What is a Period Cook-a-Long?

Period food is not scary. And to prove this, once a month, I will be posting a period recipe, with the redaction and a challenge. The challenge is to make the recipe, and comment with how you did. Did the redaction work? What did you think? Did you change the recipe for any reason? Did the change work? Would you serve this to your Canton/Shire/Barony?

Tuesday 10 May 2011

The Great Period Cook-a-Long has moved!

Greetings!

I just wanted to make the short announcement that The Great Period Cook-A-Long website has moved to:

http://periodcookalong.wordpress.com/

Hope to see you at the new site!

~ Lady Alivia Spencer

Monday 18 April 2011

April's Recipe

Since I spent most of the month getting ready for the Culinary Symposium here in An Tir - which was fabulous, by the way... I highly recommend going to one in your neck of the woods - I figured to use one of the recipes in one of my handouts. 

Let me know how it goes, and I will do the same!

Pomegranate Chicken:

Cut the meat up small and fry with oil and salt, and when it is brown, cook it until done with vinegar. Pound a handful of almonds or walnuts and throw them on and boil a while.  Take pomegranate juice and dissolve in it a lump of sugar to get rid of its tarness, and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Sounds good doesn't it?

Let's give it a try ...

Hopefully, I will be able to get my redaction and attempt done by the end of the month.

Good luck and happy eating!

Saturday 12 March 2011

Recipe for March 2011

Let's get this going!

I thought to start with this recipe taken from Pleyn Delit:

Original:

Tart in Ymbre Day
Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out Þe water & hewe hem small. Take grene cheese & bray it in a mortar, and temper it up with ayren. Do Þerto butter, safroun & salt, & raisouns corauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, & bake it in a trap, & serve it forth.

Redaction:
Tart for an Ember Day
2 large onions, peeled and sliced or chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tsp chopped sage (less if dried)
3 oz cream cheese or 1/2 cup cottage cheese
4 eggs
2 tbsp butter
pinch ground saffron
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp currants
1/8 tsp sugar
pinch each ground cardamom, mace
unbaked pie shell

Parboil onions and herbs; add butter to thoroughly drained onions. Blend the cheese with the eggs. Add butter, and remaining ingredients and stir in the onions and herbs. Bake in a 350º oven 30-40 minutes, until the filling is set and the pastry lightly browned.

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I will be doing this recipe next weekend and will post my own comments and photos for your enjoyment.

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Edited March 16 2011

Made this recipe today.  Turned out very tasty, though personally, I would make some slight adjustments next time.

Parbroiling the onions and spices.  Already the house is smelling divine!  Next time I will only use one onion and add either cooked chicken or cooked lamb to this part of the mix.



Mixing the cheese, eggs, butter and currants.  Next time I will add more currants...there were just not enough *grin*


Very blurry photo of the onion mix being added into the cheese/egg blend.


Finished mix.  See?  Not enough currants.



Adding the mix to the *cough*store bought*couch* pie shell. I noticed here it was rather runny.  I don't think I drained the onions enough.  Next time, I will press drain them through a colander.


And into the oven it goes!


It looks really good. 

Even after broiling it for five minutes, it was still too runny.  However, a couple of minutes in the microwave evaporated the excess onion water.  It turned out really nice. 

The Husband was a willing guinea pig for this dish, and his words were "Very good.  Onions were not overpowering, but it needs more currants."

I will be trying this again with one less onion, chicken and in tart shells.  If done correctly, this would be a great cold treat at an event.

All in all, including the baking, this entire meal only took about an hour to make.  So quick, so easy, so yummy!