[Sca-cooks] Camp cooking ideas

[Ysabeau]

The meal I prepared in a seal-a-meal was Al-Madiri Beef - basically a beef,
onion, and leek curry-type stew based on a period recipe that was redacted
by a friend of mine and then redacted again by me, Many Jewels Rice - again,
a redaction by a friend that I again redacted, and Strawberries in Snow-
from a website. It all worked really well. It all traveled well and was
still frozen after three days in a cooler. 

The rice was a saffron rice with dried apricots, dried cherries, slivered
almonds and toasted pistachios tossed in along with some sesame oil. It
makes for a very pretty presentation with the fruit and nuts looking like
jewels amid the "gold" rice. I was worried the rice would turn into a big
gummy glob but it fluffed up nicely after it was brought back to slightly
above room temperature.

I wimped out on the strawberries in snow and used ice cream instead of the
whipped cream...primarily because the store at the corner had ice cream and
not whipped cream. The kids in the camp definitely liked the ice cream even
if they couldn't have the strawberries in wine. I did not freeze the
strawberries in the spiced red wine but I think I'll do that next time. I
don't think the hour or so they had to marinate was enough for the flavors
to really blend. The strawberries were really big and (surprisingly) still
half frozen. Has anyone tried to freeze something like that with wine? Will
the wine freeze or just get slushy?

Just my thoughts,
Ysabeau

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Nick Sasso
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:10 PM
To: Cooks within the SCA
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Camp cooking experiment

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of
wildecelery at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 1:52 PM
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Camp cooking experiment


I was just given a seal-a-meal as a gift.  Do others have other good ,
tested ideas for Pennsic foods? (Thank you to Gunthar for those he already
posted!)
-Ardenia  > > > > > >


NEarly all of the stewy, brown glop sort of recipes from early British and
other cookbooks will work great.  We found that when we did this for Gulf
Wars about 5 years ago, it was wise to thaw completly as possible before
immersing in water.  I will also step out and say that our best results were
with things that were laid flat and frozen no more than about 1" thick.  Any
starch and sauce/stew/ragout sort of thing will do great.  For pastas and
rice and such, ever so slightly undercook to avoid gumminess.  We did do
some very thin chicken pies from Menagier . . . you need the instant seal
feature to avoid chicken pancakes.  If you use a solid sort of form, you can
do pies pretty nicely . . . think springform pan, only a little shorter.

Anything that you would marinade and grill will hold up well.  Also, if you
want to do SOME cooking, you can precook parts of the dish and assemble or
cook on site.  It will save lots of preparation time and dishes anyway.
Then throw it all into the pot for the stew or whatever the dish.


niccolo difrancesco
(proponent and owner of a FoodSaver by Tilia . . . bags are reuseable if not
boiled)

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