hrj

I headed out Wednesday evening to Davis since

xrian was getting a ride up with me, got her stuff all packed in the car and then crashed for the night, which got us on the road by 8am Thursday. Drove up the valley to Redding then 299 over the mountains to the coast (including a brief pause to creep past a rolled car on a hairpin turn that emergency personnel were trying to extract the driver from) then 101 up to the site. Long drive, but it was nice to have a leisurely set-up in complete daylight.

In case anyone hasn't been following along, I went to the war specifically for the Cooks' Play-Date, which is becoming one of my favorite types of medieval "performance art". The idea is not simply to do campout cooking, or even simply to cook medieval food at events, but to experiment with reproducing (as much as possible) medieval open-fire cooking techniques using (as much as possible) reproduction cookware and equipment. I think we had about a dozen tents in the encampment with at least a half dozen firepits to cook in and a vast array of cookware.

With three full days to plan for, I was hideously over-ambitious in how many dishes I thought I might cook (although I was mostly planning to make smallish "taster" portions). I settled on working from the three cookbooks I've been focusing on in the last several years: the 14th c. Catalan Sent Sovi, the 14th c. English Forme of Curye, and the self-descriptive collection known as Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books. One book for each day. I scoped out about twice as many recipes as I ended up doing, although I didn't seriously over-shop for perishables, largely due to making some servings larger than originally planned and farming out some ingredients to other cooks. (One of the fun things about the encampment was that pretty much any ingredient or utensil you needed would be available. We may have failed on a few occasions, but not so you'd notice.)

Friday: Sent Sovi

Friday started with an out-of-turn dish (since it was Sent Sovi day), breakfasting on TFCCB's hanoney (scrambled eggs with sauted onions). Then there was an expedition into town for last minute groceries and visit to the fish market (locally caught) so that we could indulge in "fast day" cookery (it being Friday, after all).

I've been talking for quite some time about wanting to get a nice, large flat-bottomed fire box for doing open-fire cooking (not the round-bottomed firepits intended for burning wood). In fact, I've been designing and re-designing one based on a Pompeiian brazier for at least the last decade and had started sounding out various people about getting it fabricated for me. But lately I've found myself saying that maybe I didn't need to get the perfect firebox, I just need to get one now. So when I took a Friday morning turn around the merchants and spotted something very much like what I had in mind at Red Troll Forge, I made an impulse buy.

And then we got cooking.

In picking recipes, what I'd ended up leaning towards was a combination of dishes I've done before and enjoyed -- and especially ones with ingredients currently in season -- but also dishes with cooking techniques I wanted to experiment with or processes that I wanted to get a better feel for. I started out with Oat Cream, which is a fairly simple whole-grain porridge with almond milk. The processes under focus here were time-and-process for cooking whole grains, and making almond milk in field conditions. (My usual almond milk process involves a blender.)

Almond Milk

I confess I'm still using pre-ground almonds, which no doubt makes some difference in the results. Normally I mix equal volumes of ground blanched almonds and warm water in a blender. Blend repeatedly every few minutes for about a quarter hour. Then strain. In this case I simply mixed boiling water with the pre-ground almonds in a pitcher and left it to sit, stirring occasionally, for about an hour while the grain cooked, then strained it into another pitcher. I was expecting to use almond milk for several dishes that day, so I made about a quart.

Oat Cream

(The original recipe is under the heading "Barley Cream")

Barley cream in another manner: take almond milk as is said above, then put it in a bowl. Ater that, take the barley, well-peeled and clean, that doesn't taste like old barley or any other [bad] flavor, and put it to cook in a pot with water. When it has boiled for a while, and has cracked open, take it out and press it a little between two plates. And put it in to cook with the almond milk, as is said above.

The "as is said above" refers to a previous recipe that mentions cooking it until it is quite thick and flavoring it with salt and sugar.

I put about two cups of whole oats in a pipkin with lots of water (thinking I'd drain off any left over) and put it among the coals until it simmered, then kept the heat at a very low simmer, stirring regularly for probably more than an hour. (I didn't really keep track of times and amounts much.) When the grains had all burst, pretty much all the water was absorbed, so I simply added a couple cups of almond milk then put it back at a very low heat until all the liquid was gone. Seasoned with a sprinkling of salt and a handful of white sugar, to taste.

In addition to serving it at Friday dinner, I had some for breakfast on Sunday (topped with Strawberrye) and brought some leftovers home as well. It's chewy and sticky without that glutinous effect that oats can sometimes get. A nice accompaniment to other dishes but would also work as a fill-the-stomach pottage.

Slices of Cheese, Fried Dough

There were two recipes that called for a very similar dough, so I planned to try both of them.

