[Sca-cooks] Maire's "SCA Wickedly Perfect" challenge...

[Denise Wolff]

----Original Message Follows----
From: Sue Clemenger <mooncat at in-tch.com>
THE CHALLENGE:
You and your team have 36 hours and $2500 dollars to create a fabulous SCA 
feast for 12 people.  Assume that you do not have to come up with kitchen 
equipment, and that you do not have to pay hall/table/etc. rentals.  But you 
do have to come up with your own decorations, entertainment, etc.  You may 
have up to 6 people on your team, and they must be real people from within 
the SCA community.
What would you serve? Who would you want to be on your team? How would you 
decorate?  Would you have little "guest gifts" for yout guests (something 
required on the t.v. show's episode), and if so, what would they be? Extra 
details as needed....
To make this possibly even more entertaining, I'll even come up with a 
"foodie" prize to be awarded to the winner....;-)
The challenge is open from tonight (01/14) through Sunday-next-weekend 
(01/23).  Anybody interested?
----------------------------------------------------------
On my team?
Adamantius, Brekke, Argyle, Jadwiga, Reijniier (my lord) (I have worked 
alongside all of them. Not only would the kitchen be efficient, it would be 
fun)

My menu?
Platina, On Right Pleasure and Good Health, circa 1465.
1st Course:

What should be eaten first

There is an order to be observed in taking food, since everything that moves 
the bowels and whatever is of light and slight nourishment, like apples and 
pears, is more safely and pleasantly eaten in the first course. I even add 
lettuce and whatever is served with vinegar and oil, raw or cooked. Then 
there are eggs, especially the soft-cooked kind, and certain sweets we call 
bellaria, seasoned with spices and pine nuts or honey or sugar. These are 
served very appropriately to guests.


Consommé can be made from either capon, or pheasant, or partridge, or 
roebuck, or squabs, or wild doves.  If you want capon, take a pot which 
contains about five quarts of water.  Put the capon in it, with the bones 
broken up finely and with an ounce of lean pork, thirty grains of pepper, a 
little cinnamon, not ground too much, three or four cloves, five leaves of 
sage, torn into three pieces, and two leaves of bay.  Let this boil seven 
hours, or until it is reduced to two cups or less.  Beware of putting in 
salt, for if it is salted, it becomes a cause of illness.  Nothing will 
forbid a little spice even if it is served to an ill person.  This dish is 
given to the old and infirm.].

On Bread,
…Anyone, therefore, who does baking should use flour (farina) which is 
well-ground from wheat, although farina is so-called from far, ground grain. 
>From this, he should separate the bran and the inferior flour with a very 
fine flour sieve, then put the flour, with warm water and some salt, on a 
baker's table closed in at the sides, as the people at Ferrara in Italy are 
accustomed to do. If you live in damp places and a bit of leaven is used, 
the baker, with help from his associates, kneads to that consistency at 
which bread can be made fairly easily. Let the baker be careful not to put 
in too much or too little leaven, for, from the former, bread can acquire a 
sour taste, and, from the latter, it can become too heavy to digest and too 
unhealthy, since it binds the bowels. Bread should be well-baked in an oven 
and not used the same day, nor is it especially nourishing when made from 
very fresh wheat and if it digested slowly.
Persian Relish
Thoroughly crush cleaned almonds with crumbed and softened bread. When they 
are crushed, add a little ginger and cinnamon, then soak in verjuice, red 
wine, and juice of the pomegranate, and pass through a sieve into a bowl or 
serving dishes. Some add crushed dates to this. This dish is of little 
nourishment and delays for a long time in the stomach, but it represses bile 
and is good for a upset liver.
On Preparing a Salad of Several Greens
A preparation of several greens is made with lettuce, bugloss, mint, 
catmint, fennel, parsley, sisymbrium, origan, chervil, cicerbita which 
doctors call teraxicon, plantain, morella and other fragrant greens, well 
washed and pressed and put in a large dish. Sprinkle them with a good deal 
of salt and blend with oil, then pour vinegar over it all when it has sat a 
little; it should be eaten and well chewed because wild greens are tough. 
This sort of salad needs a little more oil than vinegar. It is more suitable 
in winter than in summer, because it requires much digestion and is stronger 
in winter.

Crust for Tame Animals

If you want a crust with chicks and any sort of bird, first boil them.  When 
they are almost cooked, take them out of the kettle, and when they are out, 
cut them up in pieces, and fry in a frying pan with plenty of lard.  Then 
pour them out into a pan or well-oiled earthen pot lined with a crust.  Add 
plums and cherries or sour fruit to this mixture without harm.  Then beat 
with a paddle verjuice and eight eggs, if you are having more guests, or 
fewer, with a few, with a moderate amount of juice.  With this, mix parsley, 
majoram and mint chopped as finely as possible with a knife, and place on a 
fire but far from the flame, for it must boil slowly.  Meanwhile it ought to 
be stirred with a spoon as long as needed until it covers the spoon with a 
thick coating.  Finally, pour this juice over the crust and put it on the 
fire, even if it is a meat pie.  When it is cooked, serve it to your guests. 
  It will be very nourishing, digest slowly, leave little indigestible 
residue, repress bile, and irritate the chest.

Bellaria
"Certain sweets which we call bellaria, seasoned with spices and pine nuts, 
or honey, or sugar."

