Monthly Archives: June 2012

Classes, Edible Body of Works for A&S

Edible Body of Works for A&S Competition (Research, Presentation, Practicality)

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Edible Body of Works for A&S Competition

(Research, Presentation, Practicality)

By

Honorable Lady Sosha Lyon’s O’Rourke

Before you buy your first chicken and period cook book, ask yourself a few questions.  This will help narrow the focus from everything in a buck shot attempt at cooking, to a laser focus on what is important to you and the message you are trying to achieve.

1). What is the main focus

a.) Do I want to do feasts foods or common types of period foods.

b.)  If feasts what type of feasts i.e. wedding, grand occasions etc.

c.) What makes the chosen dishes worth displaying?

2). What types of foods

a.) Type of i.e. Roman, English, German.

b.) Common foods for common people or fancy foods for crown and nobles.

c.) What is the common dish theme i.e. desserts, main courses, dishes with fruit etc.

3.) Where would the foods normally be served at

a.) Pubs

b.) Homes

c.) Castles

4.) When is the time setting

a.) Time period

b.) Time of day

c.) Time of year (seasonality was a very important part of what was available to a cook)

5.) Why

a.) Why were these foods picked as important (sustaining foods, medicinal, impressing to nobles or foreign dignitaries

b.) Why were these dishes chosen for the venue i.e. peacock, stuffed  dormice or monkey brains.

Research:

Once the basic questions (there are lots more but this is a start) have started to tumble through the brain, cooking research can begin.

1.)     Find the type of cooking you really want.

2.)    Find the time period (narrow or broad i.e. just 1100’s or from 1000 through 1500s)

3.)    Acquire books, library cards and internet websites

“Books” is a generic term not only for cook books but for history books in that time period.  Some great ideas are art books that display different types of important historic happenings.   An example of stumbling across some thing very interesting food, was is in a portrait Middle Eastern Prince during a hunt.  The painting is in a museum display book, showing a bowl holding half of a watermelon.  I have found no other pictures, detailing an end of the hunt feast or luncheon with watermelon so clearly painted.

This picture starts a hunt for books or websites for the origins of watermelon.  Then the researching of gardening books that deal with heirloom type of fruits/vegetables.  Next comes the search for recipes in the chosen time period(s) in which this item might have been used as an ingredient.  I have yet to come across any Middle Eastern recipes where watermelon is used as a part of a dish.  I know that watermelon is period from the research done, I just cannot find a recipe with this ingredient included.  I could and do make the conclusion that watermelon was known and eaten as a refreshing snack/dessert/treat instead of being an ingredient.  So a watermelon salad or soup is going to be reaching but not the fact that watermelon is period and eaten.

Conclusion:  Cooking research is not just found in cook books (and watermelon seems to be a stand alone food item in medieval Middle Eastern foods).

Presentation:

To quote one of my favorite movies.

“Oh, there’s a difference between you and me.  You’re a villain alright.   But I am a super villain.”

“What’s the difference?”

“PRESENTATION!”  Cue dramatic music and lighting.

A presentation can make or break any display.  Don’t just throw food on a table (especially not a rickety table!) and expect people to go “Wow!  All this work is perfect!”.  The likely response will be “Eh…tasty enough but it looks like a Denny’s breakfast bar.”

1.)    Table set up

  1. Table cloth (clean and unstained).  Plain will do but make sure the color is vivid.  Brocades can work but do not let the material speak louder than the dishes.
  2. Bowls and plates can be out of wood, silver, or pottery.  For those who don’t throw pottery, Etsy is a very good website in which different potters can display their wares for public sale.  Or collect pieces from the different SCA wars from excellent vendors; who you can chat with and touch their pottery before buying.  Also check out different city festivals i.e. Pecan Festival in Austin.  Wooden items or silver are really easy to find at Goodwill. Note: DO NOT put your wooden bowls in a dishwasher!!!  You’ll damage them beyond repair/use.
  3. Raise one display item above the others.  This item should either display an excellent dish OR an unusual cooking technique unique to the dish being displayed i.e. a bake,fried,roasted whole fish (A French Spectacular food item…3 different cooking techniques on one whole fish…very different and shows off the cook’s skill).
  4. Labels for each dish.

 

2.)    Eating ease

  1. Have small plates, forks, spoons, cups at the start of the table.
  2. Have 2 sets of documentation ready for reading.
  3. At the end of the table open a paper trash back lined with a plastic trash back so that there is a convenient trash receptacle for plates/cutlery etc when the tasting is done.

