[Sca-cooks] Res Domestica

[Stephanie Ross]

I spent the day yesterday at a local teaching event tending to Mistress
Mairi Ceilidh's portable hearth. I had never actually cooked over an open
fire before, so I asked her if I could use her fire for my class. She was
doing an outdoor cooking-type demo. She happily agreed because she needed
someone to watch the food and fire while she made lunch, so we worked
together. Her husband Master Octavio described for me the process he uses
to make a fire and showed me how to put the coals back from the ceramic
pots so that they can heat up slowly and not break from thermal shock. We
made apples and onions cooked together with a little red wine, as well as
saffron rice and an Elizabethan dish of meat stewed with apricots and wine
(Minutal ex Praecoquiis). Hey, Mairi, where did you get the recipe anyway?
There isn't any citations on the recipe sheet I stole from you. Helewyse
made the pots we used IIRC, and I must say they were wonderful! After a few
hours simmering, the meat came out super tender, and the flavor of the dish
was supurb. We used too much cracked pepper for my taste - each bite got
hotter and hotter until I couldn't eat it, but it was yummy anyway. I
served the food at my class even though it wasn't early period (somebody
had to eat it!). I made oatcakes over the fire for my class as a hands-on
demo type thing. They came out pretty well (I should have ground up some of
the oatmeal just a bit finer, and contrary to Aoife's comments about rolled
oats not working, they do if you blend them into flour). I didn't roll them
out, just patted them into pancakes and slapped them onto a cast iron
skillet/griddle which was greased with bacon fat and butter. They were a
bit thick which made them chewy instead of crispy but we ate them all
anyway. I served them with the potted Stilton recipe webbed with the
oatcakes in the Florilegium (I add cream cheese to tone down the sharpness
of the bleu mold in the Stilton, and used a mustard I made from a handout I
have for an A&S entry by Mistress Kiri from Platina which had all the other
ingredients of the recipe in it and was sitting in my 'fridge). I also took
Cotswold cheese (a cheddar made with onions, chives and fennel seed),
shredded it with Lancashire cheese, took sieved cottage cheese curds and
mixed everything together with a little butter. I did the same with sage
Derby and caerphily for the third "smearing" for oatcakes. Cotswold and
sage Derby may not be period, but herbed cheeses definitely were, even
during the Dark Ages. I was looking for Cheshire to serve to my students
since it is mentioned in the Domesday book, but my local Wild Oats didn't
have it in stock either time I went there, so I opted to try these other
cheeses. The cheeses were well-received and and the whole experience was
educational and fun.


~Aislinn~
Et si omnes ego non.

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the
first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson to
Maryland Republicans, 1809.