Once again I have procrastinated, but in a way that is fruitful (Oh here we go with food puns already)because it is all stuff I can talk about together! But it’s long, so two posts. I spent most of the summer with misdiagnosed pain in my right hand, so a lot of crafting didn’t happen (long story short, I was wearing the wrong brace and taking the wrong pain pills and life is better now, but grrr.)
This year I spent all of An Tir/West War camping and cooking as part of Cook’s Playdate. Wednesday was consumed with getting there and setting up, an interesting task as the dog was along. Thursday I helped one of the other campers, (SCA name: Meshulam Aran Ben Yehuda) with his plan to make a bread oven.
Picture Credits: Meshulam Aran Ben Yehuda
First Meshulam assembled the table, and then we (and other helpers) molded wet sand into the shape we wanted the interior to be. We then applied a layer of wet newspaper and started mixing up sand, clay and straw to apply on top of the newspaper. The sand/clay/straw will form the actual oven and the newspaper is to prevent the oven mix from sticking with the sand layer. Meshulam is the one in green with the straw hat. He is taking the sand layer out now that the oven clay has hardened (This occurred Saturday morning).
Picture Credits: Laurie Hupman
Friday is usually Fish Day, since that was the medieval people traditionally ate fish. My plans changed that morning however when a friend wandered over with two pounds of boar stew meat and asked if I wanted it. I already had a pound I had planned to bake into a pie, so I said sure and planned a stew for the day instead of fish. The stew simmered all day in a bath of orange juice (the acidity helps tenderize the game meat), cherries, plums, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves and saffron. I omitted ginger because I have a friend who is deathly allergic and I wanted her to be able to try it in case she wandered by. I simmered it in my Dutch oven all day on lump charcoal and kept checking temperature with a probe (because SAFETY). Due to us all rushing off to a wedding that night, most of it got eaten cold on Saturday but it was better that way because 1) it’s summer and no one wants soup and 2) the meat got more flavor.
Saturday was ALL the pies. I brought a pound of ground duck and two pounds of ground heirloom pork. I cooked this on my jetboil for speed and again safety with raw meat. I didn’t want them to not cook in the oven. Thankfully I’d premade both wheat and white pie dough at home, which saved me a lot of time and mess. Both the duck and pork got carrot and parsnip added as well as a medieval spice blend called powder fort. (http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/fort.html). I frankly can’t recall which got which crust, but thankfully I had 6 mini pie tins and 3 mini springform pans so we were able to tell which was which by shape. Traditionally a medieval pie would have to have a standing crust that would hold shape on its own, but that’s not in my skill set yet, so I like to cheat. The springform pans give the shape well.
Photo credits: Robert Janus Dricker
The way a bread oven works is that you heat it up to a high temp, and then bake a succession of things in order based on the heat they need. The first thing that went in was a rack of lamb, then all the breads (I did bread as well), and then lastly the pies. They finished right when dinner was over, so Giles and I loaded my mini pies and his big pie sans pans onto a board and took them down the lane to the Knowne World Party. I wish we’d had a picture, that was the best part of the weekend!
Dragon Dyeworks 