[Sca-cooks] Metal Symposium Feast (long)

[Katja]

The Barony of Thescorre (mundanely, Greater Rochester,
NY) hosted an event on Oct. 24 focused on metal
working. 

Gentles made blades and tools over open forges, while
others etched and created jewelry.

Our baroness, Peregrine, prepared her *first* feast
for this special event. She had prepared several
lunches in the past, and helped in numerous event
kitchens, but this was her first feast as head cook.
:)

I'm posting her menu and notes for her, since she is
not a member of these lists. 

Enjoy! 

Katja

*****************
Metal Symposium

October 25, 2003
A.S. XXXVIII
Barony of Thescorre

Feast Menu

fresh bread
butters (plain, honey, herb)
green salad with oil and vinegar dressing
rice
peas
mushroom tarts
turnips with cheese
roast beef
roast chicken
condiments for meats: freshly grated horseradish,
green garlic sauce, mustard
rice pudding
pears in wine sauce
cider
lemonade

Greetings Honoured Guests!

My goal with this feast was not to redact fabulous and
exotic recipes of the Middle Ages through Elizabethan
times, but rather to present a hearty assortment of
dishes from those periods (and a wee bit later),
fitting for a crisp fall day.

None of these redactions are my own. I have drawn from
the work of many of the classic cooks of our fair
Kingdom of Æthelmearc, including Dame Katja Orlova
Davidova Khazarina, Mistress Michaele del Vaga, Master
Huen Damebrigge of Wychwood, and Baroness Miriam
Meggett. My sincere thanks go out to all of those
people.

This meal would not have been possible without the
help of many good friends. Special thanks to Mistress
Michaele, who agreed to be my mentor and who opened
her home and kitchen so that we could prepare for this
feast. 

The guidance of Dame Katja was also invaluable, and we
have her to thank for the delicious fresh bread!
Mistress Michaele and Dame Katja also lent me books
from their private libraries. 

The support of the Thescorre Cooks Guild was crucial,
during the advance phases and for preparation on site.
Many thanks to Baron Steffan, Lady Bryn, Dubheasa,
Lord Carlo, Lady Juliana, Lord Dark Oak, Lord
Caradawc, Cathain, Eldjarn, Felippe, and Lord Ulric.
Thanks also to my husband, Baron Cedric, for his
support and help. 
Thank you all!

Peregrine
Baroness Thescorre


Recipe Collection/Ingredient Lists

A list of dishes and the ingredients used to prepare
them is below for those for which a recipe was not
used. The recipes that were used to prepare the dishes
follow. A bibliography of sources is at the very end.

Fresh bread: flour, yeast, water, butter, sugar
Honey butter: butter, honey
Herb butter: butter, parsley, minced garlic (garlic,
water, phosphates)
Mustard: ground mustard seeds, red wine vinegar,
raisins, pinch of cloves, cinnamon, ginger
Rice: rice, butter
Peas: just peas
Roast beef: beef, olive oil, salt, peppers
Cider: commercially available apple cider
Lemonade: made using commercially available powdered
drink mix; container available for review in
kitchen



Green Salad With Oil And Vinegar Dressing
Beebe, pg. 58

Simple Sallets

… young Lettice, Cabage lettice, purslan, and divers
other hearbes which may bee served imply without
anything but a little Vinegar, Sallet oyle, and Suger:
Onions boiled and stript from their rinde, and served
up with Vinegar, Oyle ,and Pepper is a good simple
Sallet.

2 heads romaine lettuce
1 bag spinach
parsley 
watercress
salt, white pepper, sugar
¼ C olive oil
¼ cup vinegar

Wash greens and shake water off. Tear greens to
desired size, and toss all together.

Mushroom Tarts
Scully, pg. 97

pastry crust (flour, butter, vegetable shortening,
salt)

Filling:
1 lb mushrooms, sliced and tossed in 1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp brown sugar
½ tsp each ginger, cinnamon, cloves
1 C mozzarella cheese
3 Tbsp parmesan cheese
½ tsp salt

Put pastry into a pie plate and bake blind for 5
minutes at 400°F. Toss all of the filling ingredients
together, put in the prepared pie shell and bake at
350°F for about 20 min.

