Camp-Dinner-art - 11/5/06
A small camp dinner of period foods for seven people by Mistress Elaine de Montgris (known as 'Lainie). An example of how period foods can be served with a little effort even in primitive conditions. Includes recipes.
NOTE: See also the files: bag-cooking-msg, campfood-msg, Camp-Cooking-art, cook-ovr-fire-msg, salads-msg, pasta-msg, chicken-msg, cheesecake-msg, tarts-msg, spiced-wine-msg.
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Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:43:33 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] a dinner report-
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
I put on small dinner (for 7 of us, including His Majesty) last weekend,
and it went very well- thought I'd give you all the lowdown, because I
thought you might be interested. :-)
I determined years ago that it is just as easy to cook period food in camp
as ordinary food- the issue seems to be one of familiarity- so I do it a
lot to make it familiar, yes? :-)
We had:
salad dressed with oil, vinegar, and pepper
A Tarte of Greens
Losyns
Chykens in Hocchee
Chicken in Oranges and Lemons
Cheesecake
Ypocras
So here are recipes and Notes...
~Salad~
Green salads appear in any number of texts from the Romans on
down, and many of them throw all manner of herbs and greens into the bowl.
For a camping event, I pick carefully through the freshest of the wild
sacks of salad at the market, and use that. Cuts down a great deal on the
volume in the cooler.
~Tart of Greens~
I found this tart in Le Menagier de Paris (a medieval manuscript
dated to circa 1393), online in translation by Janet Hinson at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/
Menagier_Contents.html
The translated recipe there is:
TO MAKE A TART, take four handfuls of beet-leaves, two handfuls of parsley,
one handful of chervil, a bit of turnip-top and two handfuls of spinach,
and clean them and wash them in cold water, then chop very small: then
grate two kinds of cheese, that is one mild and one medium, and then put
eggs with it, yolk and white, and grate them in with the cheese; then put
the herbs in the mortar and grind them up together, and also add to that
some powdered spices. Or in place of this have first ground up in the
mortar two pieces of ginger, and over this grate your cheeses, eggs and
herbs, and then throw in some grated old pressed cheese or some other such
on to the herbs, and carry to the oven, and then make it into a tart and
eat it hot.
In the interest of packing space, etc, I used mustard greens, parsley, and
a bit of rosemary and sage. I shredded them finely and blended them into a
bowl in which I'd beaten four eggs with a little ginger and stirred in 1
pkg of the pre-grated 'Italian' cheese. Poured the mixture into a piecrust
and baked it at about 350 for, oh, 30-40 minutes or so. (Baking in camp
means checking the oven a lot.)
~Losyns~
Losyns and their counterpart, Macrows, are the mac-n-cheese of the
medieval world. Recipes for them can be found in several places- my
favorites are in the 14th c text _Curye on Inglysche_. They can be found
online at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellaneous.html#3 .
Losyns
Curye on Inglysch p. 108
Take good broth and do in an erthen pot. Take flour of payndemayn and make
+ erof past with water, and make + erof thynne foyles as paper with a
roller; drye it harde and see+ it in broth. Take chese ruayn grated and lay
it in disshes with powder douce, and lay + eron loseyns isode as hoole as +
ou myght, and above powdour and chese; and so twyse or thryse, & serue it
forth.
I fill a pot partway with water, and either drop a couple of cubes of
boullion (Knorr's is best) or a dollop of the 'Better than Boullion' goop
into, and bring it to a boil. Usually for one 8x8 pan of Losyns, about 3/4
of a regular-sized pkg of lasagna noodles is required, and one pkg of the
grated Italian cheese. '
Cook the noodles, layer them in a buttered pan with cheese and a sprinkling
of spices, bake at about 350 for 25? minutes, until the top is nicely
browned.
~Chykens in Hocchee~
Also from _Curye on Inglische_, and online at
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/poultry.html#3 ,
Chykens in Hocchee
Curye on Inglysch p. 105
(<http://www.pbm.com/%7Elindahl/foc/FoC065_smallgif.html>Forme of
Cury no. 36)
Take chykens and scald hem. Take persel and sawge, with o+ er erbes; take
garlec & grapes, and stoppe the chikenus ful, and see+ hem in gode broth,
so + at + ey may esely be boyled + erinne. Messe hem & cast + erto powdour
dowce.
Quick cheat- I used the leftover broth from the noodles to boil the chicken
in- it was already warm even!
They scald the chicken at the plant, so I didn't do that, but I did pull
the giblets <bleah!> and wash him out. I stuffed it with a mix of grapes,
garlic, parsley and sage, and pinned it closed with a skewer, breast-side
down. Boil in broth (pretty much deep enough to cover the bird) for about
25-30 minutes, then turn the chicken over, and boil another 25 minutes or
so. It's done when the drumstick is good and loose. Carefully pick it up
with forks, let the broth drain a bit, and set it in a prepared dish. Scoop
out the stuffing if you like, and sprinkle a light dusting of powder douce
over it, if you remember to (I usually forget).
