Dagda's Cauldron

Oatcakes

2012-01-07T16:49:00.001-05:00

or oatbreads, or flatbreads....
The other morning I decided the cold weather warranted some oatmeal for breakfast. I decided to make a larger batch than usual, and experiment a bit.

My preference is for steel-cut oats rather than rolled oats. It's a more time-consuming process to prepare them, and it is an entirely different result, but I like the flavour very much. Because Darrell enjoys fruit in his oatmeal, I added a small bit to the batch, a very small handful of dried cherries, dried cranberries and currants. I also added a very tiny bit of honey towards the end of the cooking process. I'm not wildly fond of honey, but it is a period sweetener. (if you don't live in Viking Age Iceland!)

So after we'd eaten our breakfast or brunch, I had leftover oatmeal to try things with.

When I had been preparing food for the period of time we'd be working at L'Anse aux Meadows, Nfld in 2010, I had made a number of wheaten flatbreads and dried them for the trip. Towards the end of the ten day period, I'd made some fresh flatbreads each day before leaving the cabins where we were staying. I've baked bread at period encampments previously, but we were working in a 'borrowed' environment as guest interpreters, and it was simpler to avoid some of the messier food prep on-site if possible.

But during the original test period of the interpretive program, back in 1996 I'd made flatbreads on-site. In those days I could even share them with the visitors!
So, I was wondering about possible variations of method that would work for this and other presentations, as well as encampments for ourselves.

I took my leftover oatmeal and added flour only, mostly oat flour, but then a bit of wheat flour as well. (I have to go further afield than locally to buy specialty flours, so I tend to hoard my small stores for moments that count most.) Eventually I ended up with an only slightly sticky dough, which I patted into small flat cakes. These I cooked gently in a flat pan over a medium heat. (It's winter, we have snow. It's harder to cook over a fire without more involved planning!)
The results were very appealing. Slightly moist and chewy, and the faint sweetness of the moderate amount of fruit made them quite appealing, though not something that would be jarring with a savoury dish.

We also took two last cakes (the rest were eaten already) and put them to dry on our woodstove. They eventually dried to something very hard and tile-like, which will probably keep quite well, though would want moistening to eat.

My next experiment came about because I wondered if one could achieve more or less the same results by soaking the oat mixtures over night, rather than cooking them, and making the cakes from leftovers. Leftover oatmeal into oat cakes certainly has a history in the more modern past, and could conceivably have been done earlier, but in that situation, possibly a leftover gruel of oats would just continue to be eaten as a gruel of oats till none was left.
However, softening oats towards making a bread or cake might be more plausible.

I tried setting up two different experiments. In one I used modern rolled oats, since that is something many modern re-enactors might have access to, and for many occasions, especially depending on the amount of time one can devote to the project, modern oats would be quick and easy. In the other batch I took oat groats and ground some to flour (unexpectedly. My flour-milling implement appears to be full of gusto. Next time I'll try merely crushing some groats with a rolling pin...) and blended those with some whole groats.

Both batches were set to soak overnight with water and a little salt.

The next day I blended both mixtures with some flour, just wheat flour this time, to a consistency where I could pat them into cake shapes. I made them thinner this time because I was also interested in how easily I could take them to a dried storable state.

Both methods yielded a similar type of cake. Obviously oat groats have a softer hull than some other grains, which is nice to know. Quite probably gently crushing them would be sufficient to allow the water to penetrate their hulls and soften them for a cake. I did miss the flavour that the dried fruits had given them: I'd want to experiment with some herbs on another occasion. And on the whole I prefer them in their chewier state, even if fully drying them made them last better. I think that the simplicity of making them on-site would outweigh the make-ahead aspect.

But definitely something to play with in a camp setting!

A New Year

2012-01-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

Apologies.
Far too much passage of time. Without cooking. Without blogging about cooking.

Even trying to fill some of the gap with the odd post about Victorian life wasn't really satisfactory. It certainly didn't fill my need for cooking, and only gave me a little exercise in researching. Quickly. And I'm not sure it was even starting to be helpful to my friends involved in the Victorian living experiment. It's more than likely that the aspects of such a project that *I* would fixate on are not at all what they're thinking about. :)
Ah well. Quel surprise!

I've often noticed that everyone has their own variations on even the obsessions we share!

So, I had an unexpectedly busy fall. And actually it was a fairly unexpectedly busy year. I kept thinking there were inherent gaps, but somehow I never seemed to be in the middle of any of them. Part of this isn't helped by living an hour away from where I often work. Even quick, small jobs get travel time added on top....

But definitely life has been very much back-to-back since September. And I've felt the lack of food time. A lot.
So, there are a number of projects I need to look at. Some I need to re-look at, because I'd played with them a bit, made a few notes, but not written about them. And now I'm not quite sure what I remember, so I need to do them again. (Well, I needed to try some of them multiple times anyway...)
And now I have some new things to plan for, and some new ideas to think about and some different things I want to try.

And I may actually have a few minutes to do it in!

So I started a small experiment today. An off-the-cuff, no special planning kind of experiment, which of course, just gives me a whole list of where I have to go next....

Stay tuned, Bat Fans...

v

Ale and Laundry

2011-06-21T17:42:00.000-04:00

Another bit of something for my friends in the Victorian world.
First, because they felt that dandelion greens were probably getting past their first spring tenderness, and because Ken likes a cool one after all his haying; from A Country Cup by Wilma Paterson:

Dandelion Beer

This isn't an historical cookbook, though it does claim to be 'Old and New recipes for Drinks of all kinds made from Wild Plants and Herbs'. (I'll have to rootle around and see if I can find parallel recipes in some of my period material.) But I have made the recipe and it worked and was a pleasant beverage. I'm not sure if I'd call it a beer, but it was nice.
1/2 lb young dandelion plants
1 gal water
1 lb brown sugar
1 lemon
1/2 oz root ginger
1 oz cream of tartar
1 oz yeast

Wash the plants and remove hairs from the main tap- root. Boil them with the bruised ginger and the lemon rind (having discarded the pith) for ten minutes. Strain on to the sugar and cream of tartar in an earthenware jar and stir until dissolved. When lukewarm add the lemon juice and yeast, cover the jar, and leave in a warm place for three days. Siphon off into screw-top bottles and leave for a week before drinking.

*I made this for a brewing contest that I'd decided belatedly to enter. I was looking for some kind of fast recipe. I had bought dandelion greens from Knob Hill Farms in Toronto, so sold as a salad green and probably without the tap-root. And I used ordinary bread yeast. I don't recall if I used 'screw-top bottles'. Even though this wasn't a highly active fermentation, I think I'd default towards something designed to handle pressure, just in case...

And for Margaret, not a fair division by any means: from the Confederate Receipt Book, some recipes for soap.

Soap
Pour twelve quarts of boiling water upon five pounds of unslacked lime. Then dissolve five pounds of washing soda in twelve parts of boiling water, mix the above together, and let the mixture remain from twelve to twenty-four house, for the purpose of chemical action. Now pour off the clear liquid, being careful not to disturb the sediment. Add to the above three and a half pounds of clarified grease, and from three to four ounces of rosin. Boil this compound together for one hour, and pour off to cool. Cut it up in bars for use, and you are in possession of a superior chemical soap, costing about three and a half cents per pound in ordinary times.

or...

Soft Soap
Bore some holes in a lye barrel, put some straw in the bottom, lay some unslacked lime on it, and fill your barrel with good hardwood ashes, wet it, and pound it down as you put it in. When full, make a basin in the ashes and pour in water, keep filling it as it sinks in the ashes. In the course of a few hours the lye will begin to run. When you have sufficient quantity to begin with, put your grease in a large iron pot, pour in the lye, let it boil, &c. Three pounds of clean grease are allowed for two gallons of soap.