The recipe for the filling is the one that Baroness
Miriam Meggett used for  the AEthelmearc Kingdom
Twelfth Night Feast, January 11, AS 37 with the
exception of the salt. Scully calls for salt, so I
included it too.
 
Turnips Baked with Cheese
Hieatt et al., Pleyn Delit, No. 38

Rapum Armentum, Platina VIII

Cut up boiled or roasted turnips; do the same with
rich cheese, not too ripe, but make the cheese in
smaller pieces. In a pan greased with butter or other
fat, make a layer of cheese first, then turnips;
repeat, pouring in spice and butter. It should be
quickly cooked. [condensed from a very long recipe.]

2 lbs turnips
10 oz. cheese (Swiss, mild Cheddar, mozzarella or
combination), grated in large pieces
¼ lb butter
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Peel and slice turnips. Parboil. Butter a casserole
dish. Put in cheese and turnips in alternating layers,
starting with the cheese. Season each pair of layers
with spices, salt, and pepper to taste, and placing
butter pats among the turnips. Bake at 325°F for 20-30
minutes.

The basic recipe for this dish came from the book
cited above. This particular recipe is how I make this
dish at home. That method came from a redaction by
Mistress Michaele del Vaga that Dame Katja used when
she cooked my own wedding feast.


Roasted Chicken
Digbie

TO ROST FINE MEAT

When the Capon, Chickens, or Fowl, have been long
enough before the fire, to be through hot, and that it
is time to begin to baste them: baste them once all
over very well with fresh Butter; then presently
powder it all over very thin with Flower. This by
continuing to turn before the fire,  will make a thin
crust which will keep in all the juyce of the meat.
Therefore baste no more, nor do any thing to it, till
the meat be enough rosted. Then baste it well with
Butter as before, which will make the crust relent and
fall away; which being done and that the meat is
growing brown on the Out-side, besprinkle it over with
a little ordinary white Salt in Gross-grains; and
continue turning, till the outside be brown enough.
	The Queen useth to baste such meat with yolks of
fresh Eggs beaten thin, which continue to do all the
while it is rosting.

Salt the cavity of the chicken and put in what herbs
you want. Butter the outside, season with salt and
pepper to taste. Roast in a hot oven till browned,
then add a little water to the pan and turn the oven
down a bit. Roast till done, basting occasionally. 

I did not follow Digbie’s method closely; I roasted
the chicken the way my Grandma taught me but omitting
the bread stuffing. Please note that no flour was used
to roast this chicken.

 Horseradish
Digbie

SAUCE OF HORSERADISH

Take roots of Horse-radish scraped clean, and lay them
to soak in fair-water for an hour. Then rasp them upon
a Grater, and you shall have them all in a tender
spungy Pap. Put vinegar to it, and a very little
sugar, not so much as to be tasted, but to quicken (by
contrariety) the taste of the other.

I dug up the horseradish from my back yard and
followed these directions using cider vinegar.


Green Garlic Sauce

1 c parsley
soak 2-3 slices of white bread in 1 C water and wring
out
minced garlic (garlic, water, phosphates) equivalent
to 6 cloves
1/3 c olive oil
¼ tsp white pepper
6 oz almonds
2 Tbls white wine vinegar
salt to taste

Puree all ingredients together. Will serve 2-3 tables.

This recipe is a blending of recipes from a couple of
places. Dame Katja served it at the Crown Tournament
feast of May AS 28. According to her feast booklet, it
is from Cristoforo di Messisbugo, Banchetti, Ferrera:
1549. Dame Katja used Mistress Michaele’s redaction
for my own wedding feast. I didn’t use these exact
amounts of ingredients. I started off with them, and
it seemed too thick so I added more of the liquids
(olive oil, vinegar, and water used to soak the bread)
until the consistency was more to my liking.

Rice Pudding
Beebe, pg. 73

To Make a Tart of Ryce, Thomas Dawson, The Good
Huswife’s Iewell (1596)

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 juice of two or three
Orenges, and et it on the fire againe.

3 c cooked rice
3 Tbsp butter
¼ cup sugar
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
½ c orange juice

Cook rice until it is tender. Add the remaining
ingredients and mix well. Continue to cook over low
heat for about five minutes, stirring constantly.
Chill thoroughly before serving. Serves 8.

