I can't art

It's true, I can't art.

I can not draw, paint, sew, sing, play an instrument or compose. I can not create anything that has a lasting beauty or value. What I can do is cook, redact and feed. I hope that what I do is seen as, making memories, creating atmosphere and nourishing the soul as well as the body. I create food and meals to try and enhance what is already around us, a beautiful hall, good company and immersion into another place and time. My hope is to supply those that are truly in the moment an opportunity to stay there, not to be jarred out of it by the mundane. It is a fine line where modern meets medieval and once the veil has been lifted it is hard to close the curtain again.

Often enough in the places discussions about my hobby takes place I have often heard how people want a good atmosphere. They encourage you to cover modern object, elevate clothing to beyond "ren faire" adequate, play period games and music but when it comes to food, they don't care and some are even against authentic (well as authentic as we can get) foods and recipes. Labeling them as yucky or weird before even giving them a chance. I plug away though endeavoring to make foods that are palatable even to the picky.

I can't art, it's true.

That's not period

Yes folks, another one :)

Back about 20 some odd years ago when I started this hobby I was told more than a few misnomers both in the cooking arena and in the non cooking arena. I have addressed the turkey one, now to address pudding.

Indeed it is true that most instances of the word pudding refer to a savory meat dish that has nothing to do with what we modernly know and call pudding. Technically this recipe is not called a "pudding" but after making it... really there is nothing else to call it. Scappi's recipe is Various ways to make pies with a cream filling, book V recipe 45 (page 456 is the translation by Terence Scully) but boiled down (no pun intended) it is pudding. It has milk, eggs, flour,sugar and a flavoring agent. In this case that agent is rosewater, a popular flavoring in the middle ages. It's use here is very similar to how we use modern vanilla extract and in fact all rosewater is, is an extract.

Scappi begins by defining what a "Crema" is, "Crema is a French term; it is made of fine flour, milk and eggs." Cooks and cultures have borrowed from and given to since time began it seems. As people move and travel they are influenced by what they experience and try to share it in tidbits with those they return to. Fashion is the most obvious of these ways but cooking gives it a good run for its money in my opinion.

While I am not ready yet to share my redaction as it is one of the dishes for feast at KWDS, I will say that it is delightful and easy to make.

Learning curve

This is sort of a follow up to my last post.

I want to discuss the event that I feel was my steepest learning curve. It has given me my greatest success  as well as my greatest "failure". I already talked about my launching points, the feast from hell and the recipe that burned my brain. I learned quite a bit from those experiences and I continue to learn from them as I learn from other experiences and make comparisons, sometimes ya don't get it on the first try. I am going to talk about 20 year celebration. I believe I even mentioned it here, that I had been invited to redact recipes for the feast. I was delighted, elated. humbled, ecstatic, scared, nervous, nauseous and a whole other large gamut of emotion and feeling  wrapped in a tiny ball. I was sure this was going to be fun! I was going to love every moment... and then, then I didn't.

It is hard to even summarize what all went wrong. Communication was slow, when it was answered. Often I had questions and no one to ask, or didn't receive answers to the questions I was asking, incorrect information, changed expectations, all of these lead to apathy and procrastination. Along with 20 year I was also committed to cooking (willingly, I could have said no) for Accademia Della Danza and a seated Baroness. Now to put some time perspective on this, I was asked to do the feast for 20 year (a June event) at least a year in advance, actually even longer. As I was blogging about it in snips as early as May the year before. No matter, the event was to be in June and ADD was in the beginning of March before that. Originally the timeline was the recipes needed to be in the end of March beginning of April and somewhere around December this changed. It should have been OK, everything should have been alright, but it wasn't. The biggest problem, I didn't know it wasn't OK. There are times when it feels like life is conspiring against us and others where we blissfully jump into the void completely unaware. I was burning to a crisp and didn't feel a single flame. I was stressed with 2 big holidays and an event in a 6 week span of time. Then I got sick, and not just a sniffle but a " Holy hell I am going to die" feeling flu. Still I was plugging along, well more like plodding. I was not yet stressed but feeling pressure. This is where I started sabotaging myself, as I got reminders from my "boss", I would pile on more pressure and function less well. My sleep and health were starting to go downhill with every day, then the floor dropped out from under me. As of mid January I began getting "reminders" of the impending deadline and began to spiral, a week later my mother went into the hospital. I dropped everything and despite not going home at that point I just couldn't focus. A week later I spoke with her, things were looking up. Her health was improving and we were making future plans. Three days later, she died. I still didn't realize things were not OK. I kept telling myself and my "Boss" everything would be fine, I honestly thought it would be and apparently they believed me. I even said in an e mail I would try to find time to work on it while I was in the US. This was my Mother and I thought I would have time for cookbooks, recipes, redaction and meal planning? I must have been crazy! and they believed me, they must have been crazy too. I came home after a week at mid February and I tried but I was so broken. My health had gone to absolute hell, I didn't sleep or I would sleep too much and I could barely focus on daily life but by now I had convinced myself not only I would do it, but that I *HAD* to do it. There was no choice, no other way, no back up plan, nothing. A week later, even sicker, the March event looming, I am still trying to convince myself that I can and will and MUST get this done. I was supposed to bring my notes and everything I had to ADD, but forgot them, along with a dozen other items. Crap, I was going to have to mail it, but I was going to get it done, I HAD to! I got through ADD (the March event on the first weekend). Sick, tired and broken... I was fired! I was angry, and then I was relieved.

