Camping day

I spent the day at my campsite with Aelfwyn and Avelyn. We opened up the trailer for the first time in a decade to see what it was like inside (dry but otherwise a bit of a disaster).

We figured out a better trail to the water, and a second trail that could be used in a pinch. We hacked down more trees and branches. Avelyn built a fire pit and we christened it.

On the way home we saw what Aelfwyn says was a sheet rainbow.

Avelyn spotted what appeared to be a groundhog swimming in a little pond when I was driving her home. Apparently groundhogs can swim! Swimming groundhog

I love hanging out with these two because we always end up learning new things. Although this isn’t the most authentic A&S activity, we did end up bleeding a little from getting scratched as we bushwhacked, so it was legitimate A&S.

The site is now in good enough shape that we could camp overnight, though there will likely be a day of chainsaw activity first (or maybe at the same time). Camp cooking experiments could happen before it gets too cold this year – I’m excited!

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White Mush

Last week I tried making purslane congee, a recipe from Soup for the Qan, an early 14th C Chinese book of dietary medicine (and recipes) that has a lot of Mongol and Central Asian influences. There was no instruction for making the congee so I used a modern one that included finely sliced ginger (delicious!). The recipe called for adding purslane juice. I tried squeezing the purslane through a strainer, which didn’t yield enough liquid to bother with. I decided it was a fail and didn’t bother with my usual picture. For next time, I could try boiling the leaves in a bit of water and using the liquid, or just tossing in the whole leaves (not correct, but probably quite tasty).

Since mush was now on my mind, I decided that I would try White Mush, from Libellus de arte coquinaria, a collection of recipes from no later than 1300 found in manuscripts written in Danish, Icelandic and German. (Libellus de arte ccoquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book, edited and translated by Rudolf Grewe and Constance B. Hieatt, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001, p. 93).

16. White Mush

Take fresh milk and well crushed wheat bread, beaten egg, and well ground saffron, and cook until it is thickened. Then put it in a dish and add butter, and sprinkle on powdered cinnamon. This is called “White Mush”.

I used about 1/2 c of dry bread crumbs, 1 c of milk, 1 extra large egg, a pinch of saffron, a dab of butter and a pinch of cinnamon. Nothing was measured too carefully, so put what feels and tastes right to you. Cook the first four ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring very frequently to keep the mush from sticking and burning. Serve up in a bowl, mix in a little butter and sprinkle with cinnamon.

This was surprisingly delicious. I had expected the cinnamon to be an unwelcome addition, but in fact it improved the flavour. As a bonus, I had an excuse to use my adorable little mortar and pestle that is designed just for saffron.

According to Grewe and Hieatt, this dish is probably a version of the dish generally known as blancmanger. They note that in various recipes for this common medieval dish:

• goat’s, ewe’s and almond milk are all options;
• grains can be barley, oats or (most commonly) ground or very well-cooked rice;
• lard can be substituted for the butter; and
• although poultry or fish are more common, eggs certainly can be used.

Platina even has one that uses bread, cheese and egg whites, while Chiquart offers a particoloured version with four colours: saffron for gold, orchil lichen for blue; alkanet for red; and nothing added for white.

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Tsvetan Arinsson – a little history

This medallion comes with the history of my SCA family. The story begins with Dame Enid Aurelia, first baroness of Skraeling Althing and my own mentor. Though I was never formally part of her household, my best friend (Mistress Etaoin O’Fearghal) was her apprentice, and Ouen atteThorne was a member of both her household and mine. Tsvetan Arinnson was also one of her apprentices.

Tsvetan started as a member of Skraeling (now Caldrithig) around 1980. A couple of years later TSvetan moved to Der Welfengau where he became seneschal. He was keen to learn to dance and became apprenticed to Enid, who taught him what she knew – his favourite dance was Sellinger’s Round. He loved to camp and he loved Pennsic; he was one of the first people to teach dance in the barn. He was also quite a good cook (more evidence that he was family). TSvetan put great energy into the SCA. One of his greatest achievements was producing An Evening at Castle Althing, which the canton put on in 1980 or 81 at Carleton U. He arranged the venue, the funding, the props… Enid put together the play, and coordinated the writing, singing and dancing, but it would not have happened without him.

I first met Tsvetan at an event, possibly in Skraeling Althing, shortly after I moved here. He was very sweet and kind – so kind that when I headed off to my first Pennsic and discovered that my tent and other gear had not arrived (it was being delivered from Trinovantia Nova), I went to him. I knew almost no-one else there, and Tsvetan was the only one I felt brave enough to ask for help. He kindly offered me a place to stay and made me feel welcome. It was a very generous thing to do for someone he barely knew, and I have never forgotten it, even though, in the end, my stuff arrived and I didn’t have to take him up on the offer.

