SC - losenges fryes/potage of beans boiled

[Gwynydd of Culloden]

Well, the jury is now in on these two dishes - the event was Saturday night
and the losenges made a reappearance at a child's naming ceremony yesterday
(Sunday). so I can tell everyone my final impressions of them.

Starting with the fryes:

Well, I didn't get a lot of feedback on these at the event - although one
person at my table did ask if I had baked them at 250 (C) for 10 hours to
get them so hard!  Makes me wonder, are these supposed to be crisp and
slightly hard (they could be bitten!  honestly *smile*)?  I rolled them to
pasta dough
thickness and then fried them until they were lightly golden.  The slightly
thicker ones were chewier - not better though, IMO.  I did speak to one or
two other people about them, one of them a notoriously picky eater, and
they
both liked them.  I thought they were nice - but then I like those slightly
hard "slow cooked" crisps (potato chips) too. There were quite a lot left
over - but they were in the last course so that is not overly surprising.  

On the other hand, my daughter, who was one of the servers, told me that
the first time they were taken around, people were asked to take only one
(I guess that the other servers didn't see the 4 bags full in the kitchen!)
- - the next time more were allowed and, she tells me, they seemed very
popular with people taking up the seconds option.

The next day, the losenges fryes were put out at a naming ceremony at which
there were a large number of non-SCA people.  The comments I over heard
(and actively solicited) were complimentary, with a number of people being
surprised that the recipe was as old as it is *smil*.

Now the Potage:

This was in the first course and about half the potful was eaten.  It was
not taken around a second time - and one person did comment on that in the
clean up when she noticed the half a potful sitting there.  She had assumed
that it was all eaten and that there was not enough for seconds - she took
the rest of it home in a zip loc bag.

I chose to use lima beans and muscatel grapes for this.  I pushed the
cooked
beans through my mouli, but I had to use the courser blade so it also
needed
to be blended.  Even still, it was grainy.  I felt that it could have
benefited from more time in the blender - but I was having real problems in
the kitchen so some batches were not as smooth as they might have been.  I
did discover that almond milk boils over!  *sigh*  I certainly reached a
point when I was ready to throw in the towel (if it hadn't been covered in
almond milk, that is) - in fact I heard myself saying "I hate cooking",
which is an unusual sentiment on my part.  The knowledge that I still had 8
or so batches of lozenges to make after this didn't help my mood!

When I was reheating the potage, I was not happy with the taste.  It seemed
to me that it needed more flavour.  I asked Min and Lorix (who are both
experienced medieval cooks and whose opinion I value) what they thought and
they both agreed that it needed help - Lorix said that it either needed to
be savoury-ed or sweetened.  I would have added more wine, more raisins,
and
more honey had I had them on hand.  At least double the quantities given
for
wine and raisins and quite a bit more honey.  In the end, having not
brought
the wine (well, except some for drinking which I was unwilling to
relinquish!) or raisins from home, I settled for emptying most of a 500g
jar
of bush honey into it as well as a tiny amount of vinegar.  I would also
have been tempted to add salt (which I felt would not be out of keeping
with
the recipe - given that at least one cookbook from period points out that
salt is not included in the recipes) because it is good at accentuating
flavours.  Some spices - cinnamon and ginger mostly - would have been nice,
but I did not feel they could be justified in the context of the recipe.
All in all, I was actually very surprised how much of it got eaten.

Gwynydd

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