[Sca-cooks] 10th C. Cornish?

Lilinah lilinah at earthlink.net
Wed Oct 25 16:06:15 PDT 2006


Stefan li Rous wrote:
>Urtatim asked:
>  > Our new Wooden Spoon minister (West Kingdom cooking competitions)
>  > has announced the contests for the next year:
>  > 3 are straight forward
>
>What are these three? The others certainly are not straight forward,
>and I doubt there can be an answer. At least not one based on an
>actual, written food recipe.

Here's most of her message.

----- Part of the original message from our Minister of the Wooden Spoon:
>Please take note on the 2007 Wooden Spoon competitions and there 
>themes: **Documentation requested**
>Reminder for the coming year, try to do your own redactions of the 
>recipes. Please do not rely on a website to redact for you. Half of 
>the fun of cooking is getting there yourself.
>
>March Crown**:
>10th century Cornwall
>Includes anything 10th C. Cornish
>
>Belatine**:
>12th century Italian
>Includes anything 12th c. Italian
>
>June Crown**:
>Fruits of the Summer Solstice.
>Any form of fruit. Pottages, pasteries, pies, sweet meats etc..
>
>Purgatorio Coronation**:
>Harvest Breads
>Braided, loaf, twisited etc..
>
>October Crown**:
>soups of the 13th century, any country of your choice. Cream ,
>broth, cold, hot, herbed, meat, veggie any style.
----- End message -----

As i noted, for the Twelfth Night contest, the Wooden Spoon minister 
supplies a recipe in its original language and those entering must 
translate as well as cook it. So it isn't included in the above 
"reveal", as that isn't posted until about 2 months before 12th Night.

Note that she says "documentation requested"! As long as i've been 
doing these things (admittedly not all that long), documentation has 
always been *required*, and, in fact, counts for 1/6 of one's score 
(taste counts for 1/3, the other 3 areas counting for 1/6 of the 
score are: historical accuracy, appearance/presentation, and 
complexity)

Note also that she says "try to do your own redactions" - as a judge 
and as Silver Spoon, doing one's own redactions is not a "try" kind 
of thing. It is necessary.

And, yes, i know that there are very few period bread recipes, but 
there's a moderate amount of info about bread, and at least she 
didn't ask for an 11th century Irish bread recipe :-)

Additionally, although we know that the ruling elite of Sicily was 
highly influenced by Muslim culture and that there is still Arabic 
influence in some Sicilian dishes even today, there is limited actual 
evidence for specific recipes. So if i cooked some 10th C. Arabic 
recipes (i don't know of any from the 12th C.), it would be 
speculation... i'm not sure how well that would go over.

Fortunately this morning, two of our food Laurels politely posted 
asking the new Wooden Spoon minister if she had any particular 
Cornish resources in mind. We Westies are awaiting her response...

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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