I "beat myself up" plenty over this "failure" and not just my own part in it but the part of others as well and then I had space and time, so I revisited the process so I could learn. I am feeling that pay off right now.

As I mentioned I have been given an equal if not greater opportunity and feel I am meeting it head on and better armed. Over a year ago I was asked to be the head cook for a Known World event, not just feast, but all of the food. There are less people coming to this event about half the number of those that attended 20 year but about 1/3 of them are coming from outside of our Kingdom. I will be doing the cooking in the kitchen. No not by myself but I can be hands on, an option that was not available for 20year. This event will take place in 1 month from yesterday. I have no stress, my health is good and I am prepared in case of emergency. If I dropped dead I am confident that everything would continue on with only a minor bump in the road.

Where I am at, I have a solid menu. Actually I just made a change to the menu and it wasn't due to stress or anything "bad". I just re evaluated the amount of work it would take and found it did not fit with the flow of the menu planned. One month out and I changed a menu that I had set in December and you know what? The world didn't end. I have a few more things to work some bugs out of and I am happy.

I don't think of anyone on my team as a "boss" because I am not treated like an employee. This has allowed me to be more creative I think. I was given a job and  both freedom and trust to go with it, these reduce my stress about things greatly. No stress = Happy = More productivity. I have still had "low points" in the process but there will always be low points. They are what make the peaks that much more beautiful.

Baby steps and giant leaps

It is 4 years ago in April I was taken on as an apprentice. My journey is far from over but I am over the "halfway" point of my contract (7 years)  and decided to take a look back and figure out where I am. So, where exactly am I ? Who am I now? How did I get here? 

Who am I? 

     The simple answer is, me. The complex answer is... you guessed it, a bit more complex. Who I see in the mirror is not who everyone else sees, what I have needed to re learn or remember is, those other people don't matter. They don't make me who I am, I do. So, again, who am I? I am Magdelena Grace Vane or much more to my liking,  Maggie. I am a  Court Baroness, and Ex landed Baroness, apprentice, cook ,consort, friend, drinking buddy, teacher, Gottfried's wife, Alex's mom, B's mom, mom, confidant, student, the "other" mother, acting "auntie", sister from another mister, niece, cousin, family, cat herder, cooker of the food, and much more that I can't think of or haven't discovered yet and I am who I need and want to be. Nobody can make be anything I don't want to be, they can only help me discover more of who I am and who I am not.

Where am I?

     Happy, confident and at peace. I have a loving family, some great friends and a good crowd of people I know. The haters, the naysayers, the ones who can't be happy in themselves so they need to destroy others, I don't need them, certainly don't want them and don't have time or room for them. Leave them behind, let them go.  Not easy but when it is done it brings peace.

     I am currently in the middle of planning a HUGE endeavor, at least for me. A few years I was given an opportunity and was unable to "make good" on it. I at first felt like I had failed and wouldn't be deserving of another opportunity like it, I had already proven ( in my mind)  I couldn't handle it and was a failure. I was wrong, I didn't fail. I survived, I learned and I was given, not  a second chance but another opportunity to do something big and I am loving the process and the result this time around.

How did I get here?
      Four years ago I had a few good ( and recent) cooking experiences behind me (even if a few were crazy) as well as my feast from hell and a desire to move forward and do something else, something new. I had "broken up" my previous peer relationship, short story is: I was taken as a protege' things didn't work out for various reasons, relationship ended, and was in an odd space. I had within the previous 6 months written a public note about peer relationships. Just a collection of my own thoughts. The piece got a lot of good feedback and sparked discussions between myself and a couple of peers. As you might be able to guess one of those peers and I took the step forward and entered a contract. Since then it has been baby steps, or maybe they have been big leaps. None of this answers the question though, but provides a base for them, but hard work, self reflection and the ability to learn do, otherwise you don't move forward. From the first step you take to all the other "milestones" in life these three things seem to be the keys. 

     I want to address what I find the hardest of those 3 keys to be, honest self reflection. Taking the time and developing the ability to look at both your failures and your successes and learning from them is important and here is the shocker... it's hard work! You are likely both your own worst critic as well as your biggest supporter. The trick is finding balance an stepping back and looking at things objectively and not subjectively.

     When something goes wrong it is easy to sit and blame "outside" problems or oneself, what is needed though is  to take a hard look at the situation and not just at the negatives and what went wrongs but the positives and the what went rights as well. I have been working at it for the last four years and now find it is a regular part of any project I do. My peer created a document for us to work with, we call it the "Post Mortem". I offer a blank copy  to anyone that wants it along with the offer to work the process with them as well. So far, I have sent the blank out once and have heard nothing back. Anyway, this process, this post mortem dissection of the "event" / project and because it has become a normal way of  processing things for me I have been able to take my giant leaps. 

