[Sca-cooks] a little dinner party

[Kirrily Robert]

Yesterday my partner and I decided we felt like cooking medieval, so I
dug out some recipes and we headed to the store.  Unfortunately our eyes
were bigger than our stomachs, so we had to invite some friends around.
It turned into a nice little dinner party with 3 period dishes plus
modern side dishes.

We cooked:

roast pork
boiled duck with turnips
tart of rice

The roast pork was originally a recipe for a roast fillet of veal, only
of course we couldn't find any veal suitable for roasting at the
supermarket on a Sunday afternoon.  So we just substituted:

    To roast a Fillet of Veal

    Take an excellent good leg of Veal, and cut the thick part thereof,
    a handful and more from the Knuckle: then take the thick part which
    is the fillet) and farce it in every part all over with
    Strawberry-leaves, Sorrel, Spinage, Endive, and Succory grosely
    chopt together, and good store of Onions, then lay it to the fire
    and roast it very sufficiently and brown, casting good store of Salt
    upon it, and basting it well with sweet butter: then take of the
    former herbs much finer chopt then they were for farcing, and put
    them into a pipkin with Vinegar and clean washt Currants, and boyl
    them well together, then when the herbs are sufficiently boyled and
    soft, take the yelks of four very hard boyled Eggs, and shred them
    very small, and put them into the Pipkin also with Sugar and
    Cinnamon and some of the gravy which drops from the Veal, and boyl
    it over again, and then put it into a clean dish, and the fillet
    being dredged and drawn, lay upon it and trim the side of the dish
    with Sugar, and so serve it up.

    - The Good Huswife's Jewell

I forget exactly what cut of pork we had, but it was just some kind of
supermarket pork roast, skin-on.  We cut into it to make a cavity for
stuffing, and stuffed it with a mixture of greens including sorrel (had
some in my garden, yay!), endive, strawberry leaves (garden again),
dandelion leaves (garden) and swiss chard (my partner is allergic to
spinach, it seems, but swiss chard is fine).  We basically packed as
much as we could into the cavity, tied it up, and roasted it until done.

The sauce was made as directed except that I diluted the vinegar with
water.  It was about 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup finely
chopped herbs, the egg yolks, currants, and the pan drippings.  Tasty.

The dish worked very well and I wouldn't hesitate to do it for a feast.
The roast itself would also be good for a potluck or buffet lunch,
sliced.  I don't know if the sauce would be good cold or not.


    To boyle a Ducke with Turneps

    Take her first, and put her into a potte with stewed broth, then
    take perselye, and sweete hearbs, and chop them, and perboyle the
    rootes very well in an other pot, then put unto them sweet butter,
    Cynamon, Gynger, grosse Pepper and whole Mace, and so season it with
    salt, and serve it upon soppes.

We found frozen duck at the supermarket!  I don't know if it's safe to
do or not in a real catering situation, but at home we've found that if
you have to boil a bird and it's still frozen, you can just throw it in
the pot and boil it til it floats to the surface.  Of course with a
fatty bird like duck it floats to start with, but it *really* floats
when it's done.  It took about 2 hours for the duck we had.  The broth
we used was just a mixture of all the bouillon powder I had... beef,
chicken, vegetable, about 1/3 each.

Anyway, the main decision with this dish was what to do with the parsley
- did it belong in the turnip pot or the duck pot?  The recipe could go
either way.  I chose to put the parsley with the turnips because we had
a vegetarian who might be attending (she didn't show up in the end,
though) and I wanted to make the turnips into a "stand alone" dish for
her if necessary.  Not a very scientific basis for the decision, but it
worked out fine.

The turnips were cut into "fingers" and boiled in slightly salted water,
then when they were pretty much done I poured off all the water, put a
cup or so of fresh water in, along with a bunch of parsley chopped
moderately finely, a couple of tablespoons of butter, a good shake of
cinnamon and ginger, pepper and salt, but no mace (I thought that chunks
of mace would be unpleasant at that point in the cooking... I should
have added it earlier if I'd wanted it.)

We served this by layout out the turnip fingers, then cutting up the
duck and putting the portions on top of the turnips.

This is a good turnip dish in its own right... really quite tasty... and
I think it would go down well at feasts.  And it's quite cheap to do,
with turnips at only a few cents a pound and nothing else very expensive
in it.

    To make a Tart of Ryce

    Boyle your Rice, and put in the yolkes of two or three Egges into
    the Rice, and when it is boyled, put it into a dish, and season it
    with Suger, Sinamon and Ginger, and butter, and the juyce of two or
    three Orenges, and set it on the fire againe.

I cooked about a cup and a bit of generic white rice in a rice steamer.
I let it cool then added the yolks of three eggs, about half a teaspoon
each of cinnamon and ginger, and the juice of 2 oranges.  I forgot to
put the butter in, though, which made it a bit dry.  The resulting stuff
was put into a generic pie crust and baked at 180C until it was starting
to go brown.

The resulting tart was a bit dry and didn't hold together very well when
sliced.  The butter would have fixed that to some extent.  I think also
that I should have erred on the higher end with the OJ, and used 3
oranges.  Also, a similar recipe from Markham's "The English Housewife"
has cream in it, and that would also have helped.  Finally, I think if
I'd chosen a style of rice that cooks "gloopier" (i.e. gives off more
starch, like arborio rice or similar), the pie might have been smoother
and less dry and grainy.  As it was it was edible, but not great.  With
modifications it could be really nice.

Along with this we served a garden salad and fresh bread.

All recipes are taken from the Good Huswife's Jewell by Thomas Dawson
(1596).

Yours,

Katherine


--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"