I set the bar extremely low for my first Shakespeare dish. Pottage is a soup or stew, extremely versatile, and the kind of recipe that's really just "this and that". My favorite kind of recipe.
I also have a copy of Dining with Shakespeare that Missy got for me and I have been a little intimidated. Between the sometimes unfamiliar ingredients and the recipes often including cooking an entire animal, I just couldn't get started. The vegetable dishes often seemed like sides not mains and bread was a project I wasn't ready to take on.
But soup I can do and calling it pottage it gave it Elizabethan authenticity. Plus, I think it has been like 23 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
It starts with browning onions in butter. I don't have a picture of the browned onions because they were beautiful and I walked away for one second and then they weren't. But it still tasted fine.
Then you add beef broth. I didn't have that so I added vegetarian bouillon and water. Boil for a bit. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve over bread. It should have been French bread but I didn't have any, so I toasted some pita bread and crumbled it into the soup like crackers. It soaked it up and made it kind of stew-y. Missy said that during Elizabethan times, there was a type of unleavened, cracker type of bread that was used like a plate for thick stews or pretty much anything else. I felt like pita bread was close enough.
It was a good nice pottage. Hot and filling especially with the bread.
I may try mince pie next. The real stuff with mince meat and orange peel. I am brave and adventurous. Perhaps.
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