A Challenge Approaches!

I have a new challenge, recreating the Castle of Love. It's gonna be big, it's gonna be epic. I am madness for attempting this, but goddamn will it be amazing when I pull it off.

Here is a description of the dish, from Du Fait de Cuisine:

10. For a lofty entremet, that is a castle, there should be made for its base a fair large litter to be carried by four men, and in the said litter must be four towers to be put in each quarter of the said litter, and each tower should be fortified and machicolated; and each tower has crossbowmen and archers to defend the said fortress, and also in each tower is a candle or wax torch to illuminate; and they bear branches of all trees bearing all manner of flowers and fruit, and on the said branches all manner of birds. And in the lower court will be at the foot of each tower: in one of the towers, a boar's head armed and endored spitting fire; elsewhere a great pike, and this pike is cooked in three ways: the part of the pike toward the tail is fried, the middle part is boiled, and the head part is roasted on the grill; and the said pike is sitting at the foot of the other tower looking out from the beast spitting fire. One should take note of the sauces of the said pike with which it should be eaten, that is: the fried with oranges, the boiled with a good green sauce which should be made sour with a little vinegar, and the roast of the said pike should be eaten with green verjuice made of sorrel. At the foot of the other tower an endored piglet looking out and spitting fire; and at the foot of the other tower a swan which has been skinned and reclothed, also spitting fire. And in the middle of the four towers in the lower court a fountain of Love, from which fountain there should flow by a spout rosewater and clear wine; and above the said fountain are cages with doves and all flying birds. And on the heights of the said castle are standards, banners, and pennons; and beside the said fountain is a peacock which has been skinned and reclothed. And for this, I Chiquart have said before, I would like to teach to the said master who is to make it the art of the said peacock, and this to do courtesy and honor to his lord and master, that is to take a large fat goose, and spit it well and put it to roast well and cleanly and gaily [quickly?], and to recloth it in the plumage of the peacock and put it in the place where the peacock should be set, next to the fountain of love, with the wings extended; and make the tail spread, and to hold the neck raised high, as if it were alive, put a stick of wood inside the said neck which will make it hold straight. And for this the said cook must not flay the said peacock, but take the pinions to put on the goose and take the skin of the rump of the peacock where the feathers are held all together; and when it goes onto the goose, to make good skewers to make the said goose spread its tail as properly as the peacock if it were alive.
And on the battlements of the lower court should be chickens skinned and reclothed and endored, and endored hedgehogs, and endored apples made of meat, Spanish pots made of meat all endored; molded figures, that is: hares, brachets, deer, boars, the hunters with their horns, partridge, crayfish, dolphin, peas all molded and beans made all of molded meat. The curtains of the said castle which go all around the castle, should be so large hanging to the ground that one cannot see the bearers of the said castle. And the said curtains from the ground to two feet up should be painted with waves of water and large sea flowers; and among the said waves should be painted all sorts of fish, and above the said waters and waves should be galleys and ships full of people armed in all ways so that it seems they come to attack the said fortress and castle of Love, which appears to be on a great rock in the sea, of which people some are archers, crossbowmen, others are furnished with lances, others with ladders to lean against the said fortress, these climbing and those descending and pushing the others off, these divided and other things, these hard pressed and those in retreat, these being killed by arrows and those by stones.
And within the curtains should be three or four young children playing very well, one a rebec, another a lute, psaltery, or harp, and others who have good voices to sing appropriate, sweet, and pleasant songs so that one is aware that these are sirens in the sea by their clear singing.
And the peacock which is mentioned above, which by the advice of me, Chyquart, is the result of artifice, take it and clean it very well and then dry it well and properly, and spit it and put it to roast; and when it is nearly roasted stud it with good whole cloves well and properly; and if the surface is spoiled put it to roast again. And then let your lord know about your trick with the peacock and he can then arrange for what he wants done.
Oh yeah...
This is going to require a huge amount of planning to accomplish. Stay tuned for a wild ride.

#castleoflove

Reflections on a Feast

So, it's been a while since Fall Coronation. Usually I try and write quickly after an event to capture my mind and my thoughts, but this event led me to sit and ponder a great deal. I learned a lot of things, both in skills as well as personally, and my emotions were a roller-coaster the entire time. Perhaps at a later date I'll share my "No shit there I was..." story for you all to enjoy, but maybe after some more time has past to protect the innocents (and me) from angry wrath :p. In between paragraphs I'll post pictures of my feast, because I'm pretty proud of it.