 

3.)    Be ready to discuss any and all sections of your research including the occasional esoteric tidbit

  1. Most people are hesitant to step outside their normal eating habits, be ready to talk up beef tongue.
  2. Different doesn’t mean disgusting.  Emphasize the good things not the weird. i.e. sugar and spices in the comfit not the ground up bug parts you used to get the period red color in your food.

Practicality:

This is more of a common sense or how driven are you to make a display.  Are you really willing to drive 2 hours to find the rare herb/ingredient that can’t be shipped to you or bought in your local ethnic/hippie/farmers market?  Is it easier to grow this item?  Buy it and make a road trip with a cooler to purchase? Substitute something else?  Consider each set of dishes carefully and what ingredients you may have to do some serious searching/driving for.

Overview:

Start simply.  Ask where your main interests lay.  Broad or narrow focus once a field of study has been chosen.  Look in unusual places for clues, hints and ideas.  Be ready to document everything; including your cutlery and ingredients!  Look for nice display pieces.  Wooden bowls and silver serving platters.  (Goodwill etc is a boon in this area).  Search out elegant or fun pottery pieces that can be used in the SCA displays and at home for regular meals.  Don’t be afraid to talk to other period cooks.  They won’t eat you.  Long pig is illegal.

Do not get discouraged!

Remember displays aren’t really period.  Period food was served or hosted to individuals.  These period feasts were show casing the host’s wealth and ability to hire great cooks…not just displayed, tasted and judged in a rushed environment.  Judging food is as much an art as making it.  You have to help educate the judges on what they are seeing and reading in documentations, and not just tasting.  The documentation needs to be not only full of supporting period documentation but easy to read and understand.  One of the best ways to write documentation is to keep in mind the average reading level is that of a 5th grader.  Do not make the documentation readable only by PhD’s or so easy that the reader feels insulted by a first grade primer.  Mix fact with fun while displaying tasty foods.

 

The ONE dish to rule them all

The ONE dish to rule them all

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The ONE dish to rule them all

By

Honorable Lady Sosha Lyon’s O’Rourke

 

Creating the ONE dish that makes people at an event stop and stare does not happen over night.  There is a great deal involved in creating a piece of edible art.  This class is an exploration of ideas, ingredients, techniques, research and display.

Every stunning dish starts with an idea.  That idea can be anything edible.  One idea is faux candy grapes.  Also known as purple marzipan balls with green marzipan vines.  Marzipan is a great medium for doing faux food.  (hint: this is very period to!)  Perhaps a scaled down size of a mostly edible elephant.  (This too is a period idea…documented too! Which we’ll get to a little later). And now for the bain of my existence in trying to recreate…I give you the Turducken.  Yes…Turkey is period but only the VERY wealthy could afford this.

Idea:

Above we have three ideas listed.  First one is simplistic.  A little almond flour, sugar, and food coloring and voila! You have a display.  The second idea requires a little more work, a wooden frame with some chicken wire, ground meat to cover (a really big oven!!) and perhaps mulmak barding for the saddle and parsnips for the tusks.  The third idea requires a LOT of work.  A turkey, a chicken a duck and 9 quail walk into a kitchen.  Oh and don’t forget the rabbit(s) and HUGE pastry shell.  If this sounds like a bad joke, it’s not.  It just takes two days of prep (6 hours each day) and then a third day for the cooking.

So…the first order of making a supreme dish is to figure the level of expertise you have for making stuff.  And by stuff I mean artistically and patience wise bending food and accessories to your will.  Period cooks, the wealthier the household the bigger the cook’s kitchen and staff as well as access to esoteric supplies/items that could be bought.

An example of wealth, supplies and over the top cooking is the wedding of  the Grand Duke Fernandino I de’Medici to Christine de Lorraine just the niece of French king Henri III and granddaughter to Catherine de’Medici.  The wedding demanded planning and resources to accommodate thousands.  Because the Grand Duke was the Grand Duke and he had great power/money the wedding planners co-opted all the ingredients of the markets for one month.  No one could buy or sell anything that the wedding might need first. http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2009/11/16/14994/  Now that was a wedding feast of extreme pomp and circumstances with HUGE kitchen space and lots of sous chefs at the head chef’s beck and call.