So far I haven't discovered soap recipes that make me feel competent to produce soap, though I have any number of friends who make soaps, and very nice soaps. I'll keep looking...

v

Summery Drinks

2011-06-16T17:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a few tastes for Margaret. She'd mentioned that the hot weather (when we've had some) made her think about refreshing drinks.

From Confederate Recipe Book:

Apple Water.
Take one tart apple of ordinary size, well baked, let it be well mashed, pour on it one pint of boiling water, beat them well together, let it stand to cool, and strain it off for use. It may be sweetened with sugar if desired.

and from Common Sense in the Household, by Marion Harland. 1879, some useful suggestions for what ails you:

Herb Teas
Are made by infusing the dried or green leaves and stalks in boiling water, and letting them stand until cold. Sweeten to taste.

Sage tea, sweetened with honey, is good for a sore throat, used as a gargle, with a small bit of alum dissolved in it.
Catnup tea is the best panacea for infant ills, in the way of cold and colic, known to nurses.
Pennyroyal tea will often avert the unpleasant consequences of a sudden check of perspiration, or the evils induced by ladies' thin shoes. *
Chamomile and gentian teas are excellent tonics taken either cold or hot.
The tea made from blackberry root is said to be good for summer disorders. That from green strawberry leaves is an admirable and soothing wash for a cankered mouth.
Tea of parsley-root scraped and steeped in boiling water, taken warm, will often cure stranguary and kindred affections, as will that made from dried pumpkin-seed.
Tansy and rue teas are useful in cases of colic, as are fennel seeds steeped in brandy.
A tea of damask-rose leaves, dry or fresh, will usually subdue any simple case of summer complaint in infants.
Mint tea, made from the green leaves, crushed in cold or hot water and sweetened, is palatable and healing to the stomach and bowels.

* I have read that pennyroyal will act as an abortifactant. Should I wonder if unwanted pregnancies are the result of "ladies' thin shoes"?

~v

Cottage Beer

2011-06-15T15:55:00.000-04:00

Some friends of mine are playing around with living a Victorian life for a year. It came up in conversation that now they'll need to start making their own potables. Since I've already done a chunk of experimenting with that over the years, and have a goodly pile of historical cookery books, I thought I'd send some info their way. Perhaps some recipes for drinks, or food, with maybe a few handy household tips thrown in!
So, Ken and Margaret, here's a recipe from The Cook Not Mad or Rational Cookery, 1831.

No. 244. Cottage Beer.

Take a peck of good sweet wheat bran, and put it into ten gallons of water with three handfuls of good hops. Boil the whole together in an iron, brass, or copper kettle, until the bran and hops sink to the bottom. Then strain it through a hair sieve or a thin sheet, into a cooler, and when it is about lukewarm, add two quarts of molasses. As soon as the molasses is melted, pour the whole into a nine or ten gallon cask, with two table spoonfuls of yest. When the fermentation has subsided, bung up the cask, and in four days it will be fit for use.

And here's another from Confederate Receipt Book, 1863:

Table Beer
To eight quarts of boiling water put a pound of treacle, a quarter of an ounce of ginger and two bay leaves, let this boil for a quarter of an hour, then cook, and work it with yeast as other beer.

I'll see what else I can come across to add a bit of variety to your fare!

v.

Oat Bread, Round 2

2011-01-22T15:03:00.000-05:00

So I decided to try another version of Savelli’s Oat Bread. (Note: This is a bit odd. A redaction of a conjectural recipe. Or maybe a redaction of a conjectural theory of a possibility…? But hey, it’s a reason to play with food!)

I had already decided that working from modern yeast was wrong, but didn’t really want to take the time to play with wild yeasts. (I’ve done that, even semi-recently, when I was trying some of Jacqui Wood’s recipes, so it will be discussed with those.) So I opted for sourdough. But I thought that in keeping with the idea of a middle class Anglo-Saxon bread, I’d use whole wheat flour.

It made a more unusual sourdough. The whole wheat flour I have on hand is quite rough and branny, so it was a speckled culture, and quite solid-seeming. That took several days to work. (Another reason I didn’t opt for wild yeast; in winter our house is quite cold. Yeast gets very sleepy and wants to hibernate!)
Sadly, I either was out of oat flour, or didn’t dig deep enough in the chest freezer, so then I had to grind some flour to actually make the bread. Fortunately I have some oat groats handy right now. I ground some of those, with just a small handful of rolled oats in the grinding. To try and balance the texture. (Okay, I was impatient, and wanted it to be flour NOW.)

Since I’d decided when I made the first loaf, that this was more of a feast day bread, with the inclusion of egg, honey, milk, and fine wheaten flour rather than a more workaday loaf, I felt I’d continue with the use of some milk.
I warmed some milk, and added it to the oat flour. Because the sour dough looked thicker than my starter usually appears, I wasn’t too sure of how much liquid I’d end up needing in this recipe, so decided I would let the dough itself tell me.

I combined the moistened oat flour and the sourdough starter, and added some honey and an egg. I seasoned it with a bit of salt, but rather than the lard suggested by Savelli, I used some duck fat.

I decided that because I’d used the whole wheat flour in my starter, and the oat flour was already being incorporated, I’d use unbleached all-purpose flour for the rest of my flour. (Since this was ‘middle class’ bread, this would give me a higher quality grade of flour overall, with less bran.)
I stirred the mixture as much as I could to incorporate the flour, and then switched to kneading to work in more.

The dough did rise fairly well, though not as much as the first version. I’m not sure if that was due to temperature difference in my kitchen between the two baking days, or the difference between the commercial baking yeast and my sourdough. Usually my sourdough leavens quite well. (In warm weather it can be very exciting!) Did the whole wheat make it a stodgier culture? But all in all it ended up a comparable loaf. Rather than sprinkling it with oats before baking, I strewed some flax seeds over the top.

The end result was marginally oatier in taste. Again, it was a soft crumbly loaf. It had neither the sturdiness of a flatbread, nor the strength of a totally wheaten loaf. Perhaps that would make it a pleasant alternative on a feast day? Where I wouldn’t expect it to be useful for scooping up a stew, or need it to last a little longer. A smaller baking that would get eaten, and relished as ‘fancier’, in a single sitting?

[I was interested to note that it really shone for lunch the next day, toasted with cheese!]

I’m not sure if I’ll bother playing further with this recipe/idea. I tend to feel I should either swerve towards a flatbread/unleavened bread if I’m going to incorporate much oat flour, or switch out to a wheaten bread, if I’m using leavening. And I already have a bunch of other recipes I feel like looking into…

So, maybe if I play further with Savelli, I’ll look at other types of recipes. Though I’ll confess, the longer I look at the cookbook, the more I’m just perplexed by some of her choices. “Suggested by a salve”? Isn’t that a bit like saying ‘it’s an ingredient in Tiger Balm, so I thought I’d put it in the soup’?

But we’ll see where I go next. Actually, I feel a rant coming on…

Oat Bread

2011-01-14T15:23:00.002-05:00

So, once I had determined that I absolutely HAD to cook something, and had rootled out Mary Savelli and was poking about in that book… I contemplated her first recipe: Ætena Hlaf, or Oat Bread.
I also very quickly decided that it didn’t sound very much as one would assume a Saxon would make bread…

But before one starts rethinking, one should at least see what the starting point is!

Of course, in many ways, the flaw of this cookbook is that it’s NOT an Anglo-Saxon cook book. Nor is it a redaction of an Anglo-Saxon cooking text. It’s not even really a cook book based on a template of ‘how they did it’ and a list of known ingredients. Technically, Mary Savelli doesn’t even make this claim.
Savelli says that Ann Hagen’s works suggested dishes she’d like to try and the medicinal texts that Savelli had access to suggested ingredients. I think the weakness may occur somewhere between those lists of ‘ingedients’, and understanding the technologies and practices of the culture.

Not all medicinal herbs will be considered culinary herbs; nor should they be. And methods of preparation that seem logical to the 21st century mind might be out of keeping for the 10th century mind.