~Chicken in Oranges and Lemons~
While I usually try to stick with recipes appropriate to my
persona (French/English, 14-15th c), this was so yummy when I tried it, I
use it even though it's Elizabethan. It is from _The Good Housewife's
Jewell_ by Thomas Dawson in 1596. (Sorry, the online link is dead.)
To boile a Capon with Orenges and Lemmons
Take Orenges or Lemmons pilled, and cutte them the long way, and if you can
keepe your cloves whole and put them into your best broth of Mutton or
Capon with prunes or currants and three or fowre dates, and when these have
beene well sodden put whole pepper great mace, a good piece of suger, some
rose water, and eyther white or claret Wine, and let al these seeth
together a while, and so serve it upon soppes with your capon.
I used two oranges and three small lemons. (Peeling lemons was not the
easiest thing I've ever done!) Peeled and cut into wedges, and I squooshed
them a bit as I dropped them into the broth (again, water and a couple of
Knorr's cubes). I added a handful of dried prunes and currants (I forgot
the dates), some whole peppercorns, blades of mace, a good 'glug' (1/2
bottle?) of pinot grigio, and a tablespoon or so of sugar. Stirred about a
bit, then carefully poured in a tablespoon or so of rosewater. (I use the
stuff from the Middle Eastern grocery, which tends to not be as strong as
the stuff in the blue bottle.) Then I dropped the chicken (one of the
cut-up chickens from Safeway- when I was there that morning, they only had
one whole chicken that was thawed completely) into the *very* fragrant pot!
It cooked for about 40 minutes, and we served it up in a large bowl, with
the broth and fruit ladled over it.
~Cheesecake~
This one came from Sir Kenelm Digby: _The Closet of Sir Kenelm
Digby, Opened_ (published posthumously in 1669). The recipe is online at:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/desserts.html#22
The recipe itself is rather funny, as it reads:
To Make Cheesecakes
Digby p. 214/174
Take 12 quarts of milk warm from the cow, turn it with a good spoonful of
runnet. Break it well, and put it in a large strainer, in which rowl it up
and down, that all the whey may run out into a little tub; when all that
will is run out, wring out more. Then break the curds well; then wring it
again, and more whey will come. Thus break and wring till no more come.
Then work the curds exceedingly with your hand in a tray, till they become
a short uniform paste. Then put to it the yolks of 8 new laid eggs, and two
whites, and a pound of butter. Work all this long together. In the long
working (at the several times) consisteth the making them good. Then season
them to your taste with sugar finely beaten; and put in some cloves and
mace in subtle powder. Then lay them thick in coffins of fine paste and
bake them.
The cheese part is basically a farmer's cheese, cottage cheese, or ricotta
type. I use a 16 oz tub of ricotta and two large (Trader Joe's has really
big ones for great prices) eggs. I used maybe 1/4 of a stick of butter- the
cheese is plenty fatty by itself. Added a bit of sugar (1/3 cup? I usually
work in handfuls) and a bit of cloves and mace. And beat it together
well.
James and I had gone blackberry-picking around lunchtime, so we had fresh
berries. I washed them, and put a cup or so into the cheese mixture before
I poured it into the piecrust. Baked the cheesecake at about 350 for a
little over an hour- had to rotate the pan a couple of times to make sure
it bakes evenly. After it cooled, I spooned more of the berries on top.
(His Maj was especially happy with it, and was amazed that I made it
on site.)
~Ypocras~
This one is a late 14th c French recipe from the _Goodman of
Paris_ (online at http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/drinks.html#6)
Hippocras
Goodman p. 299/28
To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter of very fine cinnamon selected
by tasting it, and half a quarter of fine flour of cinnamon, an ounce of
selected string ginger, fine and white, and an ounce of grain of Paradise,
a sixth of nutmegs and galingale together, and bray them all together. And
when you would make your hippocras, take a good half ounce of this powder
and two quarters of sugar and mix them with a quart of wine, by Paris
measure. And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together is the
Duke's powder.
This one came out not quite as I'd anticipated, for a couple of reasons: I
found that I was out of galingale, I accidentally added too much ginger,
and when I grabbed what I thought was grains of paradise, I saw (after I'd
added it) that I'd grabbed the sumac. Went back for the grains, but there
was no way to take the sumac out. So it was a bit hot from the ginger, and
slightly sharp from the sumac.
The wine was a bottle of Cranberry Wine (2003) from Regina's brother Will's
farm in Coos Bay- he runs sheep, llamas, grows wine grapes, apples and has
a small cranberry bog. He puts out a half-dozen or so bottlings of wine
every year, and when I poked around to see what there was here at the
house, the cranberry looked good... C'est la vie! (LA VIE!)
His Majesty's remark about the meal- 'that doesn't suck alot!' I think I
was successful. :-)
'Lainie
<the end>