A Sweet Pomegranate drink-
Book 2 # 5
There are certain apples which we use before the meal and during the meal, 
especially with roast and fried meat. Among these is the pomegranate, which 
is call Punic, whose kinds are so many that it would now be useless to 
enumerate them. Let it suffice to speak about their qualities. Almost all 
doctors agree in the single opinion that the property of pomegranates is 
astringent. Nevertheless they seem to be divided into four categories. The 
sweet kind proves to contain some sort of warmth in  its nature and should 
be eaten as a first course, although a kind of inflammation arises which the 
Greeks call phlegmone.

"But now it is time to pass on to that course which I call the second and 
more important for it concerns meats which nourish better and more 
healthfully than other food... Not only fowl and wild animals keep the 
palate busy, but even certain non animal things, such as pulse, mushrooms, 
and truffles, likewise some herbs, both garden variety and wild, which are 
placed among the vegetables by philosophers."

Roasted Mushrooms
Book 9 # 37
On Mushrooms and Fungi
Mushrooms are considered of cold and damp nature and for this reason have 
the force of poison. The nature of fungi is milder, for they are thought to 
arise from the plegm of trees. Some even cook them with the skin removed or 
with the upper cap filled with salt and oil, upside down on the coals and 
eat them sprinkled with pepper or cinnamon.

Roast Chicken
p. 94 (book 6)
You will roast a chicken after it has been well plucked, cleaned and washed; 
and after roasting it, put it into a
dish before it cools off and pour over it either orange juice or verjuice 
with rosewater, sugar and well-ground
cinnamon, and serve it to your guests

The Flesh of Veal
p. 94 (book 6)
>From the haunch of veal take the lean meat and slice it into long thin 
slices; stroke them with the back of the
knife so that they do not break; right away sprinkle them with salt and 
ground fennel, then on the meat spread
marjoram and parsley, with finely diced lard, and sprinkle aromatic herbs 
over the slices and immediately roll
them up and put them on a spit near the fire, taking care that they do not 
dry out too much. When they are
cooked serve them immediately to your guests.

Chestnut Pie
Mix everything that we described for pie from groats into chestnuts which 
have been boiled and pounded into a mortar and passed through a sieve, with 
a bit of milk, into a bowl. If you want saffron color, add saffron.

On Wine
Dinner and lunch without drink is not only considered unpleasant but also 
unhealthful, since a draught is more welcome and pleasant to a thirsty 
person that food to a hungry person. It is necessary to moisten food both 
for the cooling of the lungs and so that what we eat is better worked over 
and digested. Wine is what Androchides, writing  to Alexander and trying to 
check his intemperance, called the blood of the earth. Drunk, it has the 
force of warming and moistening; applied outside, of cooking and drying, for 
it is its warm and moist force from which Homer called wine fiery because it 
has the seeds of heat.

What Should Be Eaten in the Third Course
Enough has been said about what should be eaten in the first and second 
courses. Next, what should be taken in the third course should be briefly 
described as a seal to the stomach, as if in conclusion......

A bit of very hard cheese is thought to seal the stomach and stop vapors 
from seeking the head and brain. Also it easily takes away squeamishness 
arising form too fat or sweet a meal. The more refined tables eat anise and 
coriander rolled in sugar as a remedy for mouth and head.....Either almonds 
or hazelnuts or other nuts ought to be eaten after fish because they are 
thought to repress the cold and damp force of fish with their dryness.

Cheeses Book 2 # 17
The quality of cheese is derived from its age. Fresh cheese is cold and 
moist, salt cheese hard and warm and dry. Fresh cheese is very nourishing, 
represses the heat of the stomach and helps those spitting blood, but it is 
totally harmful on the phlegmatic. Aged cheese is difficult to digest, of 
little nutriment, not good for stomach or belly , and produces bile, gout, 
pleurisy, sand grains, and stones. They say a small amount, whatever you 
want, taken after a meal, when it seals the opening of the stomach, both 
takes away the squeamishness of fatty dishes and benefits digestion and 
head.

Peaches in Sweet wine
Book 2 #12
Also, the opinion of those who say that peaches should be eaten as a last 
course, cut up into pieces and softened in the best of wine, should not be 
scorned, because they cool the opening of the stomach and the upper 
orifices. This ought to be done, however, when the meal proceeds from a 
course of roasted meat.

Book 2 # 14
On honey
Honey is praised differently from wine; the latter is valued because it is 
old and moist, the former because it is fresh and warm.

Cooked honey is considered better than raw, for it does not bloat one so 
much or increase pains in the midriff or bile. Summer honey is better than 
autumn or it agrees with bodies which are cold and damp, heals many ills, 
does not allow bodies to decay, is considered best in preserving apples, 
gourds, citron, and nuts, and creates mouth-watering appeal in many foods. 
>From it honey vinegar and honey water are made, the latter also being called 
aqua musla, which is given advantageously to those coughing. I believe honey 
wine is made from wine and honey, according to Pliny.

My special project?
A ship soltety: I like ships and I like playing with gingerbread, marzipan, 
and sugarplate.

I would create a room full of couches where all could recline to eat. It 
would  be decorated with various foliage and gauzy curtains and would have 
at it’s center a large Italianate fountain complete with statues of the four 
fates spouting rosewater. All would be served by nubile young men and women 
in togas.

This was fun!!
Andrea

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