Cooking workshop – the resume

Last  evening went really well, unfortunately Elsa and Padraig had to leave early due to an unhappy Otto (their son). Never the less – this is what happened:

• got home late from work and last minute shopping at 5 pm
• the plan was that everyone should be arriving at 5.30 – *panic*
• everyone was a bit late, thankfully, so I got to sit down for a while and relax
• I talk a bit about the feast menu at Civil War and the recipe for the meat pie
• the cooking commence – our kitchen is to small (especially with children running around our feet) hopefully the renovations for the new kitchen will be finished soon
• the pies are done around 8-ish and we can all sit down and eat – the pies were delicious!
• the guest leave around 9, left in the house are me, hubby and a kitchen disaster
• after much needed cleaning in the kitchen we can finally go to bed  – what a day!

Sound like a lot of whining – well, even though it was a lot to do on my part, I’ll definitely hold more cooking workshops (perhaps not 1½ weeks before Civil War though…). It was a lot of fun – and hopefully everyone learnt something about medieval cooking!

Cooking workshop

Tonight most of the members (hopefully) from my shire will meet at our house for a workshop about medieval cooking.
This meeting serves two purposes. The first is that it will be an opportunity to tell everyone about the plans I have for the food at Civil War. The shiremembers will mostly either be in the kitchen with me cooking or serving the feast on Saturday evening. We’ve always had the intention of making sure that everyone knows the menu before the event. It helps in the kitchen and it makes serving a little less stressful. When have never managed to take time to present the menu previos years so this is definately a time to treasure!
The second purpose is the have an intresting shire meeting where we actually do something productive instead of just socialising (which is nice but doesn’t attract new members). Cooking is a subject that has really interested me lately so it will be great to discuss cooking with another member who I rarely get to see and who’s also interested (and a good lot better) in cooking.

EDIT: The workshop went well, 9 people showed up at our house and I think everyone had a good time. And we did eat a good meatpie!

Compost anyone?

I’m the head cook at this years Civil War (again) and I’ve started to test and prep for the lunch and feast. Lunch, serving approx 160 people, will this year be compost with grilled chicken and cameline sauce. We’ve been going safe these last years and served a well and truly tested meatstew but both Dis and I felt that it was time to do something a bit more researched.

Compost, grilled chicken and cameline sauce

So, the other night I did a test run on the lunch which consisted of compost (pickled sallad), a grilled chicken and cameline sauce. The compost was very good, fresh and a great stomach filler. The chicken was very simple with a red wine and honey glaze. I was the most suprised with the cameline sauce. It had a very strong taste and really made a difference with the chicken.
Note to self: A couple of tablespoons is enough for one person.

I’ve used recepies from Medieval Cookery, but I’ve tweaked them a bit depending on how I have interpreted the original text. I’m planning on writing down a more extensive documentation, but that will have to wait a while. Just better make sure I don’t loose all the little notes I’ve made! 🙂

/Cristina