I did figure that a bread recipe should be a shorter leap, though…

Savelli’s Oat Bread recipe starts with yeast. Dry active yeast. When I try this recipe for a second time, I will make up a sourdough starter. That will still be less accurate than beginning with a wild yeast, but baby steps…

Savelli’s ingredients are:
Dry active yeast
Warm water
Milk
Rolled oats
Salt
Lard or other shortening
Liquid honey
Egg
Water
Whole wheat flour
All-purpose flour
Rolled oats and milk for brushing on, and sprinkling over the loaf before baking

Now rolled oats didn’t come along till the 1870’s, so I’m actually surprised at their inclusion here. I’d have suggested oat flour. Or at the very least, crushing or grinding the oat flakes.
And on the whole, she doesn’t call for much oat. ½ cup rolled oats to the 3 ¼ cups of other flour. With just 1 tsp of oats for sprinkling on the loaf before baking. Admittedly, oats don’t contain gluten, and gluten is important for a raised loaf. Oats usually show up as an ingredient in non-leavened breads; oatcakes and the like. Which would lead me to imagine that oats might not be used in a raised bread. Or, if used, used in combination, but then it wouldn’t be thought of, or called, an oat bread. Still, even if you were using them for flavour, I’d think you’d want to use a larger portion so the bread actually tasted oat-like. (Or is that a modern concept?) In my remake of this, I’ll try a higher percentage of oats, and assume it a mixed grain crop. [Often, grain crops were a blend of grains, possibly for reasons of contamination, or because of the different strengths of the growing stalks, which would support each other, or perhaps simply because it was less important to the farmers.] Often wheat and rye were grown together as ‘maslin’, and ground to maslin flour.

I tend to think of the use of milk, eggs, honey, and fat as a less everyday occurrence; a feast day bread. In that case, I might be tempted to use butter, rather than lard. Mind you, oat flour will give me more of an unleavened bread, even with the use of yeast or sourdough. So I’m not sure whether I should be imagining myself as lower class, baing bread for a feast day, or well-off enough to be using ingredients for a richer bread on a more regular basis. I do have some duck fat on hand, perhaps I’ll use it in my revised version.

I’ll confess that I couldn’t bring myself to just sprinkle rolled oats on this loaf as I baked it, even though I was supposed to be following the recipe as published. Instead I crushed them very quickly with a mortar and pestle, to a coarse meal.

I found that the bread did rise, thanks to the inclusion of the yeast, but it was neither strongly flavoured of oats, nor did it have the fine texture I’d expect of a wheaten bread. It was soft and crumbly, with a non-distinct taste. Neither bad, nor exceptional. But I’ll be interested to see what happens as I play around with some variations.

~v

Dagda On Savelli

2011-01-12T15:27:00.004-05:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d pulled out my copy of Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. I’m currently having early period urges rather than later period ones, but sadly, early period food is less well-supported by convenient cookbooks! Thinking about earlier period food ends up being far more an exercise of book- and article-juggling. There is information on artifacts and technology; there are articles about archaeological remains. Odd words and phrases and references can require dictionaries and botanical texts. I usually end up with an unwieldy and tottering pile of texts beside me, and another pile behind me, and no easy way to jump back and forth. Or I rely on oddments stored in a disorganized memory, and hope I think to double-check more dubious points when I next have a convenient half-moment.
So, no, although I wish heartily, I don’t expect to be able to pull a handy little early period cookery book off my shelf.

But sometimes even looking at and thinking about something with potential flaws and weaknesses can be enlightening. And I wanted to look at recipes, rather than read and have to process a lot of hard data. I just wanted to cook something, and until I went off to a further town for wheat grains, I couldn’t re-start my Jacqui Wood experiments.

So, the book in question was Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England.
And since I’m mentioning Mary Savelli’s book here, perhaps I will repost a review/blog-post I’d once rambled out on my other blog. And perhaps I can update it with some further comments…

**Originally posted June 25, 2006.
Part of my disappointment with it is my own fault. I foolishly, and without any possible reason, allowed myself to hope that it would be, could be a resource for early period cookery the way Le Menagier de Paris or Le Viandier de Taillevant are for later periods.

I was even willing to accept a conjectural approach if I could see the roots for the result, the way you can in books like Pleyn Delit, where the period recipe is given alongside the redacted one suggested by the authors. However, I feel that instead we’ve ended up with a publication that appears to owe much to conjecture, little to archaeological evidence, or even logic, and is clothed with the perception of being the word on Anglo Saxon food.

I did a workshop with Mary Savelli a few years ago and got far more of the subtext from that session, than I did from the book. Apparently it was her publishers who suggested she write a cookbook, because cookbooks sell, and while it wasn’t something she was particularly familiar with, she thought she’d see how she could translate her research into Anglo-Saxon period leech books into a cookbook.

But it is the process, from leech book to her ideas of a recipe that are more interesting and more useful, and unfortunately, are not much included in this publication. Ever since getting this book though, I’ve had urges to have some real conversations about some of her ideas. Because I know that since she’s based them on period information, even if it was medicinal rather than culinary, I feel there’s value in here. I just can’t think that it’s ‘face value’. And it may be that more could come from some discussion and debate than from even just reading or discarding the recipes.

But, living rurally, and not being tied in anymore to a network of like-minded people for pursuing these discussions, or because the people who might want to participate in the chat, aren’t as accessible by email these days, I thought I’d just have that little discussion out loud, in here by myself. (Yes, signs of insanity, I'm sure…)
Though if anyone of my audience of two or three or accidental wanderers-by want to rebut, or offer additional thoughts, feel free.

Let’s pick one to start with. In fact, let’s start with the one she talked about in her workshop:
“Wyrtig Briw (Vegetable Soup)”

[If nothing else, knowing if these would really be the names of such things, and whether that’s just straight translation into Old English of whatever dialect, would be nice to know. Having names, even the simplest of words to describe foods, in the tongue of the day, is great. ~v.]
[Update Jan/2011: Not sure why I didn’t do some of this further cross-referencing the first time around because I already owned the books, but…Ann Hagen, in her A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food; Processing and Consumption says:
“Broð was the Old English term for broth or soup, which might be enriched with milk or butter.” And “If broþ was retained to indicate a thin liquid, the term which supplanted it in the meant “pottage”, is briw.”

Anthimus tells us “barley soup is, as anyone knows who can make it, good for healthy people and those suffering from fever.” This soup is based on a brew for lung disease, calling for sweet-flag, radish, carrot and barley meal. Cress is added to take the place of one of the other leafy herbs in the original, lesser celedine, as it has a similar texture and was also used by the Anglo-Saxons.

40g (1 ½ oz; ½ cup barley*
440 ml (16 fl. oz, 2 cups) water*
770 ml (28 fl. oz, 3 ½ cups vegetable broth*
3 radishes, chopped (1/8 to ¼ cup)*
2 Tablespoons general purpose vegetable oil*
3 carrots, diced (2 cups)*
2 Tablespoons cress, chopped*
½ teaspoon salt*
½ teaspoon ground black pepper*
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon*

* 1. Soak the barley in 2 cups of water for four hours. Drain out the water and put the barley in a large saucepan. Add the broth and bring the water to a boil. Cover the pan with a lid; simmer for 45 minutes.
* 2. Sauté the radishes in oil in a frying pan. Add the radishes, cress, carrots and seasoning to the barley.
* 3. Return the soup to a boil then reduce the heat. Cover the pan with a lid; let the soup simmer for 10 minutes or until the barley is tender.

So…. That’s her recipe. At the very least it fills me with questions. In another kind of culinary book, where there was an inclusion of an extant receipt, this would be the author’s redaction. I would be able to look back and forth and compare the two, see where the author had made changes, and either be told, or try to intuit, why, and make a decision about the differences, and the suggestions of process.

Because there isn’t an actual Anglo Saxon recipe to compare against, the mind has to go in a lot more circles. (Well, my mind does!)