The modern version of this recipe is a blending of
that from the AEthelmearc Kingdom Twelfth Night Feast,
January 11, AS 37 cooked by Baroness Miriam Meggett,
and the recipe found at
http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/ricetart.html.
 


Pears Cooked In Honey And Wine

Perys in Confyte

Perys in confyte. Take hony; boyle hit a lytill. Do
theryn sigure, poudyr of galentyn & clovis, brucet
anneyce, safron, & saundris, & cast theryn the peris,
sodyn & paryd & cutt in pecys, & wyn & venyger. Sesyn
hit up with poudyr of canell so that hit be broun
ynow.

3 lbs. pears, peeled, cored, & cut in half 
1/3 cup honey 
1/3 cup sugar 
1/2 tsp. each ginger and nutmeg
1 tsp. cardamom 
1/4 tsp. ground cloves 
1 tsp. anise seed, crushed, mixed with 1/4 tsp. sugar 
1/2 cup red wine 
1 tbs. cider vinegar 
cinnamon (to garnish)

Boil the pears in water until just tender; drain and
set aside. Add enough water (about a teaspoon or so)
to the anise/sugar mixture to make a thin sauce. Bring
the honey to a low boil; remove the scum as it rises
to the surface. Add sugar, spices, anise sauce, & food
coloring(s) and continue cooking until sugar is
dissolved. Gently stir in pears and the wine &
vinegar. Cook for a few more minutes, until pears have
warmed, then remove from heat. Serve hot or cold,
garnished with cinnamon on top.

Recipe and text copied from James L. Matterer’s
website, Godecookery.com. I have altered the recipe
for this booklet to reflect the spices and ingredients
I actually used.
 Bibliography

The recipes I used came from the following sources. In
some cases I did not copy the recipe and/or text
exactly as they appear in the source in order to
accurately reflect the ingredients and quantities I
used. This was done for the convenience of those with
dietary issues, so that they may know what is in the
food that is being served. When this occurred, it was
noted in the recipe.

Peregrine


Books and Facsimiles

Beebe, Ruth Anne, Sallets Humbles & Shrewsbery Cakes:
A collection of Elizabethan Recipes Adapted for the
Modern Kitchen (Boston : David R. Godine, 1976)

Digbie, Sir Kenelme, The Closet…Opened, 1669

Hieatt, Constance B., Brenda Hosington, and Sharon
Butler, Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks
(Buffalo: university of Toronto Press, 1996)

Scully, D. Eleanor and Terence Scully, Early French
Cookery: Sources, History, Original Recipes and Modern
Adaptations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1995)


Society for Creative Anachronism-Type Feasts

The Cauldron Bleu Cooks Guild, Un Banchetto
Primaverile In Roma, Menu for Crown Tournament, Barony
of Thescorre, May 1, A.S. XXVIII

Dame Katja Orlova Davidova Khazarina, Wedding Menu of
Peregrine & Cedric, 1999
http://www.geocities.com/katjaorlova/1999_PandCwedding.htm

Baroness Miriam Meggett, Æthelmearc Kingdom Twelfth
Night Feast in the Reign of Their Sylvan Majesties
Rurik and Elspeth, January 11, AS 37, Shire of
Sunderoak


On Line Resources

GodeCookery.com, Matterer, James L., “Perys in
Confyte,” 2000, October 2003,
<http://www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec27.htm>

Medieval Cookery. Myers, Daniel, “A Tart of Ryce,”
2003, October 2003, 
<http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/ricetart.html>


The cover art is from James Matterer’s on line
collection of images called “A Feast for the Eyes.”
The image I used is located at 
http://www.godecookery.com/afeast/feasts/fea041.html
and was copied on October 23, 2003.




I can't even begin to thank everyone who made this
feast a success. I am so afraid I left someone out,
because there are so many of you. Whenever
something needed doing, friends materialized and then
the job was done. 

It was a blast - I had such a good time working with
all of you. Thank you all!

Bob Reaf!
Peregrine




=====
Katja's Middle Eastern Dance Page http://www.geocities.com/katjaorlova/MEdance.html

AEthelmearc Cooks Guild http://www.geocities.com/aecooks/CGMain.html

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