SC - Cooking Classes

[lilinah at grin.net]

Roibeard was not alone when he said:
>I want to teach a few classes on medieval
>classes but don't know where to start (i.e. period foods, spices, methods of
>cooking, etc.).  Everytime I think of a topic, I don't see how to best teach
>it in a one or two hour session.

I have never taught Medieval cooking (i'm just learning myself - taking
Scully or Pleyn Delight to bed with me :-) but i have taught both
Indonesian and Southeast Asian cooking classes. I had at least two hours
(it was almost 18 years ago, and i don't remember just how long i had -
might have been three) and each course lasted 10 sessions. I also had a
large kitchen, as the courses were at a city college that regularly offered
cooking classes. I'd never taught before, but i had cooked, so...

I made a basic ten-class outline, what i wanted to start with (the less
unusual foodstuffs and techniques) and worked up to some fairly odd and
complex things. Then i could fill in or move things around as the whole
took shape.

For each class, i planned a menu for a complete but comparatively simple
meal. I talked *briefly* to introduce the culture of the country or region
from which the food came, the preparing and cooking methods to be used, and
any unusual ingredients. Then several students each took a recipe and made
it. I supervised to make sure things were going along as they should and to
answer any questions. I also helped prepare and cook. Then we all ate the
meal, discussing the process as we ate.

I had at least one class in which we explored a single technique, such as
making sate (often spelled satay in the US) which is an Indonesian/Malay
dish, but often appears under this name on Thai menus, or deep-frying
crispy snack-y things (common throughout in SE Asia), do get folks over the
fear of deep-frying.

For the last class in the Southeast Asian program, i didn't have a single
meal planned; rather, i gave out recipes from a number of different
countries which were very similar -- that is, several recipes for meat slow
cooked in a soy-sauce based sauce, several for different fresh cucumber
"pickles", for a green vegetable, and several unusual sweet drinks. Then we
decided which recipes to do, and we finished with a meal of multicultural
but compatible dishes.

So, there are several possibilities that i can imagine for approaching
teaching a short class:

Simple Complete Meal - If you have a couple hours and access to a decent
kitchen, you could design a simple meal. I would think it best to focus on
one time period and one "country", including the main dishes that would
appear in a meal. You wouldn't want to get to elaborate, as you will likely
have time and space constraints. Pick 3 or 4 recipes that make a nice meal
and have the class share the work. Don't try to do everything yourself.

Single Topic, Several Recipes - If you have access to a kitchen but more
limited time, you could limit your class to a single topic that doesn't
require too many different kinds of equipment, such as sauces or certain
kinds of vegetable dishes. Pick a number of recipes that you can complete
and sample in the allotted time.

History - If you don't have access to a kitchen at all (!!), you could
introduce Medieval cooking by talking about the differences between it and
modern cooking in terms of the attitude of the cooks and consumers of the
foos, the equipment and kitchen set up, what ingredients were used and how
a cook would get them, seasonings, "fish day" and other fast and Lenten
dishes, and resources both in terms of books and where to get unusual
ingredients. In one hour you won't be able to cover all the above topics;
just pick one or two you can cover. For beginners, i'd start with how
attitudes and kitchens and equipment and methods differed, but that's just
off the top of my head - you might have a different perspective.

If you haven't taught cooking before, i would suggest starting with a
"beginner's class: think about the first stuff you learned and how you
would have liked to have begun learning. What would you have wanted to know
for starters? History and culture? Hands-on? How to make a particular kind
of dish?

It sounds like you have already had some of these ideas, but are sort of
chickening out. Sit down with a piece of paper (or open your favorite word
processor :-) and start jotting notes and/or making an outline. Pick *one*
topic, whatever grabs you, and start inventing a focused class. Keep the
class focused - either on a technique, a type of recipe, one particular
time and place, a featured ingredient, i'm sure you can think of more. Keep
the focus and i bet you can draft a basic class in no time. So what if it
looks too long! Get the "meat", the jist of the topic down - when you're
satisfied you've gotten down what you want on the topic, then go back and
edit to suit your allotted time. Don't start writing with the time in mind
or you'll feel hampered. Get what you want to say on the topic, then go
back and edit.

Hope this is a little help,

Best wishes,

Anahita Gawri bint-Karim al-hakim al-Fassi


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

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".

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