[Sca-cooks] Siege cook-off report for Calafia's May Potrero War

[Dragon]

So I and my team and our four competing teams had a much more sane 
and enjoyable experience at our siege cook-off than was reported by 
Kathleen Roberts at her competition in Outlands.

We too had rainy cold weather for the weekend. It was very bizarre 
for this time of year to get such weather here in the mountains of 
southeastern San Diego county. It is usually warm and sunny during 
the day and cool at night. However, this did not deter us from doing 
our best and we had fun with the challenge. I had posted the rules 
and scenario to this list prior to this weekend, but to recap, the 
theme was the Siege of Oxford where Empress Matilda fled from King 
Stephen during a blizzard in the Winter of 1142.

My team was the same as last year, myself, Lady Ellyn of Tanwayour, 
THL Maggie MacDonald and Eira Gwdihw. Dame Selene, and my protege 
Kathleen de Galloway were supposed to join us this year but the 
weather and circumstances kept them away.

At 5:00 PM on Friday evening the five teams of cooks arrived in the 
Baronial encampment for the distribution of the ingredients. We were 
each given a box of victuals and set upon our tasks right way. Our 
first task was to identify what we had been given. A partial list follows:

A chicken
Half of a pig trotter
Two beef neck bones
A lamb shank
Three onions
Six carrots
Three parsnips
One head of garlic
Lentils
Dried peas
Dried fava beans
Wheat berries
Whole wheat flour
Rye kernels
Rye flour
Barley kernels
Barley flour
Brown rice
Rice flour
Cream
Milk
Honey
A cone of brown sugar
Salt
Black Pepper
Long Pepper
Cloves
Mace
Nutmeg
Saffron
Ground ginger
Ground Galangal
Dried parsley
Dried sage
Caraway seed
Butter
Lard
Dried apples
Dried pears
Dried currants
Dried mushrooms
Dates
Hazelnuts
Ground hazelnuts
Almonds
Ground almonds
Dried Ale Yeast

There are several ingredients I am forgetting. We had 59 items in our 
box but that is only 46...


I won't claim our menu is documentable as period. It is period 
inspired but I can't point to any exact recipe and say "we used that 
one". I've found that it is often very difficult to take exactly what 
we are given in this competition and match real period recipes to 
them in such a short time with such a small team. That and having a 
limited library of books on hand in the camp makes it challenging. 
Add to that the fact that there are no known extant recipe 
collections for the given time and place of the scenario, the best 
anyone could do was to try to get close to what would be plausible.

I was somewhat disappointed with some of what we were given. Some of 
it seems quite out of place and time to me, especially the rice 
(which I deliberately chose not to use, the favas and lentils as 
well, but we did use those). I was hoping we might get lucky and had 
been given something more appropriate to the time, place and season. 
I would have been ecstatic had we been given venison or rabbit or 
stockfish. I would have loved to have received slab bacon or pork 
belly, dried beef or something preserved as would have been used in 
winter. I suspect that some of it may also have been due to budgetary 
constraints and some of those things I would have liked to see were 
either expensive or difficult to procure. But be that as it may, you 
work with what you receive...

Our menu:

- Pottage of barley, fava beans, carrot, onion, beet greens and 
cabbage. The broth for this was made with the beef neck bones and 
seasoned with clove, long pepper and black pepper, what meat there 
was from the bones was diced fine and added to the pottage as well. 
This was served with two eggs poached in milk on top with a drizzle 
of the milk over all.

- Whole wheat bread with a saffron colored egg wash, caraway seed and 
kosher salt dusting the top. We made fresh butter which we very 
lightly salted and colored with saffron.

- Porridge of peas, onion, carrot and pig trotter made with the broth 
produced by boiling the pig trotter until tender.

- Meat pie with spiced lamb, beets, carrots, onions, and parsnips. 
The filling was layered in the pastry coffin with the beets at the 
bottom, the spiced lamb in the middle and the carrots, onions and 
parsnips at the top. The pie was then filled with gravy through a 
hole in the top of the pastry just before serving. This was served 
with a very good (and very spicy) mustard that we made.

- Small mead. It was served still fermenting as we definitely did not 
have time to let it complete but it was still delicious. Having 
access to a warm place in an RV was an advantage here. Nobody else 
even thought about doing this.

- Custard and fruit tart. A pastry crust made with ground hazelnuts, 
lard, butter and whole wheat flour. The custard was very rich, it 
used two whole eggs, two yolks, cream, a small amount of sugar, a 
touch of milk and was colored golden with saffron. We soaked dried 
pears in red wine and had dried apples that were still soft, these 
were caramelized with a bit of butter and sugar and arranged around 
the edge of the tart. In the center were three "flowers" made by 
cutting dates into "petals" and using hazelnuts for the centers. The 
tart also had currants which we had soaked in wine and laid in the 
blind-baked crust before pouring in the custard.

- Roasted chicken stuffed with mushrooms, lentils, wheat berries, 
beet greens, onion, garlic, sage and parsley. This was steamed in a 
dutch oven until done and then finished on a grill to brown the outside.


We only made seven dishes this year (down from our 23 last year) 
because the judges were simply overwhelmed by the shear number of 
dishes produced last time that they placed a limit upon it. The rules 
this year were to produce 5 to 7 dishes. We could produce more if we 
chose but we would have had to designate 7 to be judged if we had. 
One team did 14 but we chose to concentrate on making the best seven 
we could come up with instead of diluting our efforts.

In the end, my team won for best dish, surprisingly for our bread. 
Maggie can be credited for that coup, the bread was pretty much her 
responsibility, I simply baked it, the recipe and the rest was all 
hers. I was disappointed that we did not win for best team again as 
we did last year. Apparently the extra effort that the Blackened Pot 
team took to produce extra dishes gave then the extra credit they 
needed to tip the scales. We did get a bit of extra credit as well in 
that we served the majority of our food on pottery pieces that I had made.

I have yet to see the scoring sheets so I don't know the exact 
scoring and where they pulled ahead. Ah well, there is next year. I 
have not yet decided if I will compete but if my team asks me to do 
so again, I will seriously consider it. If I do not, I have been 
invited by Baron David of Calafia (the prime mover behind our 
competition) to participate in planning and judging next year with an 
eye to having me run it at a future time. (I get the feeling His 
Excellency wishes to take some time off from it).

So it was a fun experience again this year. Despite the rain and 
cold, we put on a good meal for the judges and I am satisfied that we 
did the best we could. I am looking forward to participating again, I 
just don't yet know which side of the fence I will be standing on when I do.

Dragon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~