SC - [arousseau at immunex.com: Results of a Siege cooking contest]

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hi all from Anne-Marie. Thought you guys might like to see what we did 
out here in An Tir. It was tons of fun, and I'd love to foward the 
complete rules, etc to anyone who wants 'em.

Siege cooking was a great way to get all kinds of folks involved!

- --Anne-Marie d'Ailleurs

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    From: arousseau at immunex.com ("Anne-Marie C Rousseau")
    To: culinary at u.washington.edu ("SCA - Madrone's Culinary Guild")
    Subject: Results of a Siege cooking contest
    Date: Tue, 26 Aug

    
    
    Hi all from Anne-Marie.
    
    Just wanted to share with everyone the results of the siege cooking contest we
    held at South Sound Unity Tourney this weekend. Not so much who won, but how we
    did it and how it went. I'd really like to see contests like this at other
    events...I think it's a great way to encourage creative fun with medieval food.
    
    We prepared packets of ingredients. Each bag contained flour, sugar, salt,
    currants, almonds, vinegar, a couple small boiling onions, rice or barley and
    bread crumbs. Contestants were given a list of items that they could scrounge
    from site, assuming they could find them, and were allowed to use up to three
    (things like meat, fruits, veggies, yeast, etc). They were allowed to use water, 
     and spices/herbs at will (these were "freebies"). Contestants were told to
    prepare "dinner" and impress the judges. Documentation was strongly encouraged,
    even if it was just jotting down a note "this is a 13th century Kuskenole from
    the Miscellany by Cariadoc. I didn't have dates so used currants instead".
    Completed dishes were submitted with the written recipe and any documentation.
    
    The results: All the packets (10) got snatched up. We could have used more even.
    Every packet that got taken got used and completed dishes returned to the
    judges. The average contestant produced severeal dishes from the packet, in many
    cases 4-6 dishes. Get this....at least half of them had documentation!!!! A good
    3/4ths of them were in very period style even. Yahoo! The judges were
    overwelmed...we ended up judging about 45-50 dishes all told. Wow!
    
    Expert division was won by Countess Elizabeth and Leticia who made lozyns with
    cheese, rapes in pottage, gingerbread and something else I can't remember right
    now. Everything was documented within an inch of it's life. Hooray! They got a
    $10 gift certificate to WorldSpice.
    
    Novice Division was won by Team Wyewood, who prepared a sumptuos repast,
    complete with mint tea as a beverage. They even used one of the judges own
    publications and recipes as a piece of documentation :). Bukkenade and fritters
    and vinegared cukes and all kinds of stuff. They too were very liberal with
    their documentation. Hooray! They got a neato olive wood spoon, which they hung
    in state on their camp kitchen roof :). 
    
    The Arbitrary Judges Oh-My-God-Look-at-this prize went to Eilen for an amazing
    display. She prepared something she called Moroccan chicken, which was amazingly
    Bukkenade like, garnished attractively with sugared bread crumbs and greens. She
    also prepared a lovely dish of rice, particolored pink and yellow, colored with
    the beets we gave her and the onion skins. A beet rose garnished the center of
    the spoked colored rice. The piece de la resistance was Horns of the Moon, a
    period middle eastern pastry. She had made almond paste out of the almonds we
    gave her, and made delicate little flowers to garnish the dish. They were
    vibrantly colored, with things she found on site. Purple from blackberries,
    green leaves from plantain, pink from the beets, yellow from calendula. Wow!
    Hooray! She got a bottle of verjuice.
    
    Other things of note...the sushi chef and his smoked salmon and melon stuffed
    cucumbers on a bed of vinegared rice, and his wife with her lovely blackberry
    and melon crepes, cooked to perfection. Robert of Trinity with his sekanjabin
    and sugared almonds. The new lady whos name I can't remember with her giant
    almond paste cookie in the shape of a madrone tree, since she had heard that the
    judges were all from there, and she was trying to bribe them :), Justin and his
    amazing chicken stuffing stuff that Eden tried to bogart it was so good...you
    get the idea.
    
    I think all and all, the contest was a huge success, at least from my stand
    point. The cunning plan was to get people thinking of what kinds of food they
    could produce with limited ingredients, to be creative, and ideally to do it in
    a period style. We gave written comments and lots and lots of non-threatening
    feedback, understanding that not everyone is into medieval food info like we
    are. 
    
    So, when's the next one? I wanna enter this time!
    --AM
    
    
    
    

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Anne-Marie Rousseau
rousseau at scn.org
Seattle, Washington
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