Slices of Cheese -- If you want to serve slices of soft cheese, make slices of the cheese that are quite large. Then take the leavened dough, as is said above, and mix it with egg yolks and beat it a lot with a spoon. And then spread it over and under the slice of cheese, and put it in the pan with the grease said above. Turn it over often. When it should be cooked, take it out and put sugar over and under it.

Fried Dough -- Take pork grease and wash it: put it in a small pot and put it on the coals and cover it with a lid, and leave it to melt. When it is melted, strain it with the skimming ladle. It should be light and clean. Then take leavened dough that has risen, and mix it firmly with eggs, so that there are no lumps remaining. Put the casserole on the fire, on top of the grill. When the grease has boiled, take a skimmer and hold it over the casserole, and pour another large spoonful [of dough] over the spoon with holes. When the dough is in the casserole, let it boil until it is cooked. Then take it out. Take white sugar and pour a lot over top, and cover it with towels. Make a lot of them, and make all the others in this way. One serves this after all the other food.

So I started a simple yeast dough with flour, warm water, and yeast and left it to work until late afternoon. Then I mixed in two or three egg yolks and beat it thoroughly. Since I was thinking of doing the "funnel cakes" dish with the same dough, I left it a bit runny, which ended up not working well with the cheese. And at that point I had figured I didn't really have time to do the friend dough as well, so I added in more flour after the first couple cheese slices and it worked better. I had brought some aged Gouda and some generic Swiss to use as all-purpose cheeses, so I cut smallish slices of both of them, dipped them in the batter, and cooked them in a small skillet with oil, then served them sprinkled with sugar. The dough was probably still too thin because the cheese had a tendency to leak out the edges. Delicious though. The remaining batter got saved for the next day (and we will return to it).

In the mean time, back when the batter was working, I started on ...

Grainy Sauce

If you want to make grainy sauce, take chicken broth that has good salt pork in it and that is well cooked. Mince the livers of the chickens, and pass them through a seive. Take almond milk and put it with the minced livers. Take the bowels, cooked and cut into small, round pieces. Take a piece of dried, fatty salt pork, and do the same as for the cooked bowels -- cut into small, round pieces -- and everything goes into the pot. Also, take cinnamon, ginger and cloves, and not too much so it does not give a bitter flavor, small cubeb pepper grains, a small long pepper, saffron, and a little starch, and put it in.

Take white sugar and orange or lemon juice, and egg yolks -- they should be raw and without any egg white -- and beat them in a clay bowl with the orange juice; don't put them in until the sauce is boiling. Then put them in slowly, drop by drop. Stir the eggs, and then mix everything. If there is bread, or if you have slices of nicely toasted salt pork, grind them up and put them with the sauce.

I wouldn't have dared a chicken liver sauce if I hadn't been surrounded by foodies. Since the recipe doesn't seem to call for cooking the livers before sieving them, I did them raw. (Minor crisis when I discovered that Foster Farms doesn't seem to understand that for chicken livers to be edible, you need to carefully remove the gall bladder from them. I had to remove two gall bladders and several large chunks of spoiled liver, but there was still plenty for the dish.)

May I note that pureeing food by passing it through a sieve -- even a modern wire-cloth sieve -- is a very laborious process. Especially if you're doing it when the food isn't yet cooked to a mush.

I mixed the liver puree with about two volumes of almond milk (at which point I discovered that since I hadn't stirred the almond milk vigorously when I made the oat cream, most of the solids had gone into that dish and I was now dealing more with "almond whey" than almond milk) and some minced bacon to substitute for the "fatty salt pork" (omitting the chicken bowels entirely, I confess). When I'm cooking for myself I tend to do my spicing very much by instinct, so I can't give amounts for the spices. I used pre-ground cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and freshly ground cubebs and long pepper (with the saffron ground with them so that it would distribute more evenly).

This was set in a low heat to simmer, stirring regularly, until the color indicated that the liver was all cooked. In the mean time I juiced several valencia oranges and mixed about half a cup of juice with two egg yolks and a handful of sugar. I brought the liver mixture up to a boil and slowly poured in the egg mixture while stirring constantly. The title of the dish and the emphasis on adding them to boiling sauce suggested a more curd-like intent than a smooth egg-thickened sauce, so I aimed for that. The result was a very thick, nearly paste-like sauce with only a little separating liquid. I served it for tasting on small toasts, then again at dinner by itself.

Aubergines

If you want to make aubergines, boil them with salt and water. First, however, one cuts them into three or four parts lengthwise. When it has boiled a lot, take them out; choose those that you find are not as well boiled and press them firmly between two wooden plates. And then take those that are more cooked, and onion, parsley, mint, and marjoram, and chop it all together on a plate. Put eggs and grated cheese on a plate; then take raisins and cooked garlic. Grind it all together and mix in good spices. Then stuff each one [of the aubergine slices] with this [mixture]. Take an onion, and put it on the bottom of a casserole dish. The head of the aubergine goes at the bottom and the tail at the top. Take almond milk made with good broth, a litte oil, and a little grease, and pour it over top. And it goes in the oven.

