Camp-Dinner-art

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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.

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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