Duck, duck, goose!

A friend of mine posted a link on her facebook wall to a lovely article on making duck ham. The article can be found here . I found this idea, intriguing and began to investigate some and found that it is a tried and trusted way of making Prosciutto which people mostly think of as a pork ham but the word is actually for the process not the type of meat.

Searching the sales papers I found a great sale and went to get some duck. After I got home though I discovered that I had bought goose. Not deterred I searched and found that goose ham is really a thing! So off we went to make some.

Today we pulled it out of the basement to try it :)

Thoughts:
Texture is fine, a good "ham", flavor was good though as noted by others who have tried it it was salty. I attribute this to the quick rinse we used to get the salt off and not a thorough cleaning as it probably should have gotten. I suppose that done again I might use less salt and more herbs in order to try and combat the overly salty taste.

Another experiment is we are trying is that they are "dry enough" as they are now and to leave them until we need them wold turn them to leather, so we have packaged them up and placed them in the freezer to try in a few weeks. I will try to remember to update when we do that what the results are.

You want me to eat what?

Don't get me wrong, I like to be adventurous when trying food, but I also like my food a bit... normal. OK I get that what is normal for me may not be normal for the next person, but really, garlic and orange juice?

OK, story goes like this. I was looking for simple vegetarian alternative recipes for the feast I am creating in April. I am using only 1 book for this feast and that is Opera. I already know there can be some strange food combinations in there but this one so far has taken the cake. The recipe is "To prepare a layered omelet" from Book 2 recipe number 235 page 254 of the translation I am using.

Original:
Beat fourteen eggs. Get a spoon that will hold 2 eggs, fill it with the beaten egg and make a small omelet the size of the pan - which pan should not be much larger than the dish in which the omelet is to be set. When the little omelet is made, set it in the dish - minding that, to do it well, is enough for the bottom of the pan to be greases with rendered fat. Sprinkle the omelet with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, splash it with orange juice and set small slices of provatura or a creamy cheese on it. and on that little chunks of butter, cloves of garlic that have been steeped and crushed, and raisins. Cover that with another omelet. Go one making omelets, putting one on top of the other until all the egg is gone.


I will stop here as next he offers an alternative meat filling which I will not be making at this time.

What we did. First we did not use 14 eggs, this would have been too much for just the three of us. No, first I read the recipe wrong and made 2 omelets. One with the OJ, cinnamon sugar and nutmeg with mozzarella cheese, the other with creamy cheese, garlic and raisins. We thought that each of them was a little "flat" and the garlic one was better. Then we realized I was reading the recipe wrong and all the ingredients should be in one omelet... Um... OK, I guess. This sounds strange and dubious at best but off we went back to the kitchen. We were all damned surprised when it tasted good! Real good! Don't believe me? Try out what we did.

What I did:

6 large eggs well beaten Butter for the pans to cook the eggs

Filling: 4 Tbsp ricotta 4 large cloves of garlic (blanched until soft and crushed) 2Tbsp Raisins (measure before plumping with either hot water or OJ) 1/4 tsp nutmeg 1/2 - 1 tsp sugar with cinnamon (make it sort of strong) 1 lg pinch of salt

OJ for splashing

cook 1/2 cup of egg at a time in a well buttered 6" frying pan (you should get 3 omelets)

mix the filling together and spread 1/2 between the 1st and 2nd omelet dotting with tiny pieces of butter and splashing with OJ

Now go forth and try this crazy creation that somehow works real well, next time I want to try it with fresh mozzarella.

It is officially a menu! (edited)

I have been prepping for Known World Dance Symposium and have now completed the menu.

Thursday:
     Lunch:
          A pie of colworts
          Meatballs
          Compost
          Green Salad
   
     Supper:
          Chicken crowned with eggs
          Tarts of eggs
          Mushrooms and leeks
          Pears in confection

Friday:
     Lunch:
          Meat Pasties
          Mushroom pie
          Another compost
          Green salad

     Supper:
          Douce Anne (chicken with milk and honey)
          Lasagne layered with cheese
          Frumenty
          Perry of pesoun
          Cherry pottage

Saturday:
     Lunch:
          Assorted cold roasted meats
          Tart de bry
          Compost
          Green salad

     Feast:
          1st course:
               Stuffed leg of mutton  (Vegetarian substitution, Layered omelets)
               Fried common squash
       
          2nd course:
               Breseola                       (Vegetarian substitution, Gilded bread fried in butter)
               Thick soup of asparagus in meat broth (Vegetarian version available)

          3rd course:
               Goose with rice or noodles ( Vegetarian option, Genovese onion gattafura)
               Stuffed kohlrabi
         
          4th course:
               Milk pies


This menu does not contain the "side items" that will be served at coffee time and on the sideboard, something has to be a surprise :)