[Sca-cooks] RE: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 20, Issue 54
Deborah Geary
derborgaill at hotmail.com
Thu Jan 13 07:40:03 PST 2005
Congratulations, Jadwiga.
Lady Dearbhforgaill an Chomhaidh
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Subject: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 20, Issue 54
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu)
(Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise)
2. Re: Steppes 12th Night is completed (Stefan li Rous)
3. Re: Feasts Per Year (Samrah)
4. Re: Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu) (chirhart_1 at netzero.com)
5. Re: Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu) (Martin G. Diehl)
6. Re: Steppes 12th Night is completed (Terry Decker)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:39:37 -0500
From: Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu)
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <20050113053937.GA28542 at fiedlerfamily.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >It's going to be an Anglo-Saxon feast. Not a lot of primary sources
to draw
> >on, which is a bit of a bummer. I'd hoped to be able to access the
> >Leechdoms
> >in the Old English Corpus, but I didn't get around to writing to
Oxford in
> >time,
> >
FYI: Stephen Pollington wrote a book called 'Leechcraft', which consists
in large part of translations from the original leechbooks. Berelinde,
if you know someone who is going to be a Cooking thing or Birka I can
lend it to you...
--
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"The tumult and the shouting dies/ The captains and the kings depart
And we are left with large supplies / Of cold blancmange and
rhubarb tart." -- Ronald Knox
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 02:51:46 -0600
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Steppes 12th Night is completed
To: SCA-Cooks maillist SCA-Cooks <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <5AD8ECFE-6540-11D9-B69C-000393A414D0 at austin.rr.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
Earlier Gunthar mentioned that you might get reviews of his feast from
Bear and myself. Well, I am still not employed, so there was no rush to
leave Dallas to get back to Austin for work, so we didn't leave until
Monday morning and it's taken me a little while to catch up with the
list.
Anyway, I'm going to use Gunthar's reply to Bear to give my comments
about this feast. Hey, don't give Stefan an excuse, much less an
invitation...
> > In twenty odd years of Ansteorran feasts, I've seen less than a
dozen
> > that
> > were superior in both quality and authenticity of the cooking, a
> > couple of
> > those being under Gunthar's control.
Yes, I would give this feast an A-. It was one of the better ones I've
had. The only real problem I saw was the delay in getting some of the
second course food out.
> > The feast was intended to be two courses of about five items each.
It
> > became a feast of three courses (I suspect from cooking delays in
the
> > kitchen).
>
> Yep. Some things just weren't wanting to cook, so instead of making
> people wait longer for the second course we just sent out what was
> ready and announced the other two dishes when they were ready.
> Unfortunately, not many people partook of the last "course" because
> they said they were too full.
Yes, the portions looked small when they came out on the plates, but I
was pretty stuffed by the time I completed the second course. Of
course, since my lady doesn't like mushrooms I had her wastels yfarced
and her chireseye.
> Pity, they were a couple of my favorite
> dishes. The stewd capon and asparagut.
Asparagus? oh, well. No loss there. :-) I had already planned to give
that to my lady. But by the time that apparently come out, she was in
the kitchen cleaning dishes and I had probably left for the kitchen as
well to see if I might help out.
> > Other than the wastels yfarced, there was no bread with the feast.
> As a
> > baker, I find this a sad thing, as bread was a large part of any
> > medieval meal.
The wastels yfarced was probably my favorite dish at this feast. In
fact, I had gotten another one when they brought out seconds and
brought it home. But then, unlike most of the leftovers, I thought the
wastels yfarced would survive four hours in the car without
refrigeration.
>
> This was done deliberately on two counts. The first is that having
> bread sent around the hall, especially with the obligatory butters,
> is so overdone.
Well, I've liked it in resturants and a few feasts when they served
olive oil with the bread instead of butter.
> The other reason is that the meal was carb heavy
> enough so that more filler really wasn't called for.
Was it? It didn't seem that carb heavy. There were quite a number of
meat dishes.
