Link to Suth Gild Heall

When reading my blog, it's probably best to start from the older posts and read the newer ones; also, for more recipes please refer to the Suth Gild Heall Kitchen at http://suthgh.blogspot.com, if you want to see my posts, search by Gwir verch Madog.

Recipes from Forme of Cury - Rosee

"Cury" R 52 Rosee
Original Recipe
Take thyk milk as to fore welled. Cast thereto suguar a gode porcioun pynes. Dates mynced. Canel. & powdour gynger and seeth it, and alye it with flores of white Rosis, and flour of rys, cole it, slat it and messe it forth. If thou wilt in stede of almaunde mylke, take swete cremes of kyne.
Ingredients
1	cup	ground almonds
3	cups	water
0.4	cup	sugar
1	cup	almonds slivered
1.5	cups	chopped dates
1	tsp	cinnamon
0.5	tsp	galingale (substitute for ginger)
1	cup	rose petals
3	TBS	rice flour
Method
Make the almond milk by boiling the water and steeping the ground almonds in the water. Let it soak for a bit, then strain the ground almonds from the almond milk. (I prefer to let my almond milk be a bit chunky, but that's my taste, others prefer to strain it through a hair strainer, ie, a finer mesh strainer). Add sugar. A good portion pynes - in general, I've used pine nuts. This time I didnt' have any and substituted slivered almonds. Chop the dates and add to the mix, along with the spices. Add the rose petals (I'm too lazy to chop the whites off) and the rice flour, cook until thickened, adding rice flour as necessary. Put into a serving dish, let it cool and serve. Don't add too much rice flour as it will thicken as it cools, I made it so it was like a thicker custard. too thick and it would be gummy.
Notes; some recipes have you steep the rose petals in water first, strain them and then add them to the pudding. You can then use the rose water for something else. Also, I've read somewhere that you take off the little inside bits fo the rose petals as otherwise it makes it bitter. I generally don't bother. I also used red roses, as that's what I grow - pesticide free - so it wasn't a pure white pudding, but it would be stunning more white! We generally substitute ginger as one of the people we cook for at cooks' guild is allergic to ginger. The reference to sweet cremes of kyne is full cream milk.

Recipes from Forme of Cury - Mawmenee

"Cury" R 20 Mawmenee
Original Recipe
Take a pottel of wyne greke. And ii. Pounde of sugur take and clarifye the sugur with a qantite of wyne and drawe it thurgh a straynour in to a pot of erthe take flour of Canell and medle with sum of the wyne an caste to gydre. Take pynes with dates and frye hem a litell in grece other on oyle and cast hem to gydre. take clowes an flour of canel hool and cast thereto. take powdour gyngur. canel. clower, colour it with saundres a lytel yf hit be nede cast salt thereto. and lat it seeth; warly with a slow fyre and not to thyk, take brawn of capouns yteysed other of Fesauntes teysed small and cast thereto,
Ingredients
4	cups	wine
1.5	cups	sugar
1	tsp	cinnmon
2	cups	dates
70	grams	pine nuts
4	TBs	butter
0.4	tsp	mace
0.5	tsp	cloves
0.5	tsp	galingale
1	whole	cooked chicken
Method
Hm, I did this one rather a while ago and my notes are just listing the ingredients. I basically followed the steps - a pottel is a measurement, wyne greke is ecipe calls for "wyne greke" or Greek Wine, which the glossary in Curye on Inglysch defines as "...a sweet type of wine which actually came from Italy..." . I used a fulsome bodied (cask) red wine (given that it's with a stronger flavoured meat - ie, pheasant /capon. We don't need to clarify the sugar, as modern sugar is highly processed; but I dissolved the sugar in the wine, added cinnamon. Chop the dates, add the pine nuts and fry in butter until the dates soften slightly. Add this mixture to the sweetened wine and add the remaining (ground) spices. You could read this take whole cloves and flour of canel (ie ground cinnamon) which makes more sense than flour of canel hool. Simmer this for a while, the dates do dissolve and get fairly thick, hence the warning not to let it thicken too mcuh. What the recipe doesn't say is that the chicken or pheasant shoudl be cooked, but in general, the yteysed is used in conjunction with already cooked meat - and means to pull in pieces by the fingers, which is more difficult to do with raw meat. I also opted for cooked meat as you add the meat and it's a 'cast thereto' with no further instructions to seeth, so the assumption is that the meat is mixed together with the wine and spices, picking up that flavour, and being served thereafter.