If you aren’t up for wood working and wrestling chicken wire (which will have to be documented) but you can form balls and leaves from playdoh or clay, go with the basic marzipan idea.  If you can carve 100 year old oak stumps into designer bowls using your fingers and a pen knife, take that marzipan and carve out St. George slaying a dragon on a horse in 3D!  If you can debone a duck but don’t have 6 hours deboning 12 birds, do a stuffed duck in a pastry shell with lots of dough artwork. i.e. braiding on the side or cut out pastry leaves with veining and vining.

The closer and idea is to looking almost impossible or weird (to our modern eyes but period) the better off your display has of being noticed.

Ingredients:

The ingredients you use, need to be as close to organic as much as possible.  Using the same type of ingredient found in period i.e. Ethiopian coffee beans when doing a coffee roasting display for example as opposed to a Costa Rican bean.  Yes they are both coffee beans but the idea is to use what was available to the area and time line of your magnificent dish.

If an item is not available an explanation is owed as to why.  Roman dishes were notorious for adding/dropping ingredients on whim.  So fudging a little in the Roman way is ok, however questions will need to be answered WHY the work around happened and the item wasn’t bought with your first born child.  Well other then the whole CPS really frowns upon that sort of thing.  Trading children for piglets!  What is this world coming to!

Technique:

Technique isn’t research, though the two dovetail a bit.  Technique is what you do to achieve your project. i.e. forming dough by hand instead of using a mixer.  The technique used for making and cooking your dish, needs to be as close to period as possible.  HOWEVER this does not mean you need to go out and build a mud and brick beehive oven.  You don’t.  I would suggest noting in the research part why you didn’t/couldn’t.  i.e. Homeowners association had a fit the last time you tried to build a period burning man with wicker and goats.  If you can build the beehive oven, you’ll get extra credit points though.  Hell that could be a really cool idea all on it’s own for A&S!

Research:

Researching an item isn’t just “Hey they stuffed pig’s heads and ate ‘em!”.  Research takes a little more work.  If you are displaying ONE dish.  Everything from the type of pig used for a stuffed pig’s head used, to the type of wood used to fire up the English oven’s and the type of oven used to roast the head in.  Research on a 4×4 index card is no longer an acceptable means of telling What, When, Why, Who and Where a project came from.  Research consists of everything used to make this item, everything used in this item, everything used on this item, everything used to display this item and every one who would be seeing/eating this item.  Every statement in the documentation has to be backed up with a point of fact.  Two or more points of fact would be better as a point of reference.

Information from the internet needs to be viewed with jaundice eye.  Not everything is believable or useable.  Use caution when using online information.

Presentation:

To quote one of my favorite movies:

“Oh, there’s a difference between you and me.  You’re a villain alright.   But I am a super villain.”

“What’s the difference?”

“PRESENTATION!”  Cue dramatic music and lighting.

A presentation can make or break any display.  Don’t just throw food on a table (especially not a rickety table!) and expect people to go “Wow!  All this work is perfect!”.  The likely response will be “Eh…tasty enough but it looks like a Denny’s breakfast bar.”

Table set up:

Start with a table cloth (clean and unstained).  Plain will do but make sure the color is vivid.  Brocades can work but do not let the material speak louder then the dish.

The dish you present your work of art in/on should be just as unique and fitting as the edible art is.  Wood, silver, and pottery dishes are period ways in which to display the tasty food on.  If the dish is for a noble’s table, go for a silver tray or well thrown pottery.  Wood tray’s or bowls are good ways to display either ingredients or for more common tableaus.

Silver trays and wooden bowls/plates can be found at Goodwill for a fraction of buying new.  With all the organic food items used or rare spices, every penny counts!  For those who don’t throw pottery, Etsy is a very good website in which different potters can display their wares for public sale.  Or collect pieces from the different SCA wars from excellent vendors; who you can chat with and touch their pottery before buying.  Also check out different city festivals i.e. Pecan Festival in Austin.

If possible raise the dish up.  Put a stable platform underneath the table cloth, and then add the dish.