I tried this previously at home and had very little luck with the "stuffing the slices" aspect of it. This time I thought I'd skip that aspect of it and use the small Indian eggplants and simply plan to scoop out the innards as the "more cooked" portion and then stuff it back into the skins. So ...

Cut small Indian eggplants in half and cook in salted water until begining to get mushy. (Use this opportunity to cook some garlic cloves as well.) Scoop out the insides with a spoon and save the skins. Mix the insides with a finely minced onion and minced fresh parsley, mint, and marjoram. Add some grated cheese (I used more of the aged Gouda), a handful of raisins, the cooked garlic (mashed in a mortar), and bind the whole with a raw egg. For "good spices" I added some of my pre-mixed powder fort. Spoon the mixture into the retained skins and arrange in a single layer in a pan with a little almond milk and oil in the bottom. Since I didn't have an oven available, I put it to simmer covered over a low heat until the stuffing looked like the egg was cooked.

Unfortunately, the eggplant skins lost a great deal of their integrity and by the time I'd served half of it (at dinner) it had pretty much turned into a homogeneous (but taste) mass. The theory being the presentation of this dish still needs a lot of work. It also isn't a very pretty dish since the eggplant is basically gray in color.

The last dish I did for the day was my contribution to the "Friday Fish Menu" theme:

Cheese Cream

If you want to make Lenten cheese cream, take a lobster and break its neck, and put it into a casserole dish. Put in a dozen prawns and two sea breams, if you have them; if not, put in a hake. Then when it is all boiled, grind it up well. When you have ground it up take some almonds, and pine nuts, and put it in the mortar, and mix it all together. Flavor it with salt, and put in a little saffron and ginger, if you want to.

This dish has intrigued me since I first read it. The idea seems to be to make a mock "cheese" by grinding together assorted white seafood and nuts. I choose my ingredients by those principles and what was available at the fish market in Gold Beach and ended up using halibut and small pre-cooked shrimp. So I boiled about a pound of halibut in water, used about a cup of shrimp, a cup of "spent" ground almonds left over from making almond milk, and about a cup of pine nuts. These were all ground in small batches in a mortar (I only have a small mortar) and then mixed together with the spices. My usual trick of grinding up the saffron in the salt worked very well in this case since it wouldn't have a chance to be distributed by liquid. I stirred the mixture very thoroughly until it was all colored an even yellow.

If you use your imagination, it does sort of resemble a fresh soft cheese. I still have a bunch that I brought home and if it still smells good when I pull it out later, I may try compacting it in a cheesecloth to see if I can increase the resemblance (although that isn't mentioned in the original recipe, so perhaps simple "curds" is the intention).

Dinner was scheduled every evening for 6pm (which meant that we missed both the main court on Saturday and the closing court on Sunday, but the food wouldn't have waited). We set up as many tables as needed so the entire encampment plus guests (at least two dozen people) could sit along one side, with all our food contributions being set before us at the open edge of the tables that faced the main encampment road.

Dinner began with a sort of "reverse potluck" where each cook brought their contributions along the serving side of the tables to serve them. (If you weren't sitting in your place, you were assumed to want a taste of everything.) After that, you were on your own for seconds. And when everyone in camp had been served and was dining, we began accosting passers by to come over and try the dishes. (Someone helpfully provided small disposable bowls and cups for this purpose.) Those who took us up on it (and there were many) walked along the tables so that the various cooks could explain the dishes they were offering. The only "price" was that guests had to proclaim, "Period food is yummy."

The last group event of each day with the massive dishwashing session -- an impressive exercise in successfully channeled chaos. During Saturday's dishwashing session I raised a minor peeve that people who were borrowing equipment during the day really needed to be washing up as soon as they were done with something so that the equipment's owner didn't need to wash someone else's mess off their stuff before they could use it themselves. So Sunday we had a wash station set up all through the day and the after-dinner clean-up was correspondingly less daunting.

After dinner I went off to find

etaine_pommier's Pelican vigil before putting in my two hours at gate, but despite being third in line (with nearly an hour available before work) all I ended up getting in was "Bye -- sorry to miss the vigil, but I have to work. That's all I have to say about being a Pelican."

Recipes planned but not executed: lemon sauce, meat sauce, parsley sauce, mushroom sauce, broom pudding, asparagus, chickpeas, leek puree, lentils, fried dough. (Also stuffed squid, but that was contingent on the fish market having small fresh squid.) The chickpeas, mushrooms, and asparagus were used by other cooks.