Recipes from Forme of Cury - Connates

"Cury" R 18 Connates
Original Recipe
Take Connes and pare hem. Pyke out thte best and do hem in a pot of erthe. Do herefto whyte gece that he stewe ther inne. And lye hem up with hony clarified and with rawe zolkes and with a lytell almaund mylke and do thereinne powdour fort and Safron. and loke that it be yleesshed.
Ingredients				For Powder Fort		Alt.
2	whole	quince		ginger		cloves
1	TBS	butter		cinnamon		mace
0.5	cup	sugar		cloves		cubeb
2	yolks	egg		grains of paradise		cinnamon
0.5	cup	almond milk		cubeb		ginger
						pepper
Method
Connates are quinces (note 1: connat seems to be a kind of marmalade of connes, or quinces, from FR.Coing). I peeled, quartered and cored the quinces. I cooked the quinces in butter, over a low flame (gas) (in a stainless steel saucepan, an earthenware pot would've been better). I used sugar as it was a cooks' guild and there is a honey allergy. Remove the quinces, and add sugar to the liquid, mix until dissolved. Let it cool slightly, then stir in the raw egg yolks to thicken, ensuring that they don't curdle (ie, cook). Return the quinces, and add a bit of almond milk, and spices. Mix. (Yleesshed in the notes is verb, 'gloss')

Recipes from Forme of Cury - Caboches in Potage with redaction

"Cury" R 4 Caboches in Potage
Original Recipe
Take caboches and quarter hem seeth hem in gode broth with Oynouns y mynced and the whyte of Lekes y slyt and coure smale and do per to safroun an salt and force it with powdour douce.
Redaction for 6 - 10
Ingredients
0.4	whole	cabbage		for poweder douce
3	medium	onions		anise
1	white only	leek		hyssop
		beef stock		fennel
				sugar
				recipe from eary french cooking
Grind together a pinch of anise and fennel seed in a mortar; I had fresh hyssop so I used a few leaves of that as well in the mix. Add a small pinch of sugar. I personally dislike powder douce, so used a very small pinch of that in the caboches.
Method
I only used a quarter of a cabbage, this being tested for a cooks' guild. Mince the onions, and chop the whites of the leeks (I used up and slightly into the green of the leek). Simmer the vegetables in beef stock (commercial brand) until they are soft - cabbages don't need to cook forever, about 20 mintues to half an hour, is sufficient to soften them without making a mush. Dissolve a pinch of saffron in warm water, add to the vegetable stock. Salt to taste. Add powder douce to taste.

Recipes from Forme of Cury - Rapes in Potage

"Cury" R 5 Rapes in Potage
Original Recipe
Take rapus and make hem clene and waissh hem clene. Quare hem. Parboile hem. Take hem up. Cast hem in a gode broth and seeth hem. Mnce Oynouns and cast thereto Safround and salt and messe it forth with powdour douce. The wise make of Pasturnakes and skyrwates.
Ingredients
3	whole	turnips (these were small)
1	whole	medium onion
1	pinch	saffron
1	pinch	salt (to taste)
1	pinch	powdour douce
Method
I peeled and chopped the turnips and parboiled briefly. While the turnips were were being parboiled, I minced (but not too finely) the onion. I used a commercial beef stock and simmered the turnips with the onion for approximately half an hour, until tender but not translucent. The recipe does seem to say that the onions should not be cooked, but I personally can't stand raw onion, and so added to the broth. Towards the end of the cooking, add the saffron (once dissolved in warm water), and spices. Pasternaks in the footnote are parsnips (or carrots) and a skirrit is a root vegetable (refer, Polish cooking).

