SC - Mediterranean Feast

[Stephen Bloch]

>      I am doing my first feast in September at Mooneschadowe Guardian.  I 
>      want to use a mediterranean theme but I am having a hard time with 
>      vegetables.  I am planning to do a marinated fresh vegetable platter 
>      as a first course but I haven't been able to find a vegetable dish I 
>      like to put with either of my meat courses. (Lamb meatballs with a 
>      yogurt sauce and chicken in a lemon sauce)  I'm considering using a 
>      greek style salad (olives and feta) between the two meat courses to up 
>      the green content of the feast ....

I don't see anything obviously NON-period here, but are you working from
period recipes for these things?  I've seen lots of medieval Andalusian
recipes for lamb (or more often mutton) meatballs, but I don't think I
remember seeing a yogurt sauce.  As for chicken in lemon sauce, my wife
(reading over my shoulder) reminds me that the 14th-century Catalan
_Libre de Sent Sovi_ contains a recipe for a "salsa limoneha", consisting
of almond milk, lemon juice, sugar, optional minced chicken wing, and
spices, to be served with stewed chicken.  We haven't worked it out yet.
As for the salad, did medieval people in the mediterranean basin eat raw
greens?

>      About the only other things I'm considering are a 
>      chick-pea dish or a spinach dish but I'm afraid there may be some 
>      hesitation on the part of the populace.  Thanks!

Both of those ingredients turn up frequently in Platina and the Arabo-
Andalusian _manuscrito anonimo_.  The _Libre de Sent Sovi_ contains a
recipe for chickpeas cooked in almond milk with onions and spices; we
haven't worked it out yet.  The early 16th-c. Catalan _Libre del Coch_
contains a cooked pottage of spinach and beet greens (and borage, if you
can find it) which we served to good reviews at a feast a few months
ago; see http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/sca/cooking/st.val.feast.html.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University