Anthimus tells us about barley soup. Well, there. That’s a good start.

[Anthimus. De obseruatione ciborum (On the Observance of Food) Translated and edited by Mark Grant. Totnes, Devonshire: Prospect Books, 1996.]

Now her bibliography doesn’t give me a clue about exactly when this is from. Oh, drat. Turns out he’s a sixth century Byzantine Greek, and his treatise on food reflects Byzantine and Frankish tastes. Durn. I was hoping it was one of the Anglo-Saxon writers. This changes it a bit. I was thinking we at least had proof that Anglo-Saxons ate barley soup, right from a local period source. Oh well… Let’s steam along.
[Update Jan/2011: Handily, Ann Hagen does suggest that the Anglo-Saxons used barley in their soups, mentioning the use of barley meal, as well as suggesting the use of whole grains.]

If nothing else, soups are likely. They had pots. We have archaeological evidence. They had barley. Barley needs cooking to soften it. So barley soup isn’t a real stretch.

Her “brew for lung disease” is from Bald’s Leechbook, and unfortunately, try as I might, I can’t pin down a real date on this. However, there are mentions of it in the context of Anglo-Saxon leech books and health handbooks, so that’s hopeful.
And mind you, while what is considered medicine may not necessarily be considered food, it at least tells us some items they had access to. And certainly radish, carrot and barley also do duty as foodstuffs.

I haven’t been able to track down too much info about either ‘sweet-flag’ or ‘lesser celedine’. At least, under those names. Sweet-flag might be Acorus calamus, or Calamus Root, and while I can find a tiny bit of medicinal info about that, it wasn’t much, and only one reference that suggested it as a febrifuge. But since that might be a strictly medicinal plant, I wasn’t too worried. I did find mention of its use as a substitute for cinnamon or ginger. And I also have a vague memory that Mary Savelli said that was why she had included cinnamon in the recipe.

Mind you, if it was more a medicinal herb than a culinary one, that might be an interesting choice to make, but maybe not the most logical.

Lesser Celedine might be Chelidonium minus, which is the same as Lesser Celandine. I did find some mention that in Sweden it was used as a salad herb, but the reviews of its taste weren’t too glowing. Again, perhaps the lesser celedine is a medicinal herb rather than a potherb, but I see no reason to not assume that any potherbs in common use might not be possible for this recipe. Cress is as likely as any other.
[Update Jan/2011: I’m still not tracking down much use of the name “lesser celedine” except as a fairly random mention. It might perhaps be a spelling error, or a minimally used alternative name. However, today when I thought to try following up on the Anglo Saxon common name listed by Savelli in the appendices, “wenwyrt”, I have indeed been led to references defining it as Ranunculus ficaria, or Lesser Celandine. Most of its medicinal uses are topical. One article suggested: “Can also be consumed inside carefully as can be poisonous if not careful.” A somewhat whimsical phrasing suggesting it might not make the best culinary herb?]

I wonder about the suggestion to soak the barley. Yes, this would soften it and shorten the cooking time, but my experience in cooking over a fire in a cauldron, is that it’s a ‘leisurely’ process anyway. It would be just as simple to add the barley dry, early on in the making. However, in a redaction for use in a modern kitchen, perhaps it makes sense.

Likewise, maybe, the substitution of vegetable broth, for a flavour base that would develop naturally in the cooking process. Now, I have to wonder what would make a likely combination of ingredients for that base. Since, even in my modern kitchen, I’d be more likely to make this soup that way.
Onions? I’d imagine some form of onions. Maybe wild leeks, wild garlic. Perhaps charnock or wild mustard, dill, wild celery, or sorrel. And nettles, perhaps.

She suggests sautéing the radishes in oil in a pan. My instincts, based on cooking with period implements, suggest that if something like this were really done, it would only be in the kitchens of the rich, best outfitted with all the “mod cons”!
If cooking over a small firepit in the floor of a simple house, then a cauldron hanging from the rafters is a likely object. Using a smaller pan or griddle, just to sauté some radishes to then include in soup, seems a waste of activity. And a metal pan would have been a luxury item if the common household already contained a metal cauldron (hweras or an cetel). Such a pan is more likely to have been used for bread or fried dishes.
I imagine it would be more likely that the carrots and radishes would simply be added as the vegetable broth was developing, to further enhance the flavour. And any tender greens added closer to the end.

But even that may be a modern perception. It’s very hard to turn off all one’s personal sensibilities, or to know if or when you’ve succeeded!

I find that one of the most helpful things in giving me a better sense of how an early culture might have cooked, is to work with their technology. That gives me more of an understanding of what is easy, what makes sense, what is practical, and what, farfetched. And then, if I’m drawing from a more appropriate list of ingredients, there is more chance that my final product may have a better chance of being something that wouldn’t be entirely unrecognizable in period.

So, this recipe from Savelli’s book may not be as improbable as others; representing more, perhaps, the approach that might be taken in a modern kitchen to produce a period-like dish. For myself, it led me to sit down and thumb through a handful of reference books to answer (or try to answer) some questions that it raised.

Though I still keep hoping that someday someone unearths and translates some lovely volume of early period cookery!

~vandy

[Update Jan/2011: There is a very intelligent review of this book by Dr. David D. Friedman at this link: http://home.pcisys.net/~mem/savelli.html

Musing On Breads, And Cook Books

2011-01-10T18:00:00.002-05:00

So, I really had started to play with some of the recipes from Jacqui Wood’s book Prehistoric Cookery. (I was fortunate that she started out talking about bread. While there are some ingredients I had to track down sources for – I live at the back of beyond – at least they tended to be items I could track down!)

And while I knew, even starting out, that I’d want to re-do the experiments using my outdoor kitchen, it seems I really wasn’t canny enough to make good concise notes, or write here about the experiments at the time I did them, so now I’ll probably need to take another look at even the recipes I’d attempted. ** sigh **

Unfortunately, I also need to re-source ingredients for the very first recipe, which concerned sprouting wheat. It instructs me to take whole wheat grains. I had eventually tracked down something I could use for that, but later in the summer I realized that the sealed container I had the leftovers stored in was alive with weevils! [Eek!] And they quickly were tossed outside to provide a nice feast for the birds.
I started doing a bit of research on weevils (or whatever I’d determined them to be at the time…) and it seems like it’s pretty much an inherent problem with whole grains. So for the most part I think I’m going to want to only obtain these sorts of things in smaller quantities, which means I’ll always have to plan ahead of a cooking experiment.

(And I’ll have to try and shut off the squeamish part of my brain that goes “eeewwhh!”.)

I will go back through my brief notes, and ferret out the few photos I’d taken, which have now shuffled through some hard drive changes, and at least make a bare bones start.

But I’ve been getting urges, in the pre-wheat-kernel moments to do something… anything… that has to do with some historical food experimentation. And a couple of lists I subscribe to have had some conversations on the topic of breads, or breadlike foods.

And to eke out reading material, before I finished up one series of novels and had to decide what to read next, I had been reading my copy of Flatbreads and Flavours, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. They write stunning cookbooks, as full of text and pictures as they are of recipes. And I’d been meaning to sit down with one or other of their books, (I have a number, and have just ordered another), and thought that the flatbreads volume might have some interesting insights along the whole bread idea, as they discuss breadmaking technology in some of the more primitive-seeming cultures around the world.

I also pulled out my copy of Mary Savelli’s Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England. She also starts her book on the topic of bread.

And then, in a moment of pantry rearrangement, to store some new kitchen-related Christmas gifts, I came across a copy of an article from Acta Archaeologica: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread; a Study of Late Viking Age and Medieval Quernstones in South Scandinavia, by Peter Carelli and Peter Kresten.

So, definitely there are signs and portents pointing me towards bread!

~vandy

REBOOT!

2011-01-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

At least, I’m hoping…

So, yes, I’ve been quiet. It seems that when life gets busy, it gets really busy. And as time passes along, I forget how to make best use of the in-between moments.