Campfire cooking - Stormhold Surveying Expendition

Recently, at the Stormhold Surveying Expedition, I had the pleasure of assisting Mistress Eleanor Lyttlehales with the food preparation. The joy of the experience, apart from camping in a truly gorgeous setting at Lady Ava's property (Napoleon, VIC) was that we got to cook over an open fire (this was well before the horror of Black Saturday). The good folkes of Abbotsford have a plethora of fine cauldrons, very swish pot hangers, and a proper copper, which made my meagre collection of proper cooking implements look very small, indeed! We did a feast for 60 on both Saturday and Sunday (and lunches), which was great - but by the end my feet and back were a bit sore... (I'm a desk jockey by trade...)

I think we did a very good job, there were a few challenges (like using entire dried out pine logs for firewood) - you picked them up and they were HUGE but very light, burned so quickly that they really didn't leave coals. I also learned a bit about pot nestling in coals (I've always been a pot hanger), and was reminded that cloth is actually flammable (my apron has a lovely burn section).

The recipes were simple, hearty fare that worked well while camping - the cherry pudding was particularly fine, and I like to think I made a contribution by stewing the pears Celsa brought (a fortuitous find from the roadside) in a red wine syrup, and then using the syrup for a mulled wine. I should have parboiled and larded the venison - but instead, spit roasted first, however, there were some 'squidgy' bits which needed a bit more cooking, so I ended up putting it in a red wine and pepper sauce to finish. Not too bad. My other favourite was the spinach - Eleanor added rocket (which I'm not a fan of) but blanched in with the spinach and laden with melted butter, it was a really lovely green (and one which I would definitely do again). The heat was a bit overwhelming for me on Sunday, and I forgot to fry the onion and rabbit before adding to the pot for stew - ah well!

More enjoyable I think than the soiree (well, not my feast, so all care and no responsibility) and it was two days - I really 'got into the groove' of what it must have been like, say, as a king's cook on the road. Cooking over an open fire as opposed to a stove is wonderful - though everything takes that little bit longer, but then, slow food is a pleasure unto itself.

Waste not, want not

One of the things I always try to do in my feast stewarding, is to fully use ingredients. For example, I did a Pink Dish for a Meat Day, and then, used the left over ground almonds (having been used for almond milk) for a dessert. I tend to think that our earlier colleagues would have ensured that every last bit of food was turned into something delicious... (and no, I have not yet tried the brewed stag testicles recipe from Forme of Cury, nor will I eat fish guts).

Ung Roze a chair: A Pink dish for Meat Days - no.191
Grind unskinned almonds well, then take beef broth, wine and verjuice and steep your almonds in it and strain them; then take your meat - that is, breast of veal, or whole or quartered chicken cooked with a knucke of beef, or with some other good cut of beef - fry this meat in bacon grease until it is a russet colour, then take a very small amount of fine cinnamon, white mecca ginger, and lesser spices such as grains of paradise, cloves and long pepper. For colour you should have orchil and alkanet - alkanet is as suitable as orchil, if you can get it, becuase its colour is not so pronounced as is that of orchil; it should be soaked in a little water, which is hot and not just wrm, for three or foru hours; then put it into the pottage after it has boiled, and stir it thoroughly until it has the proper colour for a Pink Dish.
No.	Quantity	Item	Per 50		Per 100
0.5	cup	ground almonds	2.5	cups	5	cups
1	cup	boiling water	5	cups	10	cups
	splash	wine & verjuice
800	grams	beef	4	kilos	8	kilos
0.5	tsp	cinnamon	2.5	tsp	5	tsp
0.25	tsp	ginger (galingale)	1.25	tsp	2.5	tsp
0.25	tsp	ground cloves	1.25	tsp	2.5	tsp
1	pod	cardamom, ground	5	pods	10	pods
1	pinch	Salt
1	tsp	pepper	5	tsp	10	tsp
Method
Make the almond milk - boil the water, and pour over the ground almonds. Leave it sit until it is cool enough to handle, strain. RESERVE the almonds - it is used for the cold almond cream! Add a splash of wine & verjuice to the almond milk. Set this on the stove to simmer gently. I didn't colour it in the test recipe - but a drop of food dye would be nice (see the notes on orchil p. 244). Add the spices - the flavour should be predominatly pepper-ish - effectively this is a medieval poivrade. Correct as necessary and add salt. Leave to warm while frying the beef. The beef should be done at the last minute. Heat skillet and fry the beef in lard until browned (don't over cook). I am choosing to serve the sauce separately to the beef.

