[Sca-cooks] Upcoming Feast

[Patrick Levesque]

Well, I'm finally going to serve some of those Romanian recipes. We're
hosting our annual Moldavian Tavern Event this week-end in Dragon Dormant.
The menu so far:

-Asparagus in a butter sauce
-Snails. The recipe has them cooked in oil and garlic, to which you later
add orange juice and parsley. Since I'm not doing a Lenten feast, I'm
substituting butter for oil.

-Boiled perch with spices (mostly saffron, cinnamon and various herbs)
-"Moldavian Meat Balls!". Since there was no meatball recipe in the
manuscript (actually, there was a fish meatball, but I already have a fish
dish), I've made one up based on various other manuscripts or research. This
is my first try at 'Creative period cookery' actually, so  wonder how it
will be received...

-Salad of chicory with capers

Then comes the Period Indian (based on 'Food of Ancient India'). Since the
recipes are not written out, I've had to narrow what I at first expected to
be  full Indian feast to just three dishes. The very flimsy historical
justification for including Indian dishes in an Eastern European feast is
that Gipsy slaves were frequently used as cooks in Romania; most researchers
now have Gipsies originating from India. It was really just an excuse to
slip in a few Indian dishes in the feast :-))

-deep-fried vegetables
-Rice boiled in milk, sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds
-Deer in a spicy sauce (including ginger, black pepper, cardamom, cumin,
coriander, cilantro, bay leaves, cinnamon, and cloves).

And finally, for desserts, some fruit sauces (haven't decided which fruits
yet, I'll see to that when I go shopping later this week) and cheesecake
(I'm using the recipe found on His Grace Cariadoc's website; there is no
evidence for cheesecake in Romania, however). Now, nothing prevents people
to add fruit sauce on their cheesecake, but I serve them separately since I
can't document it. 

Actually, the sauces should be served on fried slices of bread, which will
also be available. I intend to serve bread throughout the feast (except the
Indian part, since I already serve rice), fried either in oil, butter or
duck fat. 


Although mostly period (or 'near-period', as the cookbook is slightly OOP)
there are a few regional discrepancies; it is unlikely that these dishes
would have been served in period in one single feast. But I can live with
that :-))

I'll work on a booklet with more details for each recipes, which I'll post
here afterwards as well for those interested.

Petru