SC - OOP & OT: Now 'Non-paying Boarders' Was Tempera question

[CorwynWdwd@aol.com]

I have a recipe for Oatcakes (can't say that word without invoking a thick 
Scottish accent-ooouuutcaaakes)

Here is some work on the matter. I used the recipe for an Irish feast. It 
worked very well using an oven and can be made ahead.

 A period reference to scottish oat cakes is found as an observation by 
Froissart, as found in Cariadoc’s Miscellany, 

"the only things they take with them [when riding to war] are a large 
flat stone placed between the saddle and the saddle-cloth and a bag 
of oatmeal strapped behind. When they have lived so long on 
half-cooked meat that their stomachs feel weak and hollow, they lay 
these stones on a fire and, mixing a little of their oatmeal with 
water, they sprinkle the thin paste on the hot stone and make a small 
cake, rather like a wafer, which they eat to help their digestion.   


Oatcakes
His Grace, Duke Sir Cariadoc writes;
So far as I know, there are no surviving period recipes for oat cakes. This 
article is an attempt to reconstruct them, mainly on the basis of Froissart's 
brief comment. Rolled oats--what we today call "oatmeal"--are a modern 
invention. I assume that "oat meal" in the middle ages meant the same thing 
as "meal" in other contexts--a coarse flour. The only other ingredient 
mentioned is water, but salt is frequently omitted in medieval 
recipes--Platina, for instance, explicitly says that he doesn't bother to 
mention it--so I have felt free to include it. The oat cakes Froissart 
describes are field rations, so unlikely to contain any perishable 
ingredients such as butter or lard, although they may possibly have been used 
in other contexts.Consistent with these comments, the following is my 
conjectural recipe for oatcakes as they might have been made by Scottish 
troopers c. 1400:

1/2 c "Scottish Oatmeal" --very coarsely ground whole oats. 1/4 c water
1/4 t salt

Put the oatmeal in a spice grinder and process for about 20 seconds, 
producing something intermediate between
what you started with and bread flour. Add salt and water and let the mixture 
stand for about 
fifteen minutes. Make flat cakes 1/4" to 3/8" in thickness, cook on a medium 
hot griddle, without oil, about 3-5 minutes.

The result is a reasonably tasty flat bread. In scaling the recipe up for a 
meal or a feast, you would want to experiment with grinding whole oats into 
meal or find a finer (and less expensive) oatmeal 
than the gourmet product, intended for making porridge, that I was using.

(An earlier version of this article was published in Serve it Forth: 
A Periodical Forum for SCA Cooks, Volume I, Number 2 (April 1996). 
Information on that publication is available from Mary Morman 
(Mistress Elaina de Sinistre), 1245 Allegheny Drive, Colorado 
Springs, CO 80919,  memorman at oldcolo.com.)

David/Cariadoc


The recipe that I was working on originates in Traditional Irish Recipes, by 
John Murphy and is simply oats and water. There is a second recipe that comes 
from The Scots Kitchen, by Meg Dod. The latter recipe includes flour, sugar, 
eggs and milk. A bit more rich than the former.


This is my redacted recipe based on Froissarts observations;
.75 lbs steelcut oats
2 cups hot water
pinch salt

mix ingredients, let sit for a few hours to soak up water. Make 4 inch cakes. 
Cook on a greased med-hot grill for 7-10 minutes on one side.  Place in a 350 
degree  oven for a further 7-10 minutes. makes 16 cakes

The following recipe is one that I developed based on the more elaborate 
recipe from the later period source and in conjunction with one that 
originates from a restaurant in Carrickfergus named Killybegs. 


The World’s Best Oatcakes 
(As Sampled in Killybegs, November 96)
Ingredients
1 ½ cups white flour
2 cups rolled oats or oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
¼ pound of butter (you can substitute cooking oil for the butter, with 
reducing the amount of milk; it just makes a crisper cake)
¾ cup buttermilk or sweet milk soured with a little vinegar.
What to Do
Mix together the dry ingredients.
Cut in ¼ pound butter or rub it in with your fingers until the mixture is 
like fine meal.
Add ¾ cup buttermilk or sweet milk soured with a little vinegar.
Work the dough briefly with your hands, adding a few more sprinklings of 
flour, until it is no longer sticky. Divide dough into 6 lumps. Patting it 
with your hands, shape the six lumps into flat disks, about 4 or 5 inches in 
diameter, doesn’t matter how thick. Put them on a buttered cookie tin. Cut 
each disk into quarters but don’t separate them. With the point of a butter 
knife, print a small cross into each quarter. (An old Irish cook told me this 
lets the devil out and makes them keep better; I never omit this step.)
Bake them in a preheated oven at 400 degrees F. (200 degrees centigrade) for 
about 15-20 minutes, until they start to be tinged with brown. Turn the oven 
off, leave the oven door ajar, and let them crisp up on the outside for ten 
minutes more. Break the quarters apart. And serve them hot or cold with tea. 
With butter or cheese or jam. Or tuck them in your kit bag if you’re going 
off to war or to the New World, or any place where you might need nourishing, 
long-keeping food. I bet William Wallace ate a lot of these cakes in his 
skirmishes with the invaders.


Scots Crumpets , A traditional recipe from The Scots Kitchen,  Meg Dod, 1929

Flour, sugar, eggs, milk.

Make the batter some hours before it is required. Beat separately the yolks 
and whites of four eggs. Pour into a basin and add half a pint of milk and 
three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Mix well, and gradually add flour till you 
have a thickish batter. Beat till quite smooth and set aside. Put a girdle or 
frying-pan on a bright clear fire and rub with suet. To have light, pretty 
crumpets the fire must be brisk and the girdle hot, so that they will reise 
quickly. Drop with a spoon as many as the girdle will hold, and before they 
have time to form a skin and get dry on the top they should be ready to turn. 
Do this quickly, and a lovely golden-brown skin as smooth as velvet will be 
formed and a delightfully light crumpet produced. 


Hauviette’s Adapted Recipe for Oatcakes
makes 16 oatcakes
1 cup of oat flour (2 cups ground rolled oats)
1 cup of  course ground steel cut oats
1cup butter milk or soured milk
3 eggs 
pinch of salt

Mix ingredients. Let sit for 1 hour. Cook as a pancake, on a hot griddle, not 
turning, but placing into a 350 degree oven to dry the tops.

Best of Luck with them!

Hauviette