In the late 1980’s, Tsvetan became very ill and Ouen moved to Guelph to help care for him. The Order of the Laurel had recommended him for elevation and he was officially elevated on January 20, 1990 in Der Welfengau by Ariake and Tadashi. He died a few days later. Tsvetan liked to display a bi-coloured pennon, black and yellow, and for many years friends and apprentices had these and brought them to events. The medallion pictured above was made by a member of the order who lived in Ohio and admired Tsvetan’s work. Enid thinks he was also a dance laurel. If you look closely, you can see a little TA at the bottom. The medallion arrived too late for Tsvetan, so Enid kept it in trust for an appropriate moment. When I was elevated in 1999, Enid presented me with the medallion and told the story at my elevation. I have treasured it ever since. It seemed appropriate share my medallion with Xristina when she was elevated at Feast of the Hare. It has since passed to each apprentice in turn as part of the elevation ceremony, and is now in the hands of Master Brand Thorwaldsen, grand-apprentice through Mistress Lucia de Enzinas.

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Sour Grape Dish

This is recipe 6.70 from Scents and Flavors – A Syrian Cookbook (Edited and translated by Charles Perry).

The first recipe: Strip sour grapes from the stalks, and boil till they fall apart. Strain away the juice and transfer onto the fire. Boil pieces of raw meat and large meatballs – make sure these are made with crushed chickpeas and rice. Boil with chard stalks, onions, and mint, and float in it pieces of gourd, eggplants quartered lengthwise, and sour apples split in half with seeds and cores removed. Add fresh thyme, or dried if fresh is unavailable. Adding purslane is good too. Thicken with bread, or better yet, pounded rice, because it will then come out white.

To thicken with bread, boil bread with the sour grapes and strain. To thicken with rice, pound rice and put in. Add the thickener when he meat is done, and put in garlic pounded with coriander leaves and hot spices.

This recipe was a bit of a challenge because I just wasn’t organized and it was a holiday. But I ended up with two very different flavours and both were good.

• 2 chicken thighs (another meat such as lamb or beef would also work)
• 1 lb ground lamb (or ground beef)
• 1/4 c chick peas
• 1/4 c cooked rice
• handful of dry rice
• 1 onion
• 1 bunch of coriander or some dried cilantro seeds (same plant; I used coriander)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 zucchini or similar gourd
• 1 small eggplant
• 1/3 bunch chard
• 1 bunch purslane
• 1 TBSP dry mint, or more if fresh (or more to taste)
• 1 bunch unripe grapes
• 3 apples
• 5 sprigs thyme (or more to taste)
• salt and pepper to taste

What I did (and didn’t do):

Strip the grapes off the stem and boil in a little water until they are soft. Set aside. Cut the chicken into small pieces. Make balls of chickpeas and rice. Realize that they won’t hold together when cooked, so add ground lamb and make larger meatballs that are a mixture of lamb, chickpeas and rice. Cook the chicken and the meatballs in a pot. Add water and chopped chard, onions and mint. Realize you used up the gourd and eggplant in other recipes already. Go to store and remember it’s a statutory holiday when you get there and see it is closed. Skip the eggplant and gourd (they would be tasty additions for next time). Peel and cut up three apples and add to the pot. Add thyme. Realize you forgot about the purslane so quickly grab it out, clean and strip leaves from the stems, then add to the pot. I ended up with less than a cup of purslane because I decided everything else was getting too cooked. The rest will go into another recipe tomorrow. Realize you completely forgot about the grapes, so squish them through a strainer and add the juice to the stew. Try to pound rice in the little mortar. It is hard work and very messy. Eventually give up and add broken rice (and some that is still whole) into the pot. Serve up a dish and take a picture.

The sour grape flavour really comes through. Add a little salt and pepper.

The next step is to start writing up the recipe and realize you completely forgot the coriander and garlic. I had chosen to use cilantro rather than coriander; now I remember why I had purchased cilantro. I knew it was for one of these recipes! Chop the cilantro and pound some of it with the garlic in your mortar and pestle, then add it to the stew, along with more salt and grains of paradise (which is a hot spice, related to pepper, and you have misplaced the pepper grinder somewhere in the kitchen). Take another picture.

This was also good, though the garlic and cilantro overwhelmed the sourness of the grapes.

I would definitely make this dish again, ideally with all the ingredients. I would use purchased rice flour or bread for the thickener next time. This is definitely a seasonal dish, so next tie I would try to acquire unripe apples to accompany the unripe grapes that came from the vine in front of my house.

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Tuffahiyya

Tufhiyya seems to be have been a popular dish, as the name shows up in various forms in several different Arabic cookbooks. The version I used is from a translation of  An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook (13th C) translated by Charles Perry.

