[Sca-cooks] RE: Sca-cooks digest, Vol 1 #1194 - 14 msgs

[Marilyn Traber]

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Well, my take on things [both as a sewer and as a cook]

As a sewer, when I make reproduction clothing for A&S, I copy extant
garments with as much attention to detail as I can [if it has a panel pieced
out of 3 pieces rather than one piece, for A&S I will do 3 pieces, for
personal wear I will cut it in one piece because I can 'waste' the 'cabbage'
[fabric trimmings of a size to be useful] as I have bought more than enough
fabric, and I don't have to actually make the fabric ;-)  I will also enter
something like a Hrolfsness tunic without trim if I haven't the time to
either embroider/embellish in a manner consistant with the garments found,
or a length of tablet-woven trim. I will put storebought trim on a garment
not intended for entry in A&S. I will also knock together a 1 hour t-tunic
to wear if I need one [but I would never try to claim it as period if I am
trying to get it to emulate a hrolf as it is inno way period for a hrolf.]

In cooking, a great example is a persian dish that my house calls 'persian
lasagne', layers of ground nuts, qata'if, rose water, syrup and drippings
from a saffroned chicken, and the pieces of the saffroned chicken. I have
been playing with it off and on, and I made it with modern qata'if, which is
sort of like raw shredded wheat bikkies. It does not match what Duke
Cariadoc has as a qata'if recipe from al Bagdadi, which is described more
like a flat bread/crepe/pancake sort of thing. So I have tried making it
using his 'flaky pastry' recipe, a pita recipe, and with a commercial lavash
[armenian flatbread.] I also made it for 36 people at our pennsic camp by
cheating and instead of layering it, rolling the ground nuts in lavash sort
of like making a batch of enchiladas [2 trays with duck, 1 tray with
chicken] that was extremely well recieved. I wouldn't enter that one in any
sort of A&S because the original recipe calls for layers, not rolls
[although the original qata'if recipe says that they are often rolled up]
and I wouldn't enter the storebough lavash version [even though the original
entered attempt was made with storebought qata'if because at the time I
didn't have a clue what qata'if was...] or the pita version but I would have
no trouble entering the flaky pastry version, or a homemade flatbread
version. I will admit to making chicken and duck with a rosewater and
saffron 'rub' with a touch of honey because it is really yummy, and I might
even serve it at pennsic [we try to cook fairly period foods most of the
dinners at pensic] and explain it is derivative of a persian recipe and
explain what the recipe actually is, but i wouldn't claim it to be a period
recipe.

If I play around with with [frex] bukenade, I may tweak the meats in it, or
the proportion of meats in it and still be able to claim it to be bukenade,
but that is mainly becasue it seems that bukenade is a fairly protean dish,
it can be made with a variety of meats in varying combinations as long as
everything else is the same. The same with some of the other things like the
wortes dishes that are described as various pot herbs/greens and use
spinach, kale, mustard greens, fresh herbs because in period they frequently
mentioned in the recipe to use what greens were available. I can play around
with different types of cheeses because if it just specifies a fresh green
cheese, it may be cow, sheep, goat, buffalo or something wacky like horse -
but as long as I use a fresh 'farmers' cheese I am pretty much good to go
[unless I feel frisky enough to make my own cheese...]

We like to cook using the 'recipes' we have found, and follow them as
closely as possible for a number of reasons - I like to because it makes me
feel a link with the cooks of the past. Same reason I love to cook an animal
I have raised and slaughtered in a period manner, it just deepens the link!
margali
the quote starts here:
See, in my world view, slavishly copying stuff from period sources is a
good way to learn, but once you have a reasonable understanding of the
topic you can use your knowledge to make your own things in the same
style.  This is most commonly seen in costuming, where people might
start by attempting to make costumes or garments to exactly match
portraits or whatever, but will eventually start to design their own
clothes based on a general style.  So if this is common and accepted in
costuming, why isn't it more accepted in cooking?
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