Then it all gets complex because I feel that in this journal I’d like to be intelligible. I’d like to be organized, and put forth my arguments (or questions and quandaries) in a way that sounds like I thought about it. (Really, I do. Most of the time.) And for some reason, stringing words together in a way that seems like they’d be coherent to people doesn’t want to come naturally.
I’m sure that part of that is me overthinking. It must be. Because it does seem that most of the time, after I’ve stared at what I’ve written and tweaked it, and pruned and fluffed it, and rearranged it, it’s still pretty close to what I started with.

But I do think that what takes time is filling in the gaps, and the backstory. Tracking down references. Digging out quotes and concrete info, as opposed to just relying on what seems to be lurking in the back of my memory.

But maybe this year I’ll allow myself a bit more leeway. Maybe I’ll occasionally post a guilt-free ramble, and just not worry.

(Surely no-one out there would make the mistake of confusing me with a scholar, would they?)

But Wait... There's More!

2010-09-19T14:55:00.000-04:00

Ah, yes, Patient Reader...

I had suggested I was sure I remembered coming across historic recipes for Nun's Farts. But long enough ago now, that I had no real idea where. Well, after some searching, and Googling, and rootling about, I've come up with several versions. Somewhat more oddly, three variations claim to be from the same source, so I'm assuming there may be differences due to translation, or translations of editions.

One website: http://www.chezjim.com/sundries/s9.html has an article in a newsletter about "Tart's Toots", and as well as giving some links to other tidbits of info and history, quotes a recipe from La Varenne.

>(from La Varenne, Le Cuisinier Francois, 1680, page 444):
Put egg whites in a mortar and a litte orange flower water, beat them well and bit by bit put in powdered sugar, make a workable dough and make from it little balls the size of a walnut and put them on paper, cook them in the oven.

Another food blog that I have bookmarked is: The Old Foodie.com and there I found:
http://www.theoldfoodie.com/2006/10/womens-cakes.html with a second variation of the La Varenne recipe:

>Pets de putain (Farts of a Whore).
Make your Fritters paste stronger than ordinary, by augmentation of flower and eggs, then draw them small or slender, and when they are fryed, serve them warm with sugar and sweet water. [The French Cook, by la Varenne, 1653]
[Note the different edition date.]

After that I dug around until I found a copy of La Varenne which I have on my computer,(a 1653 facsimile) and tracked down:

Pets de putain
Make them the same way, [six eggs, half a pint of flowre, and a little salt; beat all together] but that you must put a little more flowre; draw them out very small with the handle of a spoon; after they are fryed, serve them sugred, and besprinkled with orange flowers.
(recipe #10 on page 198)

Elsewhere I found mention of:

>How to make small-whore's-farts.
Take roasted white-bread, wine, eggs, ginger and sugar. Mix well together and bake hereof small-cakes in the pan with butter and scrape thereon sugar and serve.
Eenen seer schoonen, ende excellenten Cocboeck, 1593. Carolus Battus (I believe the translation is by Jennifer Strobel.)

So there may be still more recipes out there, but these few at least justify the inclusion of Nun's Farts in our historic meals.

v

Patience Rewarded?

2010-09-08T11:10:00.003-04:00

Back in the spring I was asked about an interesting dish that I’ve known about for years, a sweet called Nun’s Farts. Or Pets de Nonnes. I promised to write a few words about them, then promptly forgot how to write at all and fell off the face of the earth. Pretty much.

So finally I was thinking about them, again, and after dredging out some references and a recipe, even felt inspired to make a little batch!

One of the first cook books I was given, by my Dad, was James Barber’s Ginger Tea Makes Friends. A wonderful, tiny little book, written in a quirky comic strip style, and designed around cooking in a stripped down kitchen, with minimal gear.
I loved it. It was funny, and inspired, and full of really good recipes that I’ve continued using over the years.

His third book, Flash in the Pan, was just as enjoyable. One of the recipes, Hot Doughnuts for Breakfast, is a small simple fritter. And about them he says:
“In their original version, they were known (quite respectably) as Pets de Nonne, which literally translated means Nun’s farts. Should you, out of delicacy, prefer the original pre-eighteenth century French, it was Pets de Pute, which means Whore’s farts.”

I love it. And them.

Bill Casselman, in his book Canadian Food Words, calls them Pets de Soeur.
And it seems from searching on the internet that there is a variety of names, Nun’s Sighs, Nun’s Bellybuttons, and a number of different possible origins for these little pastries. French, Spanish, German…

Some of the descriptions vary: dough fried and spread with jam, pastry wrapped around brown sugar and cream filling, but I quite love these simple little puffs of choux pastry. (And they make a delightful little farting noise while cooking!)

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of French reference material, and my language skills are, shall we say, frail, so I don't currently have an original recipe to post, or more precise historical descriptions, but in the meantime, here is the modern recipe I use, and I'll see what else I can find and follow up with.

v

James Barber’s recipe:
½ cup water
1 tsp sugar
4 Tbsp butter
½ tsp salt
Bring to boil and immediately take off heat. Add all at once,
½ cup flour (and stir well)
2 eggs, (one at a time, mixing vigorously with a fork till very smooth)
Cook over lowest heat, stirring until it doesn’t stick to sides of pan.
Heat 1 cup oil in a small fry pan or saucepan. (Med/High heat; 370 degrees)
Add one teaspoonful at a time into the oil, turning twice as they brown to medium, and leaving room for them to puff up. Drain. Sprinkle with sugar (and cinnamon!)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2010-09-05T11:20:00.004-04:00

(Okay, not really…but close.)

There’s a whole lot of pre-amble and follow-up that should accompany this, but being linearly- challenged as I am, it will wander along in its own chaotic way.

* * * *

Since mid-2008, there had been some discussions about having DARC (Dark Ages Re-Creation Company, http://darkcompany.ca ) go out to L’Anse aux Meadows, Nfld, to do a presentation at the historic site. 2010 is the 50th anniversary of the site, and it was decided that a series of special events would occur throughout the season, and we were invited there in August of this year for ten days.

Conversations with Dr. Birgitta Wallace, the site archaeologist, suggested a scenario of a boat going from Iceland to Greenland, getting off course, and ending up joining up temporarily with the crews already at L’Anse aux Meadows / Leifsbuðir. This meant we spent the year and a half fine-tuning and adjusting our gear to fit more specifically into a defined timeframe and locale, than we normally worry about.
It also meant I needed to start looking into foodstuffs of Iceland, circa 1000 AD.

Until this point, I’ve mostly done as others have done, accumulated a larger list of foods appropriate to the Viking Age, and the entire Norse world. Even that range of information is limiting. I’d had no idea beforehand how much more restricted a list of Icelandic foodstuffs would be!

I started by searching out as much info as I could, and it wasn’t till I began that I realized just how unspecific the usual sources were. Or how much overlap. Or how vague. Even in the current world of the internet, which at least opens up some new vistas, it appears to either be a case of ‘neat thing if it were actually written up/translated/available’, or ‘gee, same source quoted over and over again’. It was even scary to find odd vague things that I’ve said myself somewhere, usually in the dim dark past, were popping up as reasons why someone else believed something to be true! Ack!

(I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I’m so slow to ever make a statement or publish something; knowing I don’t have every fact available, and worrying that the next new bit of info will make whatever I just said obsolete.)

On the other hand, I am always truly thankful to anyone who, at the very least, talks out loud about his or her experiments. It’s that combined, if remote, brainstorming that can sometimes open a door…

I did turn to a friendly archaeologist who has done a fair bit of work in Iceland, and picked his brains more than just a bit. That’s about when the slim list of ingredients started to become an almost non-existent list! It seems that there’s not much by way of indigenous foodstuffs in Iceland. No land mammals, no fruits other than a few berries. So, fish, sea mammals and sea birds, blueberry and crowberry, and mushrooms.