>
> > Bear
> >
> > The Feast
> >
> > For the first course there was stwd beef, benes yfryed, buttered
> > wortes, chireseye, wastel yfarced and sauge.
> >
> > Of these the chireseye and the wastels yfarced were considered the
> > best.
Yes, I agree.
> > The chireseye appealed to those who like sweets and cherries. I
found
> > it a
> > little more glutinous than I would prefer
Perhaps. But as you mentioned there wasn't a lot of other bread.
> and I'm definitely not a great
> > fan of many fruits, but I will agree that it was one of the
> outstanding
> > dishes of the meal. I am thinking about experimenting with the
recipe
> > later.
>
> To hear that the cherieseye was so popular surprises and amuses me.
> I was rather disappointed in the flavor and texture. The creme bastard
> was supposed to go over it but didn't thicken enough in time for the
> first course.
That would have been good. The creme bastard was certainly good on top
of the apples.
> That sucks because I tried it later with the creme and it
> was perfect! Plus the contrast of the burgandy red pudding and white
> sauce appealed to my artist's eye.
>
> > The wastels yfarced were the big surprise. A savory stuffed and
baked
> > roll,
> > they presented a perfect blend of taste and texture. From my
> > observations,
> > the wastels were the best received dish at the feast.
>
> Another surprise to me as well. I nearly cut them from the menu as
> being kind of boring.
I'm sure glad you didn't cut them.
> Only at the demand of my assistant did I keep it in the
> menu.
Thank your assistant.
> Also, the recipe states that greens and raisins were to be added
> to the filling.
I think a few pieces/flakes of the greens would have been okay, but it
could easily be over done. I'm glad you left out both the greens and
the raisins.
> But the raisins had been under-ordered and used in the
> stewd beef and I decided to cook the greens seperately since the first
> course seemed kind of sparce to me.
I wasn't impressed by the greens.
>
> > The sauge, chicken served in a spicy sage sauce, was interesting,
but
> > the
> > sauce was a thick paste, where the recipe suggests that it is made
> as a
> > thick paste and thinned to a thick sauce. It didn't taste as spicy
as
> > the
> > recipe suggests it should be either. It was of enough interest that
I
> > think
> > I will try the sauce with fish in the near future.
>
> The main reason I kept the thickness of the paste was because I
> didn't want to overload the diners with vinegar.
This was the main thing I noticed about this dish. The paste would have
been better as a sauce. Being rather thick and chunky, it didn't really
want to spread over my piece of chicken as much as I might have wanted.
> I tasted the paste
> and it tasted right. I didn't want to add any more. (In case anyone
> wonders, it was about the thickness of warmed creamy peanut butter).
Mine was more like chunky peanut butter.
> I agree that I find the dish very interesting and agree that it could
> be
> great with fish!
>
> Something I was very unhappy with was that we had the chicken thighs
> beautifully roasted but then they were put into the steam table. By
> the time they were served they had become rather dry and mealy. I
> was totally disgusted with them. The breasts were okay, though.
I wonder if that was what was in the oven when I was cleaning up the
kitchen. I noticed that the ovens were still on, and asked if they were
supposed to be. Someone opened the door to several trays of rather over
cooked and blackening chicken pieces. Oops. :-)
> An amusing anectdote on the greens. They were supposed to a mixture
> of spinach, kale, beet greens, etc...but the people who got the
grocery
> list and delivered the stuff (more on that later) just read "mixed
> greens"
> so I got mixed salad greens. What to do? Screw it and saute' them up!
> I did have to remind my cook to fry the spinach for a bit before
adding
> the lettuce stuff. Also, I had forgotten which greens recipe I settled
> on and was expecting to add sesame oil to the mix which didn't happen.
Huh? Okay, what is the difference between "mixed salad greens" and
"spinach, kale, beet greens, etc"? I thought the latter were "mixed
greens". They certainly sound like *my* idea of a salad. Or by "mixed
salad greens" do you mean the usually insipid mix of mostly lettuce and
such which you get from the modern grocery store for salads?
