SC - No Period Feasts Allowed?

[Bfogartyjr@aol.com]

Doubtless you will chide me for the following, but the imps had taken
over my mind. Mea Culpa.

>From the MK-cooks list (with some snippage):
Jen Conrad wrote:
>From the Crown Princess of Trimaris, Anastasiya Zadorovc, OL:
>"While I am on the subject of food, let me address feast in general.  More
>than anything, his Highness and I want our populace to be able to eat the
>food that their populace has paid for.  So when we step up, we request that
>all Feastcrats endeavor to stay away from all period feasts.  We do not mind
>if some removes are of a period nature, however, we wish other removes of a
>more easily digested by the majority-of-the-populace nature!  We understand
>the reason that totally period feasts are cooked, but in some cases our
>populace is paying the price for historical accuracy: and their
>twentieth-century palates (and sometimes tummies) are unable to appreciate
>the research and effort that went into cooking that particular time period."

>... just going to have to suck it up and serve Happy Meals to high table?  
>I'm just dismayed at this point...
>Wolfmother aka Baroness Dianna Wyndalan of Kidwelly

Perhaps happy meals is just what they need...

LET EM EAT HAPPY MEALS! by Ian Gourdon

Starting with the meat:
OED: 
•C. 1420 Two Cookery Bks. 3 To make stekys of venysoun or Beef. 

•1426 Lydg. De Guil. Pilgr. 12802 Now to ffrye, now steykës make, And
many 
other soteltes; 

•C. 1450 Douce MS. 55 xvij, Take feyre moton of the buttes & kutt it in 
maner of stekes;
also:
"Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books in one recipe use the word "stekys" 
which are "gredyl it up broun" 
.........................
Or if she prefer it as a sloppy Joe:
"For To Make a Bruet of Sarcynesse: 
Take the flesh of the fresh beef and cut it all in pieces and bread and
fry  it in fresh
grease take it up and dry it and do it in a vessel with wine and  sugar
and powder of
cloves, boil it together till the flesh have drunk the  liquor and take
the almond milk and
quibibs maces and cloves and boyl them  together, take the flesh and do
thereto and mix
it forth. (Ancient Cookery,  1381)"
...................
Add bread:
Platina pp. 13-14 (Book 1) 
"... Therefore I recommend to anyone who is a baker that he use flour
from wheat meal, well ground and then passed through a fine seive to
sift it; then put it in a bread pan with warm water, to which has been
added salt, after the manner of the people of Ferrari in Italy. After
adding the right amount of leaven, keep it in a damp place if you can
and let it rise. ... The bread should be well baked in an oven, and not
on the same day; bread from fresh flour is most nourishing of all, and
should be baked slowly."
...
and if you want to really get into it, for a proper Cheeseburger effect:
Cheddar Bread (4 servings) 
      2 1/2 c Unbleached Flour 
      1/2 c Sugar 
      2 ts Baking Powder 
      1 ts Salt 
      1/2 ts Cinnamon; Ground 
      3/4 c Milk 
      1/4 c Vegetable Oil 
      2 ea Eggs; Lg 
      1 1/2 c Apples; Cooking, * 
      2 c Cheddar; Sharp, Shredded 
      3/4 c Walnuts Or Pecans; Chopped 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and grease and flour a 9 X 5-inch
loaf pan. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt
and cinnamon.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the milk, oil,
and eggs. Stir
until thoroughly combined. Gently stir in the chopped apples, cheddar
cheese, and nuts.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven until loaf is
browned and sounds
hollow when tapped on the bottom. Cool in the pan on a rack for 5
minutes. Remove
from the pan and cool to room temperature, on a wire rack, before
slicing. (obviously
not a period bread, as her majesty requested some more modern elements)
...................
On potatoes:
Gaspard Bauhin's 1596 _Phytopinax_: 
"...The root if of an irregular round shape; it is either brown or
reddish-black, and one 
digs them up in the winter lest they should rot, so full are they of
sugar. ... 
... We have further learnt that this plant is also known under the name
of tartuffli, 
doubtless because of its tuberous root, seeing that this is the name by
which one speaks
of Truffles in Italy, where one eats these fruits in a similar fashion
to truffles." 
...
One might go out on a limb and do Armored Potatoes, a bit like those
cheesy curly fries:
"THREE POTATO GRATIN (modern version)