The geography doesn’t allow for natural basins of salt, the temperature is too chill for evaporation, and there was quickly a shortage of fuel, which made other methods of salt production impractical. That would mean that methods of preservation would be reduced to drying or pickling in whey, with only minimal brining, or smoking, more by luck than by intent.

Arable land was used for growing fodder for herd beasts, and less for crops. Some grains were grown, though likely used in the production of beer. Certainly, I’m told there was no evidence of bread-making tools, querns or baking plates, until later. And dentition records imply no sugars in the diet until the post-Medieval period. (And no honeybees so no honey; even less possible sugar in the diet.) Apparently this sort of dentition evidence is peculiar to Iceland.

While this suggests a diet consisting of dairy products and meat and fish, which is not necessarily a meagre diet, it also wasn’t a good basis for pre-packing.
I needed us to be relatively self-sufficient. I’d had an offer from friends to provide us with some local availabilities information, but I assumed (correctly) that there’d be less than no time to go search for foodstuffs once we were there. I put some feelers out with other members of the team to keep their eyes open for some other sources of seaweed/dulse, and they also came across some other cheese and dried meat on their routes to the Northern Peninsula.
But primarily I needed to prep what I could ahead of time, sticking as closely as I could to what would have been likely foodstuffs.

Back in 1996, in the original demonstration of the interpretive program, there had been several other factors in play, which made it simpler.
- There were fewer of us. 4 interpreters from Ontario, and 4 local volunteers.
- There was less information easily available, so working with appropriate technology and avoiding modern ingredients was far simpler than trying to use only locale-specific ingredients.
- I had easy access to the staff kitchen at the visitors center, for clean up and storage. (This year the visitors’ center was still under reconstruction.)
- Water was more easily accessible. (I know this has to be a lie, since we carried drinking water from the VC in 1996, same as we’d started this year, and the VC hasn’t moved, neither had the reconstructed buildings. So perhaps it’s the intervention of 14 years? Not to mention that we needed water for 16 this time around…)
- There were fewer visitors in 1996. (Now it was always a goal that attendance would increase, and I think it’s a credit to the interpretive program that this has happened, but it meant that this time they really weren’t many non-public moments to attend to mundane basics of food prep.)
- In 1996 the fires we used were all real wood fires. Since then, because of smoke problems, the buildings have been fitted out with propane fires. This year I was alternatively cooking outside on the gate yard fire pit (which was far less pitlike, and could have used a bit of tweaking) or in the blacksmith’s house on his charcoal work fire.
- In 1996, it was still the heyday of public involvement in foodways programs. I was able to make flatbreads and share them out. A few very interested patrons could stay for a bowl of soup… Nowadays, when the public aren’t allowed to sample, I end up feeling somewhat inhospitable if I’m spending too much time paying close attention to food they’re only allowed to look at. And that could just be me and my feelings.

But I did want to find a way to simplify the process of feeding the team, while incorporating it into the overall aim of the program.

My plan was to prepack ‘Viking Cup-o-soup’ packets, so that each day we really only had to sort out the day's allotment of bits, and go. It was not a bad idea, and it really kept daily prep to a minimum.
It wasn't, perhaps, as much fun, or as much a ‘demonstration’ as chopping things up in front of visitors, and discussing ingredients as you go, but starting at 10am, after the visitors' day had already begun, and the difficulties involved in fetching water for clean up, as well as trying to not show too many modern foodstuffs, made it the wiser course

I'd ended up compromising on a list of foods. I'm sure the Norse at LAM would have been eating a lot of fresh fish or meat from sea mammals. And while, in the long run, our hosts graciously brought us a number of treats, I didn't want to rely on that possibility. So I'd planned our soups to use salted, dried fish, or dried beef. And because I wanted that to stretch a little further, I had also dried some onions and vegetables, and added seaweed and grains into the mix.
I also dried several roasts of meat into jerky, and made flatbreads (even if evidence of grain usage in Iceland is sketchy). After some experiments, I had decided to take along a number of blister packed cheeses which I brined as days went on, to more resemble young fresh cheese. (The new interpretation at LAM allows for some herd beasts off foraging...)

Once again, probably catering to our modern sensibilities, rather than those of the Norse, I attempted to make each soup packet very slightly different. (In 1996, these thoughts hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had dried fish to go in the soup, and all of the same ingredients each day. Variety occurred when the Parks Canada staff offered me a different ingredient. We had caribou one day, seal another. But beyond that, it was fish, fish, and fish.)
But I’m guessing that cooking for larger groups of people over the years, in an atmosphere of catering to needs and tastes, has made me awkwardly hyper-conscious, especially in a setting where alternatives are few and far between!

So, in preparation for the adventure I continued my regular drying of mushrooms, (I’ve been drying mushrooms for years, after having discovered how easy it is, and how useful they are) and to these I added onion, leek, and chive. Since every spring I harvest wild leeks, this year I also dried those in anticipation of the trip.

Because I could find mention of wild parsnip and wild carrot in some of the nearby countries, I decided to boldly risk the inclusion of their domestic counterparts, though I shredded and dried them, and overall it was a fairly minor ingredient. The inclusion of seaweed was a given, both for a useful green, and for its salt content and iodine.
I pondered a while about the inclusion of grains, since the archaeological evidence suggests they did not make up much of the Icelandic diet. But some kind of flatbread filled a gap in a lunch, where I couldn’t necessarily guarantee more dairy or meat, and grains in a soup make it heartier. It also seemed a more likely way of cooking a few grains, if there wasn’t evidence of flour-making or baking tools. I did try to limit myself to whole kernels of less modern grains.

In the flatbreads that I made ahead, or each morning, I was also using oat, barley, and spelt flours, with just a small bit of whole wheat to bulk it out. They were made using just flour, water, and a little salt; except for the ones I made our last day that used up some leftover blueberries!

Overall, except for the need to feed a large group of people at a specific time, when they had tasks that kept them busy at their own stations, or possibly trying to cater to some less-experienced or adventurous tastes, and the requirement that it all be packed along with us for the days it took to drive to Newfoundland, and the ten days of the presentation, I think it wasn’t an outrageously incorrect menu.
Certainly it worked, and none of us appear to have starved. I didn’t get the opportunity to play around with any of the experiments I’d had faint ideas of, or look into some of the local ingredients I’d been interested in, but then there’s often more I want to try that just doesn’t fit into the time allowed. I’ll just have to treat this as a starting point, and explore further.

Everybody's Doin' It, Doin' It

2010-03-01T14:40:00.003-05:00

As Irving Berlin might say...

Doing what?
Blogging their way through cookbooks!

(Okay, not everyone, but it does seem to be the new trend du jour.)

There are several levels on which this resonates with me:
- It's a useful and in-depth way to meet/present a cookbook.
- I'm interested in the thought processes that guide other cooks.
- I enjoy being involved in a progress through a cookbook, even if I'm not particularly interested in the cooking, or the eating, of some of the recipes.
- I find it valuable to get a sense of other people's opinions on the results, the processes, and on the cookbook and how its information was presented.
- It gives a basis for an on-line journal, when blogging with any sort of regularity, or intelligibility can be a struggle.
- Sometimes it's just very entertaining, and a window onto other people's worlds.

There are some cons, though.
I don't know of any cookbook on my shelves, of which there is a goodly quantity, which I'd want to 'cook my way through'. I either am not interested in all the recipes, or can't get or afford ingredients for them, or simply would not wish to tread where they might ask me to. And it is the act of 'cooking my way through' which would actually be the useful goad to write about them, and the spur to an ongoing set of experiments. (Trying to make skyr can sometimes just involve a little too much curdled dairy product!)
And since my faintly intelligible food blog is about historic food, not just any cookbook will do, either. (Not to mention that it's where my head is at right now!)

