SC - Late-period is NOT Medieval

[Mike C. Baker]

Have to return a *little* rant for rant:

- ---LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> Since the cooking techniques and ingredients available 
> as well as seasoning were drastically altared during the 
> late period (circa 1500 C.E.) these recipes and ingredients 
> are certainly not, IMHO, typical of Medieval Cookery
> and cannot be seen as belonging to the Middle Ages except 
> by an extreme distortion of thinking. There are literally 
> thousands  of pre-16th century recipes to choose from 
> negating any need to use recipes or ingredients that
> are decidedly not Medieval in style or ingredient.
> 
> End of rant.
> al-Sayyid Ras
 
Beginning of rant: the SCA covers the period of time extending
through the END of the 1600's, and therefore it is entirely proper
and respectable to occasionally include dishes, spices, or methods
of preparation documentable to this time scope in an SCA setting.
(Don't try to pass them off as 11th century Nordic recipes, of
course...)

Medieval cooking vs. Rennaisance cooking vs. Elizabethan cooking vs.
SCA cooking: moot point, in the final analysis.
- - Is the food edible?
- - Is it accurate to the intended effect(s)?
- - Is the cook satisfied with the final result and the audiece
satisfied with consumption thereof?

Some of us within the SCA have chosen to place our personas in the
very late part of the defined timeframe for reasons specifically
including wider choice in many things. Food happens to be one of
those things that influenced my choice to place Amra in the
1580-90's, and slightly beyond. For similar reasons *of persona*,
Amra also emigrated to the New World via Spain, and sees no problem
with beans and other foodstuffs grown and consumed by the natives
thereof. As an explorer and colonist, he would have eaten from the
native foods upon occasion as well.

I won't insist upon New World beans being medieval as long as others
don't insist on them being non-period as a food that would have at
least upon occasion been found on the table. Likewise at least some
forms of maize. Too many occasions, too many tables, too much other
things that can be shared equitably and for fun.

I happen to *like* Nordic/Scandinavian early period feasts, at least
in the incarnations I have experienced them. I like beef in cryspes,
and Welsh leek pie, and various barley dishes, and a fruit dish
including fish THL Enid of Crickhollow has allowed me to sample,and
the variant on Icelandic chicken we recently were served at a feast
here in Steppes. 

On the other hand, I also don't particularly care for some of the
individual dishes prepared in styles from every time period within
the SCA purview. Neither am I wedded to steak, potatoes, roastin'
ears, & green beans as plausible for an authentic or even peri-oid
feast. (I'm rather agin' it, in fact: that's stuff I can get any day
of the week -- at SCA feasts, I would like to be encouraged in my
suspension of disbelief as often as possible...)

My point: document and use, use as substitute, or make up from whole
cloth based upon ingredient availability at a given time and place.
Just don't claim New World or Asian or African foodstuffs as
automatically not suitable for SCA without assigning a specific time
of introduction or other documentation. 

For "medieval", I must agree that is another matter entirely.

End of counter-rant.

Ras, I do hope to meet you in the flesh someday and swap lies over a
good feast. Better if it is one you have been responsible for
creating, of course ... or maybe something one of the others here
cobbles together. One of these days, I'll even have to try my hand
at feeding a small horde (or even possibly a subset of The Horde),
and I will be the better in the attempt for having read your messages.

===
Pax ... Kihe / Adieu -- Amra / TTFN -- Mike
Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard) / 
Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra (AoA in SCA, so: al-Sayyid) /
Mike C. Baker: My opinions are my own -- no one else would want them!
     F.O.B. (Friend Of Blackfox)
Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8661
Alt. e-mail: KiheBard at aol.com MikeCBaker at aol.com

_____________________________________________________________________
Sent by RocketMail. Get your free e-mail at http://www.rocketmail.com

============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================