[Sca-cooks] cooking for a vigil

[David Friedman]

>Actually, there are period hummus recipes!  Happy to provide same if you're
>interested...

I'm interested. I know of one period recipe which contains hummus and 
tahini (Hummus Kasa from _The Description of Familiar Foods_), but 
it's nothing like the hummus bi tahini with which we are familiar.

On the more general question of food for vigils ... . I agree that a 
soup or stew raises practical problems, on the other hand it is a 
relatively low work way of producing a good deal of food. One 
possibility might be something of that consistency served as a dip 
with pita or something similar.

So far as finger foods are concerned, period possibilities include 
hais or khushkananaj or hulwa, which are sweet nibbles, Barmakiya, 
which is cooked meat and stuff layered between sheets of dough and 
cooked, cracker/bread things (bread of Abu Hamza from al-Warraq, for 
instance), rolled meat on a toothpick/skewer (Alows de Beef or de 
Motoun from two 15th c or The Flesh of Veal from Platina), various 
small meat in pastry dishes from lots of cuisines.

Pipefarces from Le Menagier would give you a period cheese straw type 
finger food. And I now have a period Italian recipe for what seem to 
be sweet bagels.

If you are set up to cook where you are serving, there are lots of 
good fritter type recipes, best served hot.

AM writes:

At 2:04 PM -0700 10/17/10, Laureen Hart wrote:
>  you take goat cheese and cuisinart it with cream cheese in a 1:1
>ratio, you can get a nice spreadable cheesy goo for less
>money. add herby or roasted garlic or even lemon rind if you wish. again,
>not documentable but not horribly agregious, either

Zabarbada of Fresh Cheese from the Andalusian cookbook gives you a 
nice spreadable cheesy goo too. And is documentable.

I'm not sure whether Laureen's goo would be less expensive than 
savory toasted cheese--presumably it would depend on what strongly 
flavored cheese and what goat cheese one used and how expensive they 
were. The Zabarbada uses farmers' cheese, which I would expect to be 
less expensive than either.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com