[Sca-cooks] Recipe Choices (was Historical Apples)
Stanza693 at wmconnect.com
Stanza693 at wmconnect.com
Sat Nov 1 09:28:07 PDT 2008
In a message dated 10/31/2008 2:10:27 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
sca-cooks-request at lists.ansteorra.org writes:
> Most
> competitions are "Spoons" - Kingdom: Wooden Spoon; Mists
> Principality: Silver Spoon; Cynagua Principality: Copper Spoon
> (although the Principality of Oertha has the Silver Ulu, a curved
> skinning/chopping tool). The new one is the Linen Spoon - all
> entrants get a piece of cloth with a picture of a spoon on it (i
> don't recall if it's embroidered or printed). I have to say i have
> not been happy with the recipe choices - they seem to be chosen for
> brevity rather than suitability for beginners. That often means that
> some ingredients are quite vague ("good herbs") and, well, i'll admit
> i don't have full confidence in the person running them, having seen
> his cooking documentation.
>
That raises an interesting question: How should beginners choose a recipe
for redaction? What criteria should a wanna-be cook use when (s)he starts
learning to "cook medieval"? Is it number of ingredients? Is it ease of described
process? Is it availability of ingredients?
For example: The first entry I did, in 2006, was "Mirrauste of Apples". It
had a total of 5 ingredients (6 if you count the water to boil the apples)
that were very straightforward. However, the last entry I did in September,
"Bun~uelos en forma de pez" included a statement just like you mention above:
"with good spices" -- con buenas especias. It also instructs the cook to prepare
a "fine or thin dough" -- una pasta fina.
By spending even a little time looking at other fish recipes in the cookbooks
of the same region, it is easy enough to determine what "good spices" might
be a good approximation. (De Nola has all those lovely fish recipes where he
says take X fish and its spices A, B, & C.) I don't think that recipe was
beyond a beginner. The hardest part was making pasta by hand. Even that, I
learned wasn't difficult.
--
Constanza Marina de Huelva
www.geocities.com/stanza693/stanza-works.html
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