I never truly understood how good of a cook I was until this weekend. I know that sounds egotistical as shit, but anyone who honestly knows me is aware I am my own worst critic and am the last person to praise my work. Even after hearing my feast had sold out before the event even started wasn't enough to make me feel pride in my work, Jake can attest to my panic and concern at disappointing over 100 people with my "just ok" food. I just don't compliment myself well, so when things start to go tits up I know in my gut that I'm going to be a failure. Its an issue I struggle with during every creative work, but I've heard most artists suffer from the same so I'm not too stressed about it. But after this weekend...I dunno, something changed.

I was in a terrible space on Saturday, mentally as well as with my feast preparation. Things were going wrong everywhere, ingredients were not working and to me it felt like I had clearly not practiced enough. At one point I had a breakdown, needing to call Andi to get some kind of help through the woods I was clearly losing myself into. We were both struggling over the phone to figure out a way to solve it, when a single piece of information sank into my brain and suddenly I had it. It was a moment of clarity, where there wasn't sound or dark or loss...I just understood what I had to do.

From that point on, I was running on instinct. I've never butchered an animal before, but I knew how to do it. I don't know how I knew, I just knew what knife to use and where to cut to get my desired outcome. Thank goodness Squeaky gave me some tips on presentation for cutting purposes, and James Collins helped me make life a lot easier when my brain was acting stupid near the 2am mark. But I just knew what to do. And that happened for me all day Sunday. Problems rolled in, and I knew the answers before I had even thought about them. We had a problem, Andi or an of my other horde of Laurels would toss them at me and we were able to bounce ideas off each other until the problem was solved. It was like a dance, it was just a perfect swell and crest of music.

I learned I was a pretty good cook. Not just in actual knowledge, I knew enough about the processes instinctively through training to know how to fix problems or roll with any punch that got thrown at me. I knew when to ask for help, I knew when to take hints and to follow the advice of my peers. More importantly, I learned I could trust myself. When the chips were down, when I was forced in the corner...I found out I could trust myself to handle the pressure as best as any human can and produce a pretty excellent product. That's a pretty valuable lesson right there.

Besides all that fun stuff, I really did learn a lot of great things this event. Finding out you chose the right people to be friends and family with was nice, especially when they let me scream and stomp then give me booze and push me back into the kitchen. I also learned how to butcher a whole animal, the joys of that I cannot begin to describe, and how to remove eyeballs (far less joyous, more...curious). I learned that no matter how much you prepare, shit will go down and you have to deal with it. I also learned you cannot please everyone, and one person not properly reading your menu and thus complaining about allergies is totally not my problem. It also seems that I say unintentionally hilarious things in the kitchen when I am focused ("The 19th chicken rides the pig!") and many people will believe that I will serve eel for dessert.

Tomorrow I'll finish my what went right and wrong posts, until then thank you for your support. Yes even you, the one on the left.

SCA Recipe of the day: Chardewardon covered in Snowe

Hello again gentle readers! Another installment of SCA Recipe of the Day is here again, I haven't done one of these in a while :)

Excuse me while I go fight with my pears.

Right then. So today is me doing Chardewardon covered in Snowe, two recipe's combined into one to make a yummy delisious dish. First up is my Chardewardon, a pear dish (because pears are in season) from the cook book Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, T. Austin (ed.) :

Ingredients:

4 pears
1 cup white wine
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger

Steps:

Peel and core the pears. Cut into small pieces and place in a sauce pan along with white wine. Bring to a boil, and simmer until pears are soft - about 15 minutes. Allow to cool and then grind with mortar and pestle (or in food processor). Mix with remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Heat until it boils and becomes very thick - it will resemble oatmeal in texture. Serve warm or cold.

 Pretty simple, right? Careful, pears boil quick!

The next item on my list was Snowe, a pretty simple dish that was used to top many a meal. This recipe for Snowe can be found at A Proper New Booke of Cookery, C.F. Frere (ed.):

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cream
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. rose water

Steps:


Separate egg, discarding yolk. Stir egg white in a large bowl. Add cream, sugar, and rose water. Whisk until mixture will not drip out of whisk. Strain to remove whey if necessary.