Berries with Cold Almond Cream (cold almond cream from Take a Thousand Eggs, vol. 1 p. 227
take almonds, and blanch them, and wash them in fair water, and bray them small in a mortar with fair water. And then take them and the water togther somewhat thick, and draw them through a strainer into a fair pot, And set them over the fire, and let them boil once, and take them down, and cast thereto salt and let stand a furlong-way or two. And cast a little vinegar thereto, then cast it on a fair linen cloth that is fair washed, and the water wrung out thereof; and cast it all about with the ladle, and let men hold the cloth all about; and then take a ladle, and draw under the cloth, and draw away the water all that a man may. And then gather all the cream together in the cloth; and then take the cloth with the cream, and hang it upon a pin, and let the water drop out two or three hours more. And then take it off the cloth, and put it in a bowl of wood, and cast sugar enough thereto and a little salt. And if it wax too thick, take sweet wine and mix it withal; then take raisins of corinth, clean and washed, and put them therein that they are not seen, and when it is dressed in the manner of a mortrews, take red anise in comfit or else leaves of borage, and set thereon in a dish.
No.	Quantity	Qantity	Item	Per 50		Per 100
1		carton	strawberries	5	cartons	12	cartons
Method
Wash and hull the strawberries; refrigerate. The almond 'cream' has already been made from the pink dish from the first remove. Strain it; squeeze in a cloth, let it hang for several hours. Either mold the almonds around the currants, or poke some currants in the molds. The variation is instead of a sweet wine, I've got excess rose cordial or lavendar cordial - which will be ladelled around the almond cream. The berries either will be plated with the cream, if possible or served in small bowls separately .

Cooking - favourite pies

Two of the more recent favourite recipes I've done are both for William Marshal feasts, they are as follows: the Pie of Herbs, cheese and eggs (listed below) and Custard Lombard, also done both for the soiree and the 2008 William Marshall.

One of the Stormhold annual feasts is William Marshall, in honour of William the Marshall (circa 1170 - 1209) and it is one feast that I have inevitably been the head cook or helped at for the last 10 years. One of the reasons I've been working so much with Forme of Cury (1390) and Taillevent (1330 - 1395), and Menagier, is, apart from the fact that it is fantastic food, that it's the closest we have written cooking texts for the 13th century. The recipes are similar to the Anglo Norman Culinary Collections, Constance B Hieatt, Robin Jones (it's on the web, but I have a PDF of it from Speculum, vol 61, Issue 4, Oct. 1986). Recipes are presumed to date back to 1272, and I note that some are included in the later texts, such as cress, rose pudding, sage sauce. So I feel quite comfortable using Taillevant for an early Anglo-Norman feast.

In general, becuase the feast has been for larger numbers (ie 100 pax, give or take), with a wide range of culinary sensitivities to be considered (ie food allergies, gluten free, vegetarians, fighters), I like to plan the feast so that there will be some period 'crowd pleasers' and some more challenging dishes. I do feel that, to the extent possible, I will cater to notified food issues. It's no hassle to make a gluten free pastry base, for example. Though at the 08 William marshall, I had the beef and barley stew in vegetarian form, non-allium but with meat, and a gluten free version all bubbling simultaneously. Anyway, back to the recipes. These two pies are noteworthy, as the Pie of Herbs, cheese and egg has the addition of a whole egg yolk after the pie is baking - an unusual, but delightful touch. The other, Custard Lombard, a sweet custard pie, has the addition of beef marrow - which gives it a delightful delicacy. Custard Lombard is also unusual in that parsley acts as a 'whisk' - I've done it both over parsley and with a whisk, and the parsley gives it as smooth and nice a texture. But let the recipes themselves do the talking:

