[Sca-cooks] Siege Cookery at Talonvale: The Premise and Ingredients

[Gaylin Walli]

This past weekend I was pleased to be invited to judge a siege cookery 
competition held in the Shire of Talonvale, here in the Pentamere 
region (lower Michigan) of the Middle Kingdom. The event was the "Siege 
on Talonvale," an annual, good natured argument between the Barony of 
Cynnabar and the Barony of Northwoods over who maintains the 
protectorate status of the Shire of Talonvale. This was the first year 
the siege cookery competition was introduced. I'd like to share with 
you the short handout that the cooks received on their arrival:

"Welcome to the First Annual Siege Cookery Contest

"We must impress the Lord of the Keep from what little we have in our 
cellars. There are some things from the gardens, and there would have 
been more had the goat not gotten loose. The head cellarkeeper was so 
outraged that he slaughtered the goat, as you will note from your 
available ingredients.

"Frankly, he is not the best cellarkeeper. Due to a mistake, all the 
oil went rancid so we have beef fat, which will need to be melted down 
in order to use. We've sent the children up to steal eggs from the 
geese that nest in the north tower, as we have no chickens left. We 
also sent soldiers out at night to pick berries form the hedgerows. 
That was quite the expeditions! Soldiers, picking berries!

"We bought a few things from a trader - we snuck a man out to meet with 
him. He had Saracen corn flour, which we mixed with the small amount of 
rye flour we had left. He also had nutmeg nuts, some salt, and some 
cones of dark sugar, that sort of thing. And, along with some odd 
looking mushrooms we found growing in the cellar, that's about it.

"Good luck!"

With that, the teams were left to choose pre-measured amounts of 
ingredients from a list they were given. The list was:

-- Grains (up to 2): oats, millet, saracen corn & rye mix.
-- Meat (up to 2): goat meat, goat bones.
-- Dairy (up to 3): cheese [it was Asiago I think], buttermilk, 2 goose 
eggs.
-- Vegetables (up to 4): carrots, rutabagas, mushrooms, dried lentils, 
onions, garlic, cabbage [red or green], parsnip.
-- Liquids (up to 2): cider vinegar, beef fat. Note: as much water 
could be used as they liked.
-- Fruits (Mulberries, plus 1): white currants, gooseberries.
-- Spices (up to 7): white sage, fennel seed, coltsfoot, cinnamon 
chips, rosemary, cumin, nutmeg nut, juniper berries, parsley, star 
anise, yeast, sugar cone, celery seed, nettle, salt, anise seed.

The teams were allowed to use whatever means at their disposal to cook 
the dishes they wished. There were no specific requirements on number 
of dishes, nor, I think, on the period nature of them, though that was 
the tacit understanding of the competition. No team was required to 
support their choices with period sources, nor were they judged on it, 
as this was the first time the contest was held.

No presentation to the judges was required other than making the dishes 
available (that is, we didn't need to be served). Teams were judged in 
two categories, for simplicity and because this was the first time the 
event was held: presentation and taste, on a scale from one to ten, 
with 10 being the most points possible.

I have more notes and commentary almost ready on the actual dishes, 
with descriptions of what each team produced, but that would make this 
email overlong. I'll try to get the rest of the writeup done by this 
evening.

Cheers!

Iasmin

Iasmin de Cordoba, Baroness Roaring Wastes, Middle Kingdom
iasmin at comcast.net