So yeah, snowe itself is super easy!


I went ahead and made my snowe first, to allow it time to chill and firm while I made the pears. Because I would be using the yolks for the main pear dish, I went ahead and separated and stored the yolks in a side container while using the egg whites for the snowe. I made the dish and played pass-along, handing the cream around for people to stir and shake until it became snowe. Once down, I put it in the fridge to chill and relax. Simple as pie!

The Chardewardon was a bit more complex, requiring lots of steps. The coring was the trickiest for me, pears do not have as distinct of a core as say apple or peaches so it was a lot of trial and error in de-coring the pears. I went with a simple Chardonnay wine because I enjoy the taste, and the smell of the boiling pears in the wine was divine. Wine burns really well when it splashes out on top of your skin, so take care.

I set aside the pears and let cool for 20 minutes while discussing some politics, then went back to the food processor to blend the pears down. I added the rest of my ingredients into my original pot, stirred till evenly mixed and then boiled. As you can see by my statement above as I started to write, the pears boil up quick and hard and splashed my lappy a few times while I worked :p. It continued to be a wonderful smell while boiling, and turned a wonderful cinnamon brown in color.

I served these into small tumblers and topped with snowe. The taste and color was amazing, and I really loved how this dish came out. When finished and cooked it came out thicker than oatmeal, but not quite custard. It reminded me of pumpkin pie filling in a way, i served it war but I'm sure it would taste just as good cold. I plan on doing my own redaction of this dish, seeing how my own translation will work out for me. I highly recommend this dish, a solid A!

SCA Recipe of the day: May Eggs

6 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. parsley
1/2 tsp. tarragon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 slice white bread

Place six eggs into a pan of cold water and bring to a boil. After they've been boiling for 3 minutes, remove from heat, and chill rapidly in ice water.

Carefully cut a half inch hole in the shell at the large end of the egg. Cut through the white with the tip of a knife to expose the yolk. Remove the yolk and put it into a bowl (a turkey baster or syringe works well for this). Repeat with remaining eggs.

Mix the six egg yolks together with the extra one, add spices and return to egg shells. Plug the whole in each egg with a small piece of white bread. Place in pan of cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and chill in ice water for 2 minutes. Then remove the eggs immediately from the water, dry them off, and carefully remove the shell.

* * * * 

Oh France, making things needlessly complicated since the 1500's! This is my first attempt at a period-based recipe, so obviously there was some trial and error. the eggs pre-boiled a touch too long, so I did not get as much yoke from each egg as I would have preferred. I think the trick there is that each stovetop is gonna have different heat settings, and just to keep careful eye on the water.

I tried to mix in a bit extra egg yoke to compensate for what I lost, though I think the mixture was still a little less than needed as I ended up with a thicker spice blend. A well, lesson learned! :) I left out the tarragon and substituted with onion powder, because I love onions, and I stuffed with wheat bread instead of white as I felt that was more "period correct" for what would have been added.

Feeling creative once completed, I dusted each egg with a different topping to try and see how that would work! One egg has a small coating of freshly shredded cheese, another a thin dribble of honey, a third with a small sprinkle of sugar and the last just plain.

OK, upon eating I can tell its a bit too much spice with the yoke content as assumed. Still really good, but I should have scaled back on the spice to match the yoke ratio. First egg I would rate as a B-. Cheese egg has a similar issue, the sharpness of the shredded cheese is heightening the spice so it's not all that great sadly. I'm sure cheese egg would be better with a yoke ratio higher, but its a D+. Sugar egg...ugh. That was a poor choice, the sweetness and the rough spiciness does not go well in the slightest so this egg is most definitely an F. On the honey egg, on the other hand, surprises the crap out of me. I was kinda holding my gut, thinking I was gonna have another sugar egg on my hands and I was kind of right. The sweetness of the honey doesn't go well with the spice mix, but the honey itself on the egg where the ratio is better actually works really well! I have a good feeling that if the yoke mixture is perfected, the honey egg will be an awesome taste so I'm gonna go and give it a C+ for the effort.