SC - Workshops - long

[Christina Nevin]

Saluti,

Well last weekend I gave an "Introduction to Medieval Cuisine 101" talk and
workshop. There were four complete medieval-cooking novices and one
experienced cook (which is as many as you can fit in my little kitchen!). It
went quite well I thought, though I'm not used to speaking publicly and the
talk was probably a little long (but hey, there was a lot to cover!) so I
was hoarse by the end of it. 

Then I did the 'Ready, Steady, Cook' thing (not sure if you guys get that TV
program?) and gave them a whole bunch of typical ingredients (a whole
chicken, a pork roast, almonds, eggs, goats milk, rice flour, bottle of
wine, apples, pears, pastry, leeks and some other stuff I can't remember),
pointed them to the books and got them to sort out a menu according to what
I'd told them regarding dish style and order, humors, etc. I made comments
on various dishes and arrangements, but essentially they did the choosing,
and then the cooking.

They ended up with a menu consisting of a first course of Orange Omelette
for Harlots and Ruffians (which they were amazed at how nice and 'uneggy' it
was <laff>), a colored chicken pie and mushrooms fried & stewed, and a
second course of roast pork, apple & cubeb sauce, (a very brown) green
sauce, a hashed leeks dish, pears in wine syrup (I was most impressed they
remembered my aside about pears = 2nd course!), and rapes in armor. They
enjoyed eating the dinner and managed to use almost everything! So all in
all, it was quite successful.


I'm doing another, more specialised talk and workshop in May (5 workshops in
total this year) entitled "Fish, Humors and Vegetables (the influence of
religious restrictions, medical dietary & humoral theory, and vegetarianism
on the Christian medieval diet)", with the workshop part consisting of
cooking a Lenten Day meal - which should be somewhat _interesting_ as I'm
allergic to cooked fish (though not shellfish) and even the smell makes me
queasy. What to do, what to do! 
Ideas anyone? :-P

I also need some help on the research part. So far I have read/am reading
the following:
General:
C.Anne Wilson's "Food in Britain"
Scully's "Art of Cookery in MA" 

Religious restrictions & vegetarianism :
On order: "Holy Feast and Holy Fast" by Bynum 
Spencer's "The Heretic's Feast"

Medical dietary & humoral theory:
Mark Grant's translation of "Galen on Food & Diet" 
Scully's "Opusculum Saporibus" article
Spencer's "Tacuinum Sanitatis/Four Seasons" 

Does anyone have any books or articles that they can recommend which are
good on these topics - especially the religious restrictions topic?
('Lainie?) Only in English please (dangling appropriate foreign language
texts in front of me is merely cruelty disguised as helpfulness ;-). MTIA.

Al Servizio Vostro, e del Sogno
Lucrezia

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Lady Lucrezia-Isabella di Freccia   |  mka Tina Nevin
Thamesreach Shire, The Isles, Drachenwald | London, UK
thorngrove at yahoo.com | http://www.geocities.com/thorngrove 
"There is no doubt that great leaders prefer hard drinkers to good
versifiers" - Aretino, 1536 
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