>
> > The stwd beef was blander and tougher than than I expected. In my
> > opinion,
> > the dishes was cooked at too high a temperature or not cooked long
> > enough
> > to make the meat tender. The spicing is an issue I hope Gunthar will
> > address, but he was directing the kitchen and I suspect may have
left
> > the
> > spicing to others who didn't taste the results.
>
> Okay. This is very interesting. Because one of the dishes I was happy
> with
> was the stwd beef. I felt the texture was perfect and loved the
> flavor.
> I think maybe it should have been a little sweeter but I was overall
> happy
> with that product. In fact, I just got through having dinner of that
> beef over couscous.
It must have varied quite a deal depending upon which pieces you got.
My wife's was pretty gristly and stringy. Mine was okay, but not
spectacular. Rather bland.
>
> > The benes yfryed were interesting, but nothing to write home about.
Right.
> Kidneys are easy to get, cheap and not
> far off from favas. The other beans may be more authentic, although I
> would differ on that, but most folk would have hated them.
Yes. I don't think I would have liked the favas better.
> > The second course was mousserouns florys, makerouns, cormarye, and
> > apple tarts.
>
> Also, fryd asparagut and stwed capon.
>
> > The mousserouns florys are skewers of bacon and mushrooms, glazed
> with
> > egg
> > yolk and sprinkled with spices. Very enjoyable and flavorful, but
> > slightly lacking in texture.
>
> Well, you can't have everything. :-)
> The texture would have been better if I had been able to grill or
broil
> them instead of using a convection oven as I did.
So how would grilling or broiling them change them? Isn't that what a
convection oven is supposed to help with? Or is it just a faster oven?
> I liked them. And even made
> a bunch of them with onion instead of bacon for the non-pork eaters.
This was probably my second favorite dish. But mine had the onion
rather than the bacon. I think I would have preferred the bacon better.
When eating them I didn't remember that they were supposed to be
endored. It wasn't that apparent. But they perhaps I'm thinking more of
a batter than an egg glaze.
>
> > If you like mac and cheese, the makerouns were a hit. Wide noodles
> > (lasgne
> > size I believe) layered with cheese. I think they were held in an
> oven
> > that
> > was a little too hot because the top cheese had a texture suggesting
> > that
> > it had been browned, but I found that to be quite acceptable, making
> > the
> > dish a little more interesting.
This was also one of my favorite dishes. I probably would have grabbed
some of the leftovers to take home. They also probably would have been
okay after a four hour car ride, but the leftovers had been piled into
a plastic bag making a big ball of pasta. Oh well. I'll have to try
making these sometime, but it will probably be with store-bought dried
pasta rather than making my own.
>
> This dish was totally amazing and decadant. I feel guilty for even
> serving it, much less eating it.
Guilty for what reason?
> > The pork loin (cormarye) was tasty, but a little dry, either from
> being
> > slightly overcooked or being held too long. I wonder if one of the
> > ovens
> > may not have been running 50 degrees F above its set temperature.
>
> Again, differing opinion on that one. I recieve many compliments on
the
> texture of the pork. Personally I would have preferred it to be a bit
> rarer, but this was cooked with the mindset of the average non-foodie
> person who feels that pork even close to pink is death. Some bits may
> have been dry but not the pieces I tried. It did hover on the edge of
> dryness so you may have just gotten some of the unlucky pieces. Hell,
> even my extremely picky squire who refuses to eat any pork product
> took home some extra.
I guess it could have been cooked rarer. Mine though, was quite moist.
I found it monotonous? Not exactly bland. But something to spark it up.
But then I like spices. I think it would have been much better with a
sauce of some kind.
>
> > The apple tart was a very good piece of apple pie.
>
> Yeah, nothing exciting about it excepts some raisins and dates. And
> I served the creme bastard over it instead of the chereyse.
