SC - Cooking Symposium Report

[kat]

kat here - with a report on my 1/31 cooking workshop...

(I have set my menu, and will post it separately...)

	Things went very well, thanks in part to the good advice from Crystal and others on the list... and thanks in part to the fact that my dear hubby took the majority of the non-cooking spouses to the arcade for the afternoon and came back just about in time for dinner...  :-)

	I had set five dishes for us to work on, and we got three of them done:  

Blamanger (various sources)
Frumenty (Pleyn Delit)
A Sauce for Goose (To the Queen's Taste)

	(I'll do Macrows and the Capon in Milk and Honey later on...)

	First we made almond milk.  Folks, if you haven't tried it yet, the towel trick for the almonds WORKS!!!  We got nearly 2 lbs. of almonds blanched, cooled and husked in about 5 minutes (with 6 people helping).  
	Everyone tasted the almond milk and we agreed that it didn't taste a thing like milk but that it was lovely.  Various suggestions concerning amaretto, Kahlua and ice cubes were made...  ;-)
	On the subject of color:  Our almond milk was a rich, golden buttery/honeyed color.  Not at all white, but very creamy and good.  

	We tried two versions of frumenty; one with bulgur wheat and one with barley.  The bulgur we didn't add enough liquid to, so it burned; but the barley one (made with chicken stock) came out quite nicely.  I'm going to try a few more variations on this over the next few weeks... hope my hubby doesn't get sick of barley... <g>
	And it wasn't at all gloppy; the barley was firm but not crunchy, and the dish itself was creamy, though after it had sat for a couple of hours (covered), it got a little dry and stiff.
	Advice on keeping it creamy, anyone?

	The blancmange was lovely, if a bit bland... I wanted to get an idea of the "base" taste of the dish so we didn't add anything to the stock; just chicken and water.  Next time I'll definitely throw in the onions, celery and peppercorns while I cook down the chicken...
	Maybe it was just me, but I didn't really get a sense of the almond taste coming through in the blancmange, even though we used almost equal parts almond milk and stock.  Are you supposed to taste the almonds when you cook with almond milk?

	The Sauce for Goose recipe was actually the idea of our own Cathedral Choirperson, brid.  I had slated a pork roast for the first remove, but hadn't nailed down the sauce yet; and she ran across this recipe while flipping through To the Queen's Taste.  It's basically apples simmered in vinegar, stock and mustard, and then pureed with a little sugar and pepper.  It was heavenly on the chicken, and when I said, "brid suggested we put this on a pork roast," all my tasters went, "OOOOOOHHHHH!!!" so I think that's a yes vote...  :-)
	(Sometimes I wish I weren't allergic to pork.... <sigh>)

	All in all, it went very well.  I'm glad I made the blamanger at least once; two cups dry rice and half a chicken went a looooong way; longer than I thought it would... 

	We tried to stick to the source recipe for most of the dishes, taking only dry-to-liquid proportions from the published redactions.  I'm pretty proud of the way things came out... my crew, except for brid, are pretty much novices to period cooking, so I'm glad we're getting them trained "right" from the beginning... 

	Anyway, that about wraps it up.  Will post the completed menu in a little bit; I've got to pretend to be working here...  <g>

		- kat
	
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