Pie of Herbs, cheese and eggs no 175 from Viandier of Taillevent
Take parsley, mint, chard, spinach, lettuce, marjoram, basil and wild thyme, and grind everythign together in a mortar, moisten with pure water and squeeze outgt he juice, break a large number of eggs into the joice and add posdered giner, cinnamon and long papper, a good quality cheese, grated, and salt; beat everthing tgether. Then make a very thin pastry to put in yourdish, of the size of your dish, then line your dish with it; coats the inside of the dish with portk fat, then put in your pastry, put your dish on the coals and again coat the inside if the pastry with pork fat; when it has melted, bput your filling in your pastry and cover it with the other dish and put the fire on top as well as underneath and let your pie dry out a litt;e uncover the top of the dish and put five egg yolks and fine spice powder carefully ove your pie; then replace the dish as it was before and let it gradually cook in low coal fire; check often to see that it is not over-cooking. Put sugar on top when serving.
Per table (10 to a table
No.	Quantity	Qantity	Item	Per 50		Per 100
			parsley	*
			mint	*
			chard	*
500		grams	spinach	*	kilos	2.5	kilos
			marjoram	*
			basil	*
			thyme	*		1	litre
3		whole	eggs	15	egs	30	eggs
0.5		tsp	ginger (galingale)
0.25		tsp	cinnamon	1.25		2.5
0.24		tsp	long pepper*	1.25		2.5
			*pepper and cardamon
1		cup	grated tasty cheese	5	cups	10	cups
4		yolks only	eggs	20	yolks	40	yolks
0.25		tsp	cinnamon	1.25	tsp	2.5	tsp
0.25		tsp	nutmeg	1.25	tsp	2.5	tsp
0.25		tsp	ginger (galingale)	1.25	tsp	2.5	tsp
Method
Coat the pie pan with non stickspray; line with pastry. Melt dab of butter in the pastry; put in oven until it melts and the crust begins to harden a bit. In the interim, chop the parsley, mint, (cook the spinach and squeeze out the juice from it); marjoram, basil and thyme. Put it in a mortar and pound it a bit. Pour warm water on it; squeeze dry. Reserve the liquid - there should be approximately 1 litre of green juice. As for balance of flavour, add more basil/thyme, then parsley, the spinach then just a hint of mint. Mix the liquid, whole eggs and cheese, and add the spices. Put it in the pastry and bake at about 200 degrees C for approximately 15 minutes. Add the whole, uncooked egg yolks to the top of the pie. The pie should be cooked enough so that they SLIGHTLY sink into the pie - they shouldn't sit 'proud', but should gently sink a bit. Add a gentle sprinkle of fine spice powder (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg). Put the pie back into the overn for about another 30 minutes until well cooked. Sprinkle with sugar just before serving. The whole egg yolks 'hard boil' and sink into the pie - looks great for presentation - our pie pans only fit 4 egg yolks on comfortably.

Custard Lombard - Renfrow, page 285

Take good cream, leaves of parsley and eggs, the yolks and the whites, and break them thereto and strain through a strainer, til it is so stiff that it will bear himself, then take fair marrow, and dates, cut in 2 or 3 prunes and put the dates and the prunes and marrow in a fair coffin, made of fair paste and put the coffin in the oven till itis a little hard; then draw them out of the oven; take the liquor and put therefon and fill it up and cast sugar enough on and salt; then let bake ogether till it is enough; and if it is in Lent, leave the eggs and the marrow out and serve it forth.

No.

Quantity

Item

3 pies

For 70

For 90

1

cup

cups

cream

2.5

cup

cream

3.333

cup

cream

1

sprig

sprig

parsley

2.5

sprig

parsley

3.333

sprig

parsley

6

eggs

whole

eggs

15

eggs

eggs

20.000

eggs

eggs

0.005

grams

pinch

marrow

0.0125

pinch

marrow

0.017

pinch

marrow

12

whole

whole

dates

30

whole

dates

40.000

whole

dates

3

whole

whole

prunes

7.5

whole

prunes

10.000

whole

prunes

2

tsp

tsp

sugar

5

tsp

sugar

6.667

tsp

sugar

1

pastry shell

Method

Blind bake the pastry shell for about 5 minutes. For the marrow, get your butcher to cut a marrow bone in half. Chop the dates and prunes. Add the dates and prunes to the pie shell, and scrape out about half of the marrow bone (if it's a beef shank). Dot the marrow in amongst the chopped dates and prunes. Bake this in the oven for about 7 minutes (pour yourself and some friends a glass of wine, have a chat and when you just begin to smell the pie, have a loook and if the marrow is melted, take the pie out of the oven). Now for the interesting part of the recipe. Put the parsely in a colander. Break the eggs over the colander and 'mash' the eggs through the colander. The parsley helps to froth the eggs, ie, whisking without a whisk. Pour the egg (add the cream too) mixture through the sieve a few times until the mix is frothy and thickened. Add the cream mixture on top of the dates in the pie shell, and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 200 celcuis for approximately 45 minutes until the pie has set like a custard. This is a delicately flavoured, superb custard, don't be put off by the beef marrow - it's a subtle enrichment to the pie.

