[Sca-cooks] 12th Night 2007 Stories

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

>On Jan 7, 2007, at 7:12 AM, Celia des Archier wrote:
>
>>  hmmmm...
>>
>>  any possibility of getting a recipe for the littiu?

I have the recipe webbed here:
http://www.geocities.com/ranvaig/medieval/kitchen.html

>
>This is interesting. Oats have been eaten in semi-solidified form for 
>thousands of years, and I gather from looking at the stuff saved in 
>the Florilegium that this is just oats and milk, cooked as a thick 
>porridge and allowed to cool somewhat, so I'm not questioning this as 
>a dish, per se. But if our knowledge of what this is/consists of is 
>sorta sketchy, why use this obviously Celtic name? Is it just an 
>Irish word for oats? Why is it not just oatmeal or porridge, or 
>flummery, or what distinguishes it from them? Is it that the name has 
>emerged from Irish poetry and people have felt the need to come up 
>with a functional "recipe" to match it, and this is what it is?
>
>Just trying to understand the reasoning process...
>
>Adamantius

I got the recipe from Tigernach. I'll pass the question on to him and 
report his answer.

As I recall, the word is used in the Brehon laws, as the proper food 
for the sons of kings who are being fostered.  I'm not sure where he 
got the specific recipe, but he is very specific about the proper 
size of the oats and how it is cooked.

Its not so much a porridge as a solid pudding.  You put equal amounts 
of hot milk and oats in a pan in the oven or near but not over a fire 
and cook slowly without stirring.

Ranvaig