[Sca-cooks] Murri

[galefridus at optimum.net]

I have exchanged e-mails with Charles Perry on the making of murri, and he states that the murri that he has made tested about like cheap soy sauce.

On the other hand, Lord Michael of Safita taught a class at Pennsic this year which included a discussion of his home-made murri and he shared some samples of his efforts.  They were similar to soy sauce in that they were salty/bitter and had that slight MSG flavor that is common to soy sauce, but they full flavor experience was quite different.

The one concern that I would have about making it from scratch is that it takes several months, according to both Charles Perry and Lord Michael.  Thus, the head cook for your January event doesn't really have a whole lot of time to play around with the stuff.  She could experiment with some murri recipes and hope for the best, but she may want to plan on using cheap soy sauce (Kikkoman, e.g.) as a "plan b" option.

As for saffron substitutes -- I have heard that many folks use safflower as a substitute, and a number of folks use the real thing.  Real saffron is fairly potent stuff, and a little bit goes a long way.  I have purchased true saffron (select grade) for $10 for 2g at one of my local Middle Eastern markets -- possibly your friend might be able to find it at a similar price.

-- Galefridus

> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:50:12 -0700
> From: Sue Boone 
> To: An Tir Culinary Guild , SCA Cooks
> 
> Subject: 
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm looking for help with a source or recipe for Murri.
> 
> The Barony of Aquaterra will be hosting Ursalmas in January. We 
> will be having a feast after the main action Saturday night and 
> the Lady in charge of the feast has been convinced to use soy 
> sauce instead of Murri. (Also, she's also replacing Saffron with 
> Turmeric because "Saffron if the most expensive spice in the 
> world." We'll work on that.) We have 5 months to come up with 
> something so, please, any help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thank you
> Lady Caitriona Russell