Well, I think it was much better with the creme bastard over it than it
would have been with the chereyse served over it. :-)
I liked the apple tart with the creme bastard. If fact I had my lady
wife's as well.
> > The third course, which I did not get to eat and can not comment on
> was
> > capons stwed, creme bastard, and esparaguat, but those who ate it
> > seemed to
> > enjoy it.
>
> As I said earlier, I'm very disappointed the stoves decided not to
> cooperate
> and get these dishes out earlier. They were both wonderful and not
> nearly
> enough folk got to try them.
I'm not sure that word got out to all the tables to send up someone
with a tray and another set of dishes for them.
>
> > Portions may have seemed small, but the cumulative effect was a more
> > than adequate meal, except for an absolute carnivore.
Definitely.
>
> Another thing I was very worried about. I kept stressing that people
> would
> see just the bits and pieces and feel slighted. But nobody seemed to
> mention
> any lack or disappointment.
Well, I was worried when the plates first went up how all that food in
the first course was going to fit on my plate. And wondering if I
should have sent a second plate or should see about getting some larger
pieces of feast gear.
There was plenty of food.
>
> > Layout and Serving
> >
> > Gunthar's responsibility was the feast, so this isn't his province,
> but
> > I'll discuss it anyway.
>
> It's still my responsibility in that the method of serving was my
idea.
I think this was an excellant idea. And being one of the first times
this has been tried in this area there are bound to be some things that
can be improved. Is it more or less period than bring the food out on
platters and serving it "family style"? I don't know.
This serving method does work well in the Ansteorra tradition of
intermixing the "off-board" and "on-board" feasters together. I still
prefer this to segregating folks from their friends simply because
their friends have chosen not to eat the feast. But I do understand
that other kingdoms see things differently.
> The plan was to have trays brought to every table for any six to eight
> people.
Well initially our server thought one tray was supposed to cover two
tables. Since the plates for one table pretty much covered the tray and
overlapped the sides, this was a concern to me. I didn't want to see
plates stacked on top of plates, even if they do do that in resturants.
It did turn out to be one tray per table, though.
> I was assured we had the trays to cover this. Then one person
> from a group would gather the plates with the feast tokens and take
> them up to the window for service.
That is what we heard was to be done, but then we heard that they
wouldn't be picking up the feast tokens. The feast tokens listed the
dishes. which was nice because we could easily keep track of what was
still to come. My wife thought we were supposed to cross off the dishes
we didn't want and had marked a number of dishes off her token. That
idea is good, since it would minimize the waste of plating food that
someone wasn't going to eat. But it sounds like a logistics problem.
> > Service was by sending someone from a table up to the serving
windows
> > with plates on a tray (commercial jelly roll pan).
Part of the catch here, if you are depending upon the site to supply
the jelly roll pans is to make sure you have enough of them.
> > All of the servers were called up at once, causing long lines,
> extended
> > waits and some fraying tempers. Service would probably have been
> > smoother had sections been called up in turn.
>
> Good point.
Yep. And could get you around not having enough trays/pans for serving
the entire hall at once.
>
> One problem we had, and another reason for the people coming
> up with trays, was because we had a significant lack of volunteers for
> serving and whatnot.
Yes, this was a problem. It was also noted during cleanup that only two
of the eight or so people were from the hosting barony. But then it was
their court which was going on during this time and I was perfectly
happy to help out during this time and let more of the locals see their
court. Still, some of the cleanup crew were getting pretty ragged by
the end and having some other folks come in to relieve them would have
helped.
> I was pretty happy that we even got kids filling up drinks.
> (The drinks, btw, were period fruit syrups watered down. I promised no
> more Country Time Lemonade or Iced Tea at my feasts.)
Yes, I thought this was nice. Unfortunately since all likely were
loaded with sugar, I didn't get to try any of them.
