Porridge of four colors
The recipe comes from a cookbook from Bohemia in the 15th and 16th centuries.
This dish belongs to those that were meant to impress diners with their attractive visual presentation, something we might compare to today's "wow effect." It was referred to as schauessen, meaning a dish for spectacle. This was an international dish, described in most European cookbooks. Due to the ingredients used—such as expensive imported spices, almonds, and Malvasian Greek wine—it was a very luxurious and costly dish. Finely ground sandalwood bark can be ordered from specialized online spice shops, but it can be substituted with another ingredient for coloring, such as crushed raspberries. The recipe comes from the Bohemian cookbook Spis o krmiech, kterak mají dielany býti, dating back to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the photograph of the porridge, the top left section is unflavored, the right section is colored with crushed sandalwood, the bottom left with plum jam, and the right with saffron.
Recipe
300 g almond flour, 100 ml Malvasian-type wine, 200 ml water, cane sugar, saffron, ground sandalwood bark, three tablespoons of plum jam, 20 g sultana raisins, 20 g chopped almonds
Mix Malvasian wine with water into the almond flour, sweeten with cane sugar to taste, and cook over low heat until the alcohol evaporates and a thicker porridge forms. Divide it into four portions. Pour the first portion into the first section of the cross-shaped mold in a bowl. Mix saffron into the second portion to turn it yellow. For the third portion, add ground sandalwood bark, which will turn it red. Into the last portion, stir in plum jam mixed with two tablespoons of water, raisins, and chopped almonds. Next, you will need a cross-shaped mold, which can be made from two thin wooden slats long enough to fit inside the serving bowl or, alternatively, from sturdy cardboard cut into two rectangles, each matching the diameter of the bowl. Make a halfway cut in the center of each piece and fit them together to form a cross. Pour each colored portion of the porridge into the respective sections of the bowl created by the cross mold.
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