Preparation of Tuffâhiyya, Apple Stew. Sour apples are cooked with meat in water until ragged, then the apples are macerated and strained. Put with it oil, salt, pepper and crushed soaked garbanzos and boil until the meat is browned. Pour in the apple juice, and when it boils, throw in mint, celery leaf, rue and stalks of purslane, and thyme and boiled eggplant, and cover [the pot with a crust] and ladle out.

• 4 apples (green apples or crabapples would be ideal, if available, for extra sourness)
• 1 lamb chop
• 4 small eggplants (each was about the size of a small apple)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1-2 tsp sea salt (to taste)
• 1/2-1 tsp freshly ground pepper (to taste)
• 1 c mashed cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas).
• 12-1 tsp dried mint (or more to taste)
• handful of celery leaves, chopped
• 1/2 tsp dried rue
• 1 1/2 c purslane
• 4 sprigs of thyme (or more to taste)

I peeled and quartered the apples, removing the seeds, then boiled in water until soft, then mashed them through a strainer to extract the juice. Meanwhile, I chopped the eggplant into bite-sized pieces and boiled. Next I chopped the lamb into bite-sized pieces and browned in the olive oil, adding salt, pepper and garbanzo beans and cooking until the meat was done. Then I added the apple juice, herbs and vegetables and heated to boiling, then cooked until the vegetables were soft. The recipe calls for adding a crust for a lid, which implies that the stew is then baked. I skipped this step and simply served it up with a slice of naan to soak up the juices. It would also be tasty over rice. Serves 2-3 people.

 

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Ropes and Nets

I went down a rabbit hole on rope making today (thanks to this article about a paleolithic antler tool for rope making). The description of how to make rope is useless, but the tool itself is cool.

I started wondering if there was new information about medieval (specifically early medieval) rope making and found some cool videos from Roskilde, Guedelon and Visby. Plus two new pictures of rope makers. The first is from the Mendel Hausbuch, from about 1425:

Hausbuch der Mendelschen Zwölfbrüderstiftung, Band 1. Nürnberg 1426–1549. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg

The second is of a German rope maker from about 1470, but I can’t find any more information about the original source:

The rabbit hole led me to this 15th C image of fishermen using a net in a stream from Heidelberg. It is from the Buch de Beispiele, a translation of moral stories, fables and animal stories. The collection goes back to Panchatantra, a classic Indian text that became known in Europe through the Arabic translation Kalīla wa Dimna. This was translated into Latin in the 13th century by Johann von Capua under the title Directorium humanae vitae. The German translation by Antonius von Pforr is based on the Latin text Johann von Capuas, but the exact Latin template is unknown.

Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 84 Antonius : Antonius von Pforr: Buch der Beispiele ; Passionsgebet (Schwaben, um 1475/1482) Folio: 42r

 

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Purslane, from a 14th C Syrian Cookbook

Scents and Flavors is turning out to be a treasure trove! Today I tried two of the three purslane recipes from chapter 8: How to Make the Various Types of Sour and Salty Pickles.

“Purslane, also called al-rijlah and al-hamqa’ al-baqlah. There are two variations on purslane dishes.

The first – Take purslane, remove the leaves from the stalks and a little from the stems, and boil until done. Add sour yogurt, olive oil, and garlic or mustard.

The second variation – Clean as previously described and boil. Fry an onion in sesame oil, then fry the purslane in it. Add mint and wine vinegar sweetened with sugar or honey, and set aside.”

I didn’t have a lot of purslane, so pulled the leaves off the stems and boiled it all together in just enough water to cover. When it reached a boil, I turned off the heat so it wouldn’t over-cook. Then I took about half the leaves and mixed them in a bowl with an equal amount of plain Balkan-style kefir (which is a nice firm yogurt), about a 1/2 tsp of olive oil, and the chopped up flower tops from a couple of garlic scapes. Though the recipe didn’t call for it, I decided to sprinkle a tiny bit of salt on as well.

This had a pleasant sour and garlicky flavour and I would happily eat it again.

For the second dish, I chopped up a little green onion from my garden and fried it, then added about twice as much purslane as onion, and fried for a few moments longer. Then I took it off the heat and added a pinch of dried mint (fresh would be good too) and about 1 TBSP of white wine vinegar that I had previously mixed with about 1/2 tsp of honey. I let the flavours blend for a couple of minutes, then served it up.

This was delicious! I would definitely eat it again. The biggest challenge is getting enough purslane.  Not only is it hard to find, but picking it off the stems is a bit tedious. Still, it was worth it.

I may try the third once I acquire more purslane. However, it isn’t significantly different from the second. “The third variation is made the same way, but with reconstituted sour grapes juice, lemon juice, or sour pomegranate juice instead of vinegar”.

Scents and Flavors – A Syrian Cookbook, Edie and Translated by Charles Perry, New York University Press, 2017, p 245.

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