SC - The siege cook challenge.

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here.  Tibor asks about the rationale behind the choices.  Here
goes, for mine.

I had three separate sets of constraints.  First, of course, what did I
have the makings for?  Second, what's good for summer?  And third -- my
main sources are *packed*.  I was on my secondary machine, so I didn't
even have the transcriptions of recipes that I have in a word processor
file on the primary one (in use by my husband at the time).  So I had to
go with dishes I knew well enough that I could remember preparation
methods and the nature of the dish and its proportions, as opposed to
just ingredient lists (I have those for a tremendous number of dishes
on both machines, thanks to a separate project), plus the *very* few
I had on line and available from this machine.

So I decided that never mind being in Savoy, I was English, not Savoyard,
because I don't know Savoyard cuisine well enough to wing it like that.

The Count was well known to have a Savoyard cook heading his regular
establishment.  So I decided that I was a secondary cook, and new.  Now
I was feeding him a meal in a cuisine that was somewhat different from
his customary one.  I wanted dishes where that would prove a virtue
rather than a vice.

The dishes I chose are all very typically English, but close enough to
French dishes not to feel as if he were getting an alien meal at his
own table, at a time when he wanted comfortable food, not a culinary
adventure.  The man, after all, was fresh from the field, after
raising a siege.  He'd be tired and hungry.

Given that basic decision, the remaining choices, within the constraints
of what offered, were based on appropriate placement within the meal and
on balance in several dimensions.  

I wanted variety in the kinds of main dishes I presented.  Mawmenny
and blanc desire are pottages (served as a single partitioned pottage
dish).  Boar in egurdouce is a sauced roast.  It would be good to add
at least one pie.

>From professional pride, I wanted two distinctive meats in each course.
That required magicking up two meats from somewhere.  On the other hand,
I had all those eggs, which suggested a custardy sort of pie.  Herbelade 
is a *very* meat-economic dish; I figured I could peel one table's-worth
off the pork, and still have a good showing of roast for the second
course.  That left me short a second meat for the second course -- 
but if there was this much food left, hunger should not have completely
denuded the surrounding woods of small birds, which would make a fine
delicate entry there.  And as simple roasts -- and about the only meat
that was served roasted without sauce -- they would provide a good contrast
to the egurdouce.

That gave me my four meat dishes.  Mawmenny and blanc desire are typically
first course dishes (or a first course dish, depending whether you count
them as one or as two), as is herbelade.  The roasts were more suited to
the second, more delicate course.

Now what to go with that?  I had a garden, which would produce both salad
and pot greens.  Pot greens belong in the first course; the salad can
readily go later.  Being English, I would want something at least somewhat
sweet in each course.  The woods should provide blackberries; and I still
had lots of eggs, and I had milk, complete with cream, which suggested a
custard or cream.  Hence the fraissee (a blackberry pottage) and mon ami.

It's summer.  It's hot.  Each course should have something at least cool.
For the first course, the herbelade worked.  For the second, the salad
did; but another cool dish would be good.  Fraissee is better hot than
cold, but mon ami is the other way around.  It is also the more delicate
of the two.  (English courses progressed from simple and robust to
delicate and complex.)

Considering the visual appearance, I already had at least some color and
texture variation in each course.  In the first, blanc desire is a
whitish dish, while mawmenny made with red wine is red, the joutes are
green, the herbelade is (once opened) green-flecked gold, and the 
fraisee (made with blackberries, strawberries being past season) would
be deep purple.  Good contrast in color, though I'd have been happier
had I had better texture contrast -- the fraisee echoed the texture
of the mawmenny and blanc desire.  Then again, that was a prized texture
at the time; and the cream-custard of the mon ami would echo the
herbelade, which is definitely the inferior of the main dishes, so
the fraisee seemed the better choice for the first course.

For the second course, the egurdouce is a deep purple brown; the birds
would be a golden brown; the salad primarily green, but with occasional
grace notes; and the mon ami a delicate pale yellow.  Reasonable
contrast, and good texture variation.  And the brilliant flavors of
the salad set off the mild and subtle flavor of the cream-custard sweet, 
where they would simply have competed with the blackberry dish.

Both courses had sweet dishes and savory ones, and both had strong and
mild ones.  Both had dishes that basically blended in flavor, and dishes
that held internal contrasts (in the first, the joutes, and to a much
lesser extent the herbelade; in the second, the salad, and the sweet-sour
egurdouce).  No strong flavor was repeated (there are lovely versions
of fraisee that call for currants; I left them out, in consideration
of the currants and dates in the egurdouce).

The salad greens -- well, there's no excuse dumping a bowl of lettuce
in front of a count and calling it a dish.  Mint cools; parsley brightens;
cress adds an almost bitter tang that plays off the mint's sweetness;
and the herbs color it a variety of ways.

And I knew for a fact that all those dishes were in the 14th C English
repertoire, and "belonged" together in the same meal.

It's not the best menu I've put together, but I wouldn't at all mind 
eating it.  In fact, one of these days, I may do that.  Sounds like a
good fancy-company meal to me.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry

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