1 tablespoon unsalted butter 
2 heads of garlic, split in half 
1 quart of cream 
1 pound peeled white potatoes, 1/4-inch slices 
1 pound peeled sweet potatoes, 1/4- inch slices 
1 pound red potatoes, 1/4-inch slices 
2 cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, plus 2 tablespoons for garnish 
Salt and white pepper 
Essence (notice this is from Emeril?)
2 tablespoons chopped chives 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a porcelain souffle dish with
the butter. In a sauce pot, bring the garlic and cream up to a simmer.
Season with salt
and white pepper. Simmer the cream for 15 minutes, or until the cream
has reduce
by 1/4 and has slightly thickened. Season the potatoes with salt and
white pepper.
Alternate layering the white potatoes, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, and
cheese in the
prepared dish. You should have a total of six layers. Remove the garlic
from the cream and
pour over the potatoes. 
Cover the souffle dish with aluminum foil. Place in the oven and bake
for 30-35
minutes. Remove the foil and continue cooking for 10 minutes or until
the top is golden
brown. Cool the gratin for 10 minutes before serving. Place a piece of
the gratin on a
plate and garnish with Essence, cheese, and chives. Yield: 9 servings" -
Emeril Lugasse
...
Though, if the queen be brave and like the odd turnip;
Armored Turnips - Platina,  p. 147 (book 8) in one translation:
"Cut up turnips that have been either boiled or cooked under the ashes.
Likewise do the
same with rich cheese, not too ripe. These should be smaller morsels
than the turnips,
though. In a pan greased with butter or liquamen, make a layer of cheese
first, then a
layer of turnips, and so on, all the while pouring in spice and some
butter, from time to
time. This dish is quickly cooked and should be eaten quickly, too."
...................
And then of course, Tomatoes:
"Actually tomatoes were brought back from America by the Spanish and
were seen on the tables of the Spanish court at the very end of the
1500's (1579 I
believe is the earliest reference).  Like most exotic food of the time
only the nobility had
access to it when it was first introduced and their method of preparing
it was to slice it
and roll it in bread crumbs and fry it like one would do to zuccinni. If
your doing a Spanish
feast from the late 1500's this would be an appropriate dish for head
table. - Giovanna"
....................
now after that love apple treat, add a little Mustard to that happy
experience:
Gerard's Herball, 1633 edition, pages 345-347: 
"Poma Amoris. Apples of Loue. ...In Spaine and those hot Regions they
vse to eat the Apples prepared and boiled with pepper, salt, and oile:
but they yeeld very little nourishment to the bodie, and the same nought
and corrupt. Likewise they doe eat the Apples with oile, vineger and
pepper mixed together for sauce to their meate, euen as we in these cold
Countries doe Mustard."
....................
Now, last but not least, for that refreshing soft drink:
...from _The 'Libre de Diversis Medicinis' in the Thornton Manuscript
(MS. Lincoln Cathedral, A.5.2)_. Edited by Margaret Sinclair Ogden.
Published for the Early English Text Society by Humphrey Milford, Oxford
University Press. Amen House, E.C. 4. England. 1938. 
Text circa early 1400 CE. Page 60 

"Rose Syrup 
Tak an vnce or twa of roses & sethe tham in water to the ij partis be
sothen in. Than clene it thurgh clathe & do suger ther-to & sethe it to
it be thikk as hony & vse as thu dose the tother."
...
Though if she prefer Hot Chocolate:
"When the Spanish conquistadores led by Hernan Cortes were in Mexico in
1520, one of their officers, Bernal Diaz, observed that the emperor
Montezuma was drinking chocolatl, a beverage consisting of powdered
cocoa beans and ground corn, flavoured with tlilxochitl (ground black
vanilla pods) and honey. For more than three centuries after this,
Mexico was the leading vanilla-producing country in the world despite
attempts to plant the vines elsewhere." 
- - http://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm:1104/lectures/vanilla.html 
by Dr. Robert J. Lancashire, 
The Department of Chemistry, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus,
Kingston
7, Jamaica. - Feb 1995 
...
"Bernardino de Sehagun, a Franciscan friar, who arrived in Mexico in
1529, wrote about vanilla, saying the the Aztecs used it in cocoa,
sweetened with honey, and sold the spice in their markets, but his work,
originally written in the Aztec language, was not published until
1829-1830. The Spaniards early imported vanilla beans into Spain, where
factories were established in the second half of the sixteenth century
for the manufacture of chocolate flavored with vanilla."  
 - Shank's Extracts 1-800-346-3135
shanks at shanks.com -- http://www.shanks.com/aboutvanilla/history.htm 

VOILA: Happy Meals, fit for a Queen. And generally period, too.
- -- 
Ian Gourdon of Glen Awe, OP
Known as a forester of the Greenwood, Midrealm
 http://web.raex.com/~agincort