12-15 minutes.
Run away and hide under the bed.
Rat Vmdaloo
You don't want to know about it. Besides, how would you tell?
SURE ENOUGH, ONCE you've got enough food, people will invent etiquette.
People say to me, what is this etiquette? And the answer is, it is what people have to use if they don't have good manners.
I was fortunate to be born with nat'ral good manners and am quite at home in any company, but for a lot of people it is all a big mystery and it is handy to have a guide. Then people say to me: ah, but isn't it just a way of making you look stupid if you don't know the rules? And I say: ah, but at least there are rules, and they're all written down where anyone can find 'em. A bit of study is all it takes.
The same thing applies to evening dress for men. Perhaps it makes you look a bit like a penguin, but at least everyone looks like a penguin. A very democratic item, your basic evening dress. Once you're in it, there's no difference between a clerk and a king. Well, there are some slight differences - a king's will fit, while the clerk's might have been worn by three other people already that week -but at least the idea is there.
You see, posh society is easy. Etiquette is where you find it,
though, and there's plenty of places where the rules are a lot more complicated than in any palace and no one has written them down because no one who knows them also knows how to write.
At least if you need to know if an admiral takes precedence over a field marshal you can look it up, but it takes an unusual grasp of the special etiquette of the wilder parts of town to rank these in order:
A man who once forced another man to eat his own ear.
A man who can drink three pints of ale in seven seconds.
A man who can fart the National Anthem while whistling his own accompaniment.
A man who can open beer bottles with his teeth.
A man who can open beer bottles with someone else's teeth. , ^
A man who is known to have killed nine people, not counting trolls.
And remember that the penalty for getting this wrong isn't that someone is going to be mortally offended. Someone will be offended, mortally.
I know inns up in the hills where people get realty intense if you spit in the wrong part of the fireplace or wipe your chin with the wrong sleeve, and these are the kind of people who punch you in the mouth and then kick you in the bum while you're looking for your teeth. Compared to that, anyone would prefer to be sneered at by a duchess. As for sitting in the wrong seat or accidentally drinking the wrong drink . . . well, it doesn't bear thinking about, but let's just say you could be looking at half a beer glass coming at you really, really fast. Whereas use the wrong fork at a posh dinner, and the worst they are allowed to do is not invite you again. You don't even get your fingers broken.
ETIQUETTE WITH WITCHES
THIS IS REALLY QUITE STRAIGHTFORWARD. WITCHES ARE VERY
lucky people to know, especially happy witches. When you meet a small dumpy witch, it is good luck to offer her a drink.
If you happen to be baking and a witch comes calling - and it's amazin'ly occult, the way a witch turns up when you happen to be baking - it's good luck to give her a few scones, a bun or two, or maybe a whole cake to take away.
When brewing, a good beer will keep well if a jug or two is dispatched to the local witch. She will be too polite to refuse.
Beware of bad luck caused by throwing away old clothes, which may be used by occult forces to put an evil 'fluence on you. Have 'em sent round to the local witch for disposal, especially if there's any decent lace or fine linen with a bit of wear left in it (you wouldn't believe the trouble occult forces can cause with that kind of stuff, it's amazin'.) It's no trouble.