So, after commenting that 'gee, if I were going to do that, the cookbook I'd do it with should be...', let's come right to the point and say it out loud:

I think I should take a stab at wending my way through Prehistoric Cooking by Jacqui Wood. [http://dagdascauldron.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-cookbook.html] I mean why not? Fortunately, her first chapter with recipes is about bread. That should at least give me a chance to try to actually make some recipes before I run into the roadblock of inaccessible or mystery ingredients. And by then, well, maybe I can just talk my way through them. (Hmmm....yes, Clay-Baked Hedgehog might prove problematic!)

I do imagine that there are recipes in here that I'll want to try again come spring, when the possibility of outdoor cooking once more comes our way. She's mostly proposed these recipes for use in a modern kitchen, though she does make mention of probable methods that would be used in period. And I'm nothing, if not all, about the period cooking techniques. (Can they work? How can I reproduce them? How do the techniques/tools affect the results?) Also I fully imagine that I'll have to have some mental discussion about how to apply some of this stuff on my side of the pond. As we move into the chapters on herbs and vegetables, there will be ingredients I probably can't get, and quite possibly ingredients I won't even be able to easily identify.

And since Ms. Wood is looking at Iron Age cookery, there will be some aspects to this that may be both very appropriate to my interest in early period, specifically Viking Age cooking, as well as being quite different. Certainly there may be types of food that will not apply to the Scandinavian world, and possibly techniques that may be unlikely, either for having been outmoded, or less suited. But I do feel there will be enough parallels that it will be a useful and intriguing experience.

~v

What's for Dinner in Iceland, Part 2

2010-01-20T13:00:00.000-05:00

So it appeared that I was pretty well able to produce a menu that wasn’t a bad one for a Norseman in the Scandinavian world, but what could I come up with for Iceland? Now that I was discovering how the rules seem to be different there…

I’d known that Iceland was a marginal settlement, a harsh land. I had never realized until talking with archaeologists, and being steered towards more focussed research, just how different it was. Basic things that I took for granted about northern Europe; geography, climate, growing season, trade distances and likelihood, didn’t necessarily apply to Iceland. Until now, I had just assumed… But as I’ve started learning more, I just end up with a longer list of questions, and have had to try to completely rethink some things.

In the end, I came up with menus for two meals, a lunch, and a dinner. By rights, a day-meal or ‘dagverthr’ would probably have been a morning meal, but only some of us were staying on the site, and the morning hours were required for setting up the demos. Thus, lunch.

Because I’d be cooking over a fire in a simple camp setting, I decided that a soup was the best way to go. (As it turned out, we ended up having to use a ‘fire ring’ for our fire pit, which altered access to the heat, and left no convenient way to use ashes or embers for cooking. That put paid to any ideas about experimenting with salt evaporation or roasting eggs, or making use of the bake pots.)

(picture by Karen Peterson)

One of our number doesn’t eat farmed meat, so my lunchtime soup included mushrooms, fish, and dulse.
I am a compulsive dryer of mushrooms. I like them for demos, but I like them for anything, and I always manage to feel remarkably thrifty when drying mushrooms. Also, mushrooms shrink when they dry, but not by so much that you don’t feel rewarded at the end of the process. For this soup I also dried onions, leeks, and fish. I did this partly for the convenience it would lend to packing, and storage, but also because I felt that for Iceland, I might be able to justify some dried ingredients, where it would be harder to guarantee fresh.

I brined the fish lightly before dehydrating, as a way to incorporate some salt. (Icelanders didn’t have the access to salt that was possible in other locations. It was too cold for natural evaporation, and there wasn’t the fuel to waste. I’d wanted to try experimenting with a basin of salt water by my cooking fire, but with the fire ring, didn’t actually have anywhere to try this. Another thing to add to the list of ‘must try’.) But sea fish would have some natural salt to them, and I was thawing frozen fish anyway… As well, the dulse has a salty taste. (I think I also used some carefully hoarded wild leek bulbs…)
But as far as I’ve been able to find, there weren’t many indigenous greens that I have any way of obtaining or replicating, except for seaweeds.

We also had some smoked sausage, and dried meats. I didn’t make the sausage myself, so had less control over flavourings, but I did have some elk sausage to offer up. (Elk isn’t appropriate to Iceland, sadly, but is a bit more interesting than store-bought!) I had made several batches of dried meat/jerky. One was elk, again with the one person in mind. (Apparently there were no indigenous land mammals at all in Iceland, other than the arctic fox, so this is a case where using beef or mutton would have been more correct!) I did try one small batch of dried beef with minimal flavouring: a mild marinade of water/vinegar/salt, and slight seasoning of smoke and mustard seed. It is SO hard to give up my perceptions of taste! (When we were at the 2000 celebrations in Newfoundland, I had made up dried meat to take, that was only lightly brined and dried, with no other seasoning. - this was prior to learning about the no salt in Iceland rule. - I ended up using it happily as an ingredient in cooking, but found it unpalatable on its own.)

I had made some unleavened flatbreads, mostly of barley flour, with a bit of rye, and a bit of wheat, because otherwise serving a soft cheese is awkward! But the leathery flatbread crackers also keep well and travel, so maybe cousins coming to the Althing brought them or the flour along.

(And thanks to the cousins for also bringing along some dried apples!) (And justifying some other dried fruits I’d made, plums, and berries.) A belatedly-remembered plan to make some butter resulted in trying it with cream still too chilled from the cooler for butter. Instead we ended up with a thickened cream, which tasted very fine with the dried fruits.

On the whole our luncheon wasn’t exactly what might have been a plausible meal for a Viking Age Icelander, but it wasn’t totally unlike, either: a soup, cooked in a kettle over a fire, of fish and mushrooms, with some dried flavourings: some dried or smoked meats to chew on; some cheese; and maybe some dried berries. The most glaring inaccuracy would be the flatbreads. Though even they might be partially excusable because of the festive occasion of an Althing. (Though that’s just guessing, on my part. And extrapolation from what my archaeologist friend told me.)

Our dinner strayed a bit further still from the Icelandic path:
I did two stews, one of venison and elk, for the same non-farmed-meat eater, (though to be honest, it was farm-raised elk, but maybe closer to free-range?) and one of lamb. I had felt that I needed to make two pots’ worth of stew because of the numbers that ended up being involved in being fed, so that did allow me to use a meat in one that would be more appropriate to the Icelandic diet, lamb. Because there were no huntable mammals in Iceland, the only meat would have been that which they brought and farmed themselves. Sheep, mostly, goats, and pigs to a lesser degree, and some cattle, though cows were valued more for their milk production.
One of our folk had a quantity of leftover vegetable and lentil broth that they’d pleaded with me to use up, so that justified its inclusion! Even so, I wasn’t able to squeeze in as much as they had for me to use.

We had some smoked fish of varying kinds. (Thank goodness smoked fish is justifiable! We all love it. Now I just need to build a smoker and make my own…) And I’d made some pickled fish. And some other pickled fish was contributed. The major difference is that these were fish pickled with vinegar, and it should have been pickled in whey. I need to do some experiments with whey-pickling, more than I’ve tried up till now, but then I also need to fine-tune methods of whey-production, since it’s not an ingredient one can just run out and fetch.
We justified some leavened bread, since the Althing is also a festival, and we had those cousins popping over from Norway…
To end the meal, I faked out some skyr.

At the point of that early Althing menu, I barely knew what skyr was. Some soft curded cheese. Then, it was all more conjectural anyway. There was also far less accessible research material, and no-one within reach who knew much about it, or had tried eating or making it. Now I know about skyr. I’ve had skyr. At least I’ve had modern incarnations of skyr, which may or may not be what was produced in the Viking Age. I’ve even tried making it myself with varied results. (Yes, you, my faithful reader, have struggled along with me on that!) But since I’ve still not been able to define to myself, or have other experienced skyr-tasters define to me, just what skyr is exactly reminiscent of, or like unto, unless it’s right before us… there’s still a sort of x-factor that allows for some play. What I did this time was to drain some yoghurt for a yoghurt cheese, and blend some cottage cheese to smooth out the curds, and then combine the two. I think the end result wasn’t unlike some of the grainier versions of skyr that I’ve had. Essentially, flawed skyr. Oh well.
With it we had a cooked-down compote of berries, blueberries, which might have been available, cranberries, and red currants, because I happen to have a whole truckload of red currants, thanks to my mother-in-law. Crowberries also grew in Iceland, but aren't something I had access to. Against all Icelandic food rules, I sweetened this with some honey. (No bees in Iceland, therefore, no honey.)

