Cucina per Campagna

This past Saturday May 6th I was busy all day cooking over an open fire with my Mistress and some SCA friends. That's Mistress Lijsbet in the green by the fire. This is her set-up, her medieval camp kitchen. We were teaching her class "Cucina per Campagna: Beyond Re-creating Period Recipes."

She is an accomplished cook and researcher, and has amassed a kit of period-correct (or very close) equipment, tools, and containers with which to make period-appropriate food using period-appropriate techniques.

It takes the recreationist cook to a much higher level than simply trying to reproduce period recipes in the modern kitchen with modern tools. One is truly transported to another time when working in the period camp kitchen. There is almost nothing to remind one of the modern era, and it's a magical experience.

I am not in any of these pictures, because I took them. If I get pictures from anyone else I will add them.

The best way to accurately re-create is to make and do. We have found that if something doesn't work well, we're not doing it accurately, and that the more accurately we do things, the better they work. Take Marjorie's clothing, for example, in the red:

She's wearing a wool gown, which is fire-resistant and protects her from the heat of the fire. Her heavy linen apron protects her gown from sparks and soil, and she can use it as both a hand towel and a pot holder. Finally, her head-wrap keeps her hair clean and out of the way, and also keeps her head cool. Her sleeves are loose in the shoulder, allowing for freedom of movement, but narrow in the forearm, so that they do not dangle or get in the way. This is an example of how doing something accurately makes it work better, and how actually using it the way our ancestors would have used it, doing the things they did in the way they did them, tests our theories and our skills and either proves we've got it right, or highlights problems where we may have misinterpreted something in our re-creation.

Finally, we get to enjoy the fruits of a day's labor. It is very, very satisfying to spend the day in good company, sampling the food (and the spiced wine!) and making something with your hands, which you then get to enjoy, and watch others enjoy, eating together. Of course, then someone has to clean up!

We prepared the following dishes this day:

Fish with wine & sage sauce, roast beef, roast pork loin, roast chicken stewed with spices, fried fava beans, spiced sauteed turnips, home-made sausage with pork, sage, and spices, three different sauces for the meats, fresh pasta with cheese and spices, pottage of apples and raisins in almond milk, figs stewed in wine and spices, and red and white spiced wines. Everything was prepared on-site by hand, using fresh herbs and hand-ground spices. It was a wonderful meal!