Sort-of demo reporty

[jauncourt]

Yesterday, my mom and I did the monthly Episcopalian Church Women's dinner, and our theme was "a Chaucerian Feast". We dressed up, did the tables in a "u", lit the place wiht candles and mom gave a talk on the socio-politico-religious climate of the time, including how the Lollard bible came out of the same household (especially significant to our church). There were background minstrels-in-a-box: the Dufay Collective, I beleive. It was effectively a demo in the form of a dinner.

Mom and I served, and we seated the vicar and his wife at the 'top' of the table, above the salt.

Our menu was as follows:

A pottage of pulses (yellow peas and red lentils) with onions and pork, served over bread.
Round pies (not made in piepans, rather more like 7" round raviolis) in two flavors, spiced sweetened ground pork with raisins and chopped apples, and cheese with leeks (ricotta cheese).
A sallet of sausages, celery and parsley.
Cheese and fruit (we chose 'farmer's cheese' as it's close to a period short-maturation cheese)
Ale, cider (non-alcoholic), and mulled wine served with water.
Finally, we finished the meal with hedgehog-shaped cakes - essentially a shortbread shaped into little hedgehogs, with slivered almond spines and caraway eyes.

Unfortunately everything was eaten before I could photograph it. The hedgehogs were darling. I was only the "assistant cook" in that mom planned everything and all I really did was roll out the dough and serve.

My dad performed several period instruments, and gave his usual talks on early music.

So it went well, and everyone was quite impressed. I don't think anyone was expecting medieval food to be Really Good :)

Comments

[frualeydis.livejournal.com]

Sounds really wonderful.

Eva

[shalmestere.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting--which mss. did the recipes come from?

[jauncourt.livejournal.com]

As mom put the menu together (I'm not kidding about that "assistant cook" bit), using all of her books and mine, all I can tell you is that she spent quite a bit of time poring over Food and Feast in Medeival England, Le Menagier de Paris and Le Viander de Tallivent (out of my library - I'm not altogether sure what other books she looked at). I referred her to Godecookery.com, but Mother is something of a technophobe and therefore didn't go look.

The hedgehogs were originally meant to be made of almond paste (like the german almond hedgehogs at godecookery, which I remembered), but we were unable to get any and so resorted to shortbread.