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. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 05:43:33 -0700 From: "Laura C. Minnick" 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 (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 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 Edited by Mark S. Harris Camp-Dinner-art Page 5 of 5