[Sca-cooks] Bright Hills' Trial by Fire

[Elaine Koogler]

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I had a wonderful experience this past weekend competing in the Trial by
Fire competition sponsored by the Cooks' Guild of the Barony of Bright
Hills.  The folks up there are truly wonderful, and it was great to get
to "play" all day with a bunch of fine cooks.  The final spread that was
put out was amazing!  Not only was the food delicious, but the
presentations were something to behold.  There were four categories,
meat, veggies, grains and desserts, with a grand champion to be chosen
overall.  Master Chirhart, of this list, won the meat competition with a
chicken and prune dish that was excellent...I'm sure that, if persuaded,
he'll share the recipe with us!  One thing I did discover...I now have
an idea as to what those guys on Iron Chef feel like as they head down
to the wire....I really had to scramble to get everything done and
plated during the last 15 minutes of the competition!

To cap off a wonderful day, during a meeting of the Cooks' Guild, I was
voted in as an honorary member of the Guild...which was later modified
to "the founding member of the Dun Carraig branch of the Bright Hills
Cooks' Guild"....thanks a bunch, guys!!!  It is a great honor.

I did three dishes, all from Perry's "Medieval Arab Cookery" book, and
all were well-received.  Probably the best of the three was the lamb
stew dish which everyone really liked.  The almond-stuffed dates were an
experiment as the recipe sounded very much like the Dates Alexandrine
from Apicius.  The result was actually much better...the dates are
actually cooked in a mixture of honey and rosewater with saffron, then,
while they are cooling, sprinkled with a mixture of caster sugar and
poppy seeds.  They were moister and more flavorful than the Roman
version, we thought.  I am attaching a Word file with the recipes in it
to this.  If anyone cannot read the file, let me know and I'll send the
recipes in a mail message.  I'd love to know what you all think of my
redactions....

Thanks!

Kiri
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[ Trial by Fire recipes.doc of type application/msword deleted ]
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