SC - cooking times

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

hey all from Anne-Marie
it amuses me no end when people assume period food has to be difficult or
time consuming.

At SCA events, I am notoriously busy, but still manage to run the kitchen
for a group of 8-15 people, cooking only documented period food, on a fire.
some ideas that work well for us...

limit the cooking to dinner time. You're more likely to to find the time,
and only having to build one fire a day and do one batch of dishes helps a
lot.
do as much precooking as you can manage...makes everything at the event
much easier!
prebake pies and tarts and pastez for lunches. No plates required. In fact,
we tend to do a cold but hearty brunch (pastez, fruit, harboiled eggs,
bread products, interesting cheese, pickled things, sweet biscuits like
shortbread/marchpanes, etc), so we dont have to gear up for breakfast when
we're all getting ready to go fight/meetings/classes/whatever. If you
insist on a hot breakfast, do poached eggs (less cleanup than herbolade,
which makes notoriously grungy pots), toast the bread over the fire.

for dinner:
preroast a chicken. wrap it in foil. premake the sauce, store in a jar. On
site, put the chicken in a large pot. Dump the sauce on and stew until
heated through. the same could be done for a small pork loin roast, or even
a lamb hunk. You can make beef olives at home. Store them in a zippie.
Store the broth in a jar, or as dry boullion. Assemble and simmer on site.

ravioles. You can buy frozen raviolies. Boil on site and serve, strewn with
pregrated parmasean cheese and poudre forte. you can also use the little
dried ravioles (which are outstanding when the cheese you use is
gorganzola, by the way!!!!)

salat. buy the already washed greens in a bag. premake the dressing and
keep it in a jar. Preprep the other ingredients and put in a zippie.
Assemble in a period bowl on site.

shishkabob like objects (skewer meat bits and mushrooms) means no pots to
clean and need no plates and require no prep, especially if you skewer them
at home and bring them in a big tupperware.

premake a pie or tart. Pre stew your wardyns in syroppe and keep in a jar.
warm them up on site. serve store bought wafers with your ypocras.


hope this helps! Most medieval food is boil and serve, which means its
actually less fussy than a lot of modern food.

good luck!
- --Anne-Marie, another one of those mean old period people :)