Sotelties

I've played a lot with sotelties over the years, and try to ensure that every feast has an entrement. This past year I've done a gingerbread drakkar for Stormhold. I used an earlier period gingerbread recipe, honey and breadcrumbs (Take a Thousand Eggs, vol 2 p. 288) rather than the later period Sabrina Welserin Nuremburg gingerbread receipe (recipe 164, downloaded from http://www.davidfiedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Sabrina Weserin.html) which uses sugar and flour (for small ones) and R. 164, which uses honey for large Nurnberger Lebkuchen. Interestingly, is lised in the cookbook, GermanCooking from Time Life books, as being a 'closely guarded secret, with no extant recipes' - this was published in 1960's, hence the omission. David Friedman has done a great service in translating the Sabrina Welserin into english and this will be my next focus.

Anyway, I molded the drakkar while the mixture was warm, as the honey is still pliable at this stage and it made a serviceable drakkar shape. I then made the 'shields' to decorate the outside of the drakkar from marzipan. Stormhold had issued a commemorative coin, so I took a wax casting of the coin and then used it as a mold to shape the marzipan. I painted it with a saffron mixture for yellow and stuck them on with royal icing. For the sail, I wanted ot use sugar paste, but it wasn't going to dry in time so instead I painted a piece of parchment gold (with a red laurel leaf) and sewed the parchment to cross sticks to make the sail. I was able to stick this into the ship and it held with additional gingerbread. I used cinnamon sticks for extra decoration on the drakkar. Interstingly, as the drakkar dried (I made it the night before the event), it started to crack, and some emergency repairs were made on the night with toothpicks to hold it together. I think it was well received, and certainly there wasn't much left at the end of the nigt!

In contrast, when you are working with the later period gingerbread recipe, ie, a baked gingerbread (made with flour) it holds it shape (in general) witout cracking. One of my first sotelties was to make a horn of plenty from a baked gingerbread, I shaped the dough over a cow's horn to get the horn of plenty shape and then baked it (in two halves) - can I just say that baking cow's h orn stinks! Didn't effect the end product, whcih is good. I then filled the horn of plenty with marzipan fruit, and it looked stunning.

I've also used marzipan extensively, either as a base (I did a painted marzipan base for a garden scene from the Alhambra) or as a feature (I did a helmeted cocks, using marzipan as the helmet for the chickens). Now that was a great entrement - we spit roasted a pig, and to serve it we put it on a huge board - and did a jousting scene. The pig was mounted by a chicken holding a lance, wearing a marzipan helmet. There was a fence running down the centre of the board, the chicken mounted on the pig on one side, and a 'horseless' chicken (battling on its feet) on the other side - the unmounted chicken also sported a lance and shield. Most impressive!

Also recently, I (and helpers) made and painted sugar plates on which to serve macaroons (hey, small but you have to have some sort of decoaration) which looked quite cute. Sugar plate is a bit fiddly, but plans are to do some moulds. I've also used sugar plate to make mock spices, and then flavour the mock spice with the real spice (ie, clove shaped from sugar plate flavoured with cloves). I put the spices in a box and used them as in investiture gift for Sara and Rodrigo from the Shire of KG, which the kids presented. Looked cute.

Apparently, I creeped people out wiht one of my sotelties - which was a life sized paper mache figure of William the Marshall (which you lifted up and there were sweet meats underneath). The paper mache was molded over Gwynfor's armour, so it was really life sized, and it was paraded into the hall preceded by singers. A little too life like I was told...

I love doing sotelties as they are (a) fun and (b) I have a relentless sweeet tooth and so search out sugar, fruit and sweetness in all its forms...