SC - Re: sca-cooks SCA-ck Lard Preservation

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

At 10:18 PM 4/17/97 -0600, Stefan li Rous wrote, quoting me:
>1. A peacock is a game bird, and cooks differently than a chicken.
>2. It was a peaCOCK, not a peaHEN, and took longer to cook because of this.
>>>>>>
>Please explain these two points to new cook. If the peacock and the
>chicken are the same size, why would they cook differently?

It is my understanding that game birds (pheasant, for example) take much
longer to cook than your average off-the-shelf chicken. Also, unless spiced
some way (like roasted in rose water, as someone else suggested), you will
get a very "gamey" flavor from the meat.

>Why would a peacock take longer than a peahen? Because the peacock is
>bigger?

That's one reason. Also, (speculation ahead) because the quality of the
meat is not the same (denser, perhaps, or more dry).

>- -Duncan (...and don't even get me started on the eel stew...)
>Please do explain the eel stew. Eel is something I'd like to try
>at least once. If it was methodology, I'd like to know what NOT to
>do as well as what to do right. Where did you find the eels?

In truth, I'm not sure where they obtained the eels, but they arrived
frozen. At one of the precooks, we thawed, skinned, and gutted twenty or
thirty eels. The thing that stuck with me the most was the pungent aroma of
eel blood - a sickly-sweet odor that was so appalling I couldn't even
approach the eel stew without remembering it. Needless to say, I can't
really comment on how they were cooked, since I stayed as far from them as
possible. I remember that they had buckets of the stuff left over after the
feast, too. (Katerine - do you remember how they were cooked?)

- -Duncan, with fond memories of that precook, and of watching a vet school
friend gleefully dissecting an eel, with commentary (Her: "Oooh! Look!
Here's the stomach!" Us: "Yeccch!")
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Brady    tabrady at mindspring.com   SCA: Duncan MacKinnon of Tobermory
 See my web pages for links to the Society for Creative Anachronism and 
      gay and lesbian info: http://www.technomancer.com/~duncan/