Eating ease:

Have small plates, forks, spoons, cups at the start of the table.  Have 2 sets of documentation ready for reading.  At the end of the table open a paper trash back lined with a plastic trash back so that there is a convenient trash receptacle for plates/cutlery etc when the tasting is done.  Be ready to discuss any and all sections of your research including the occasional esoteric tidbit.  Most people are hesitant to step outside their normal eating habits, be ready to talk up beef tongue.  Different doesn’t mean disgusting.  Emphasize the good things not the weird. i.e. sugar and spices in the comfit not the ground up bug parts you used to get the period red color in your food.
 Conclusion:

Find an idea that is right for you.  Some thing that is fun but not usual.  Some thing that can be made with ingredients that are accessible and period.  Practice making the ONE dish at least once prior to the big day.  Research everything.  Leave nothing to be questioned.  Provide pictures if you can of the steps taken to get from point A to point DD.  Have fun!  Remember this project should be both edible and fun.  If it makes you giggle thinking of some one eating it, you’re probably on the right track.

 

Hilyauniyya Asparagus wrapped in Meat (one version), Plain Dishes (Sawadhij)

Hilyauniyya Asparagus stuffed in Meat (one version)

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I really like asparagus.  It’s one of the best things about spring and summer.  Ok not one of the best but a very tasty part of summer!  So when I have extra asparagus on hand (which isn’t often) I try to find new ways to cook it.  Here is one version of some thing I found.

A version of

Hilyauniyya

Asparagus with Meat stuffing

Translation:

Take asparagus, the largest you have, clean and boil, after taking tender meat and pounding  fine; throw in pepper, caraway, coriander seed, cilantro juice, some oil and egg white; take the boiled asparagus, one after another, and dress with this ground meat, and do so carefully. Put an earthenware pot on the fire, after putting in it water, salt, a spoon of murri and another of oil, cilantro juice pepper, caraway and coriander seed; little by little wile the pot boils, throw in it the asparagus wrapped in meat.  Boil in the pot and throw in it meatballs of this ground meat, and when it is all evenly cooked cover with egg, breadcrumbs some of the stuffed meat already mentioned and decorate with egg, God willing.

(An Anonymous Andalusion Cookbook of the 13th Centry, pp. A-41)

Ingredients:

Asparagus spears         1 lb ground meat (I used beef)

2 tsp pepper, caraway, coriander (seed or powdered), cilantro (I used dried), olive oil

2 eggs                          1 ½ C of ground bread crumbs

1 tsp salt

 

Redaction:

This recipe has several steps.  It’s not a put together and throw into a pot type of dish.

This is the first round of spices.  There will be a second round.  It’s on the test!

First trim off the white ends of the asparagus, throw these away, and put the green tips into boiling water for about 2-3 minutes, or until the asparagus turns bright green.

Once the asparagus has turned bright green, remove from water and set to the side.

Next gather all the spices together and separate into two batches, each batch to have 1 tsp of each spice.

Separate 1 of the 2 eggs.

Put the egg white in with the meat and set the yolk in a bowl with the other egg.

Put one set of spices, into the ground meat and kneed well.

Add the oil.

The meat will be very moist and slippery!

It looks not so tasty but gets better soon!

Take a ball of meat and flatten it out.

Wrap the meat around the asparagus carefully.

Due to the slipperiness, the meat will try to slide off the asparagus or not cover very well.  Some times a meat patch of extra spiced meat can be applied, or the original coating can be pinched back over the meat back over hole covering the asparagus.

Some times you just have to unwrap the whole things and restart.  Place each bit of meat and asparagus to the side.

I did not have an open fire pit in which to put a clay pot so I had to use a metal pot over the stove.  Put enough water to come only half way up a meat wrapped asparagus. Add the spices.

Here the fish sauce has melded into the salt a little, hence the damp/wet looking salt and spices.

I added the spices all at the same time instead of bit by bit.

Then place each meat/asparagus piece into the pot carefully.

You can use your fingers but I’d use tongs if at all possible.  Do not worry if the water boils over the meat.  This is suppose to happen.

Let the meat cook through and reduce a little roughly 7 minutes.  I do suggest doing a taste test around the 5 minute mark.

The next step is to combine the eggs and the breadcrumbs.

Here is the cup of bread crumbs with one egg and the yolk of the first egg.  You’ll want to combine these quickly.

Once the meat has thoroughly cooked and is slightly evaporated.  Add the breadcrumb mixture to the water.

The breadcrumbs and eggs will absorb the water and cook very very quickly.  The more water and fewer breadcrumbs the more porridge like this becomes.  The less water, the more solid the bread crumbs become and slightly crispy at the bottom.

Color wise this is not very pretty.  Taste wise though, this is pretty darn tasty! If you need a bit of coloring add parsley over the top as a garnish to look less boring, though this really is anything but boring!