One problem I noticed was that Steppes should have had some folks in
charge of overseeing the public trash cans so that they were emptied
before they overflowed. In several cases I found myself having to move
the foot or two of yucky bottles, paper, food piled above the top of
the can to another can before I could tie off the plastic bag and get
it to the dumpster. It also didn't help that the plastic trash bags
being used were often the thin, white plastic kind and barely withstood
being tied off or lifted from the cans. The thicker black plastic ones
were better. I would usually haul the plastic bag and the plastic trash
can out to the dumpster as one unit to avoid having the bags break.
Further, the dumpster was supposed to have been emptied before the
event and apparently it wasn't and the event started with it half full.
This meant that in a short time the bags had to be hoisted over the top
of the dumpster, increasing the chance of breakage. Piling kitchen
grease, waste foods and liquids in the plastic bags also greatly
increased their weight and chance of breakage. Is this the proper
disposal method for such stuff?
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous Barony of Bryn Gwlad Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris Austin, Texas
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at: http://www.florilegium.org ****
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 01:35:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Samrah <auntie_samrah at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Feasts Per Year
To: Bill Fisher <liamfisher at gmail.com>, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <20050113093503.76128.qmail at web52201.mail.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
So sorry Cadoc!
Samrah
Bill Fisher <liamfisher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Samrah wrote:
> > How about a sound-off by kingdom as to how many feasts per year
(kingdom,
> > baronial, shire, whatever), how many served & price per plate?
[snipped]
I'll be happy to just find time to get some new garb made and actually
get to an event.
Cadoc
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 10:04:26 GMT
From: "chirhart_1 at netzero.com" <chirhart_1 at netzero.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu)
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Message-ID: <20050113.020459.21419.129568 at webmail23.nyc.untd.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
Dear Lady Brighid Thanks for your guiding lite.I went,I saw,I
Down loaded. Many thanks from chirhart
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 07:35:13 -0500
From: "Martin G. Diehl" <mdiehl at nac.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Leechdoms (was Mudthaw menu)
To: jenne at fiedlerfamily.net, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <41E66B01.222F0019 at nac.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:
>
> > >It's going to be an Anglo-Saxon feast. Not a lot of
> > >primary sources to draw on, which is a bit of a bummer.
> > >I'd hoped to be able to access the Leechdoms in the Old
> > >English Corpus, but I didn't get around to writing to
> > >Oxford in time,
>
> FYI: Stephen Pollington wrote a book called 'Leechcraft',
> which consists in large part of translations from the
> original leechbooks. Berelinde, if you know someone who
> is going to be a Cooking thing or Birka I can lend it to
> you...
Leechcraft ... on a cooks list??
The term 'illusion food' comes to mind ...
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika
> jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
> "The tumult and the shouting dies/
> The captains and the kings depart
> And we are left with large supplies /
> Of cold blancmange and rhubarb tart." -- Ronald Knox
Vincenzo
--
Martin G. Diehl
http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=MGD
Reality: That which remains after you stop thinking about it.
inspired by P. K. Dick
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 07:04:32 -0600
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Steppes 12th Night is completed
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <000501c4f970$6f7a35b0$d8ae4a0c at toshibauser>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=response
>> > The chireseye appealed to those who like sweets and cherries. I
found
>> > it a
>> > little more glutinous than I would prefer
> Perhaps. But as you mentioned there wasn't a lot of other bread.
Just because it is a bread product doesn't mean it should have a gluey
texture. It wasn't library paste, but it was more than I would have
desired
in a bread pudding. I'm not saying that I can make it any better, just
that
I would not and did not find it satisfactory.
The creme bastard would certainly have improved the chireseye.
>> I tasted the paste
>> and it tasted right. I didn't want to add any more. (In case anyone
>> wonders, it was about the thickness of warmed creamy peanut butter).
> Mine was more like chunky peanut butter.
>
> Stefan
Warmed creamy peanut butter will pour (the kind I use is salt and
peanuts
and will almost pour at room temperature). The sage sauce was a paste
coming from the steam table. The portioner was spreading it on the
chicken
with a knife and it wanted to stay in a lump.
Bear
------------------------------
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