SC - Medieval BBQ

[Christine A Seelye-King]

We are in the testing stages of recipes we will be using at the Pennsic
Meridian Party.  We are working on spice/vinegar blends to use on grilled
meats, and are working with several period recipes to get the balance of
spices together.  We did a Baronial Champion's Tourney yesterday with two
experimental batches, and they were a big hit.  I am working with the
basics from several Egredouce recipes to get the spices.  Our technique
will be a bit different, but it is not too far from what the originals
call for.  They usually say to boil and then roast the meats (we won't be
boiling first, probably humorally wrong, but some recipes don't call for
that step, anyway) with some spices, and then either serve with a sauce
or cook the roasted meat for a longer period of time in the sauce itself,
and then serve.  We are using the spices in a couple of ways.  We made up
a 'dry rub' to smoke some meats with, and we also made up a 'marinade' of
the sauce ingredients to soak the meat in before grilling (my lord's
preferred method, which has been requested by our King and Queen for our
party).   The two different spice blends we used were:

1) [based on Egredouce and pork with pepper sauce recipes] 
	Powdered spices including: winter savory, sage, thyme, cinnamon, pepper,
cubeb, ginger, mace, cloves, grains of paradise, galingale, garlic,
sugar(about 2 tbsp. to the whole mix, or roughly equal to any one of the
other spices in volume), and salt
	With the addition of a combination of distilled white and red wine
vinegars for the marinade.  I would like to make the sauce for this,
using red wine, red wine vinegar, and onions, cooking it down into a
syrup.  I think I can make this in advance and take it up there with me,
and use it to serve with the meat.  

2[based on simpler pork in pepper sauce recipes]
	Powdered spices including: cloves, mace, pepper, ginger, and salt.  

Number one was much more widely liked, the addition of the garlic and the
sugar really set it off.  (Temair did not like this one, and preferred
#2, but she is the only one I heard this from.)  I particularly liked
pouring a little of the vinegar marinade over the cooked meat, and think
the sauce will be wonderful with this.  My lord is still trying to get
over the fact that it isn't red, because his beloved capsicums are
missing, but Temair says that a little saunders (or the sandalwood I know
I have somewhere) will make it more red, and it should make him feel
better ;)
	Unfortunately, it rained in big buckets, so the tourney was called off,
so we stood under pavillions eating for a while in the thunderstorms
(only SCA folks would continue to sit under canvas, wood and metal frames
in a pouring down thunderstorm :/)  and eventually packed everything up
and came home.  We have a bit of bbq'd meat left, so we'll be
experimenting with sauces for a while.  
	Christianna
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