But we seemed to have enough food to go around, and it was neither too strange for people, nor completely wrong for an Icelandic Norseman, even if didn’t quite follow our expected habits of eating. I need to do a lot more research, taking the information I have about possible indigenous herbs and plants, and trying to identify them and relate them to what I know. However, there’s a good chance that I’ll never be able to replicate ingredients, which means that Icelandic food, more so than that of any other Norse cultures, may always stay just a little elusively out of grasp.

What's for Dinner in Iceland, Part 1

2010-01-15T15:19:00.008-05:00

Yes, my nagging reader. I’ve been an absent girl. I’d like to blame it on the process of writing something for what tries to be a semi-lucid blog, when semi-lucid is usually way beyond my means. But truth be told, in the last year there have been huge stretches where even a multi-word status update on Face Book was beyond me!

(Though it does still take way more time to write something that’s thought out, intelligible, researched, and makes some kind of point, which is what I aim for here…)

My previous question-to-myself had been “what’s for dinner in Viking Age Iceland.” The reason? Two-fold.

We are working to put together a presentation in conjunction with the 50^th anniversary of the World Heritage Site at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. A few of us have a very long time connection with the site. In 1996, we went there to present a prototype interpretive program. Before then, there had been no costumed interpreters at LAM. So in ’96, there were four of us, and a big bunch of gear, and three or four local volunteers that we kitted out, who worked with us to flesh out the presentation.

http://www.warehamforge.ca/ENCAMPMENT/beach.jpg

When the program got the green light, there was more involvement as my husband designed it, and produced the artefacts for their use. I designed and sewed the costumes, and had a hand in shaping the domestic crafts side of the program, and we have had an on-going relationship with the site for a number of years since.

http://www.warehamforge.ca/ENCAMPMENT/index.html

(photo by Karen Peterson)

There is a fine balance, I find, between what is purely a food demonstration, and what is a meal for a crowd, especially in a short time frame, and on a primitive site. (We had to bring our water and firewood.) Initially I’d assumed it was the ‘usual suspects’ I’d be feeding, and pretty much knew what give-and-take would be involved. But more of the team decided it sounded convenient, so the whole project expanded a bit.

In the end it meant it wasn’t purely ‘Icelandic’ food, but I did learn a lot in the process, and tried to bear in mind those limitations.

One of the first hurdles I faced were our modern perceptions when it comes to food. While I will admit to hardly ever eating breakfast, on the whole, people today think in terms of three meals. And snacks. And anyone who prepares his or her own meals is often aware of the need to attempt a balanced diet. And… is usually interested in variety.It seems quite likely than in the context of Viking Age world, food was fuel. It was a colder harsher climate, and a more active, working lifestyle. There was also much more labour involved in filling the cook pot. I imagine that the reward of a meal was sufficient in itself!Variety, then, and even not that long ago, was more by season, or luck, or forethought.

Some number of years ago, I’ve forgotten (conveniently) when, I did a menu for an Icelandic Althing event. That was one where we were actually serving a feast. Admittedly, there was much less to be had as reference material at all, and certainly very little on early period food, so in retrospect, it doesn’t surprise me to look back on the menu and see the weak points.

- roast eggs, flatbreads with ‘skyr’ and cheeses, stuffed breads, pickled fish
- sausages, cabbage with apple
- fish soup, dish of lentils
- bread with butter, salt chicken, roast pork, baked onions with garlic, mushrooms
- frumenty with soft fruit, roast apples
- and some roast goat for the Chieftains.

Knowing what I now do about the possibility of Icelandic foodstuffs, some of this is less than likely.
The eggs could have been seabird eggs, and since that time I have successfully roasted eggs in the ashes of my fire; though it would be helpful to do a bit more experimentation with that, so I have a better sense of how hot = how long. (I’ve also exploded eggs in my fire pit; much excitement ensued!)

The flatbreads, stuffed breads, basic bread, and even the frumenty of grains aren’t an impossibility for elsewhere in the Norse world, but are far less likely in Iceland. (This is one of those points where my brain just stalls, and goes ‘huh?’) While my sense is that bread, or grain, is one of the major food items of any agrarian culture, it turns out that very little grain was grown in Iceland during the Viking Age. Arable land was used to grow hay for herd beasts. There were some grain crops, most likely barley, but it’s suggested this was used more for brewing. In fact, I have been told that there’s almost no archaeological evidence for any grain processing or baking tools till later in Iceland’s history. Dentition evidence also suggests no processed sugars and starches in the diet till almost the post-Medieval period!

Sadly, for the cabbage and apple, there were no indigenous fruits in Iceland, and cabbages were introduced well beyond the time period I’m looking at.
Lentils, at least, travel well, so there’s a faint chance…
The roasted meats, on the other hand, are far more likely!

So, after I’ve shot down my years-old menu in flames, where do I go from here? While still being able to produce some food that will be manageable within the constrictions of the day and budget, which will also sufficiently feed a group of people with varying tastes and preferences…

[As an aside, several friends have often mused about the possibility of doing some kind of small event, where for the most part, we'd only be allowed to have what we'd legitimately be able to carry in a sea chest. I wonder if we'd also be up for an occasion where we'd only be allowed to eat what they would have...]

(end of part 1)

~v

Feel free to walk around and stretch, take a trip to the loo, or rootle out a snack. Smoke 'em if you got them. See you soon for part 2.

What's For Dinner?

2009-09-12T18:43:00.003-04:00

In Viking Age Iceland?
Oh my, now that's a poser!

And it's not a question I've ever considered before. Up till now, all the info I've accumulated on on Norse foodstuffs, or Viking Age cookery, has been by dint of taking every scrap of info and piling it into a not very big heap, and working with that. I've never worried about what was specifically available in one location simply because there's not a lot of information. Period.

It's far easier to wonder what they ate in France, 1550. Or Italy, 14th century. Even putting together the late period English menu was really only cheating a bit by looking to cookbooks a few years beyond, and they were only beyond ONE of the dates suggested by the theme of the event. No one ever suggested a specific date to me for the feast.

But when you pick early period, pre-cook book time periods, and then pick a country that doesn't really get chatted up in a big way in the reference material, then things get tricky.

I started by picking the brains of one of my favourite Icelandic archaeologists, and he helpfully passed along some info. But it's scarier by its 'lacks' rather than for its inclusions. He corroborated some casual info and facts I had stored in the back of my brain. Not much by way of game animals. Not a lot of indigenous fruits or berries. No real evidence of salt production. And he's thown some special spanners into the works as well, like no evidence of bread production till later. Eek.
All of a sudden things have got a bit tricky. A lot more thought is going to be required. Yes, a bunch of thinking and reading, indeed!

(All of a sudden, I'm hungry.)

Stay tuned, folks.

Tudor Research

2009-05-07T09:17:00.003-04:00

So, I've pretty much garnered myself a long list of favoured foods for the Tudor time period. And started weeding through them.

Some are impractical. Eels. Just for example. Though I was amused by reading about all the variety of names in use for eels, at the time, depending on their stage of development: "An eel was a Fauser, then a Grigg or Snigg, then a Scaffling, then a Little Eel, an Eel, and when very large, a Conger." [from Tudor Food and Cookery]
It seems almost worthwhile serving eels, just to list griggs, and sniggs and scafflings on the menu!

But fish, and fishy items, although such a major part of any historical diet, can be a