Organ meats (was SC - Hedgehogs)

[Philippa Alderton]

I have to confess a deep-seated hatred for barley because of too
much of it in SCA soups--I guess trying to stretch it, or because
of an overenthusiasm for proportions and lack of understanding as
to just how much liquid it will soak up and how much it will expand.

I don't like peels on potatoes either.

A thought:  food fashions.  In this country, it is fashionable to
demonstrate how "home-cooked" or "hearty" something is by leaving
everything in chunks.  I dislike large chunks food, particularly
in something like soup, which I'm trying to manage with just a
spoon.  This extends to stuff like salsa; I'm very fond of cooked
salsas, with lots of chili flavor, much more so than the slimy
"chunks o' pepper, onion and tomato" I get at most restaurants.

to loop bck to topic, what are some of the observations one can
make about serving pieces/sizes/styles in medieval food?  I was
making Barmikkiya last night--actually, working with two other
people for the feast this weekend, thank you, Cariadoc :-)--and
noticed that the chicken is supposed to be cut up quite small.

Another observation I made when cooking it was that one of my
partners in crime kept saying, "It must be done now", even though
I'd pointed out that we were to cook the chicken filling stuff
for "about an hour".  This reinforced my observation that one of
the problems many people run into with a lot of medieval dishes
is that they don't cook them long enough.  One of my friends
was fretting because she can never reproduce the "wardons in syrope" the way
that I do it; observing, I noted that she doesn't
cook the liquid long enough for it to *become* syrup.  I think
that the microwave/fast food mentality has affected a lot of
people; some things should not be cooked too long even in medieval
food, but some really need to cook in order for flavors and tex-
tures to develop properly.

Pardon my babbling...lack of sleep...

Berengaria


True, my mother (who grew up in Germany during WWII) refuses to eat my beef
& barley stew.  She refers to barley as "calves-teeth" - I think because
they let it soak up so much water during cooking till the barley was the
size of calves teeth.  Mom also refuses to eat potatoes with the peels on -
says she ate enough potato-peel soup to last her a lifetime.

Gwen-Cat
Caerthe
(Who is quite thankful to be able to enjoy the good things in life without
having had to go through the hard times!)
(exit soap-box mode)

replying to

>snip<
BTW, when I went looking for barley in German stores I couldn't find it,
and one store keeper told me that, as a result of wars, and having to eat
whatever they could get, barley is now out of fashion in any form but
animal fodder.  Even the old-fashioned farmers won't eat it.  Interesting
to see a side-light on things that influence food fashions.

Regards,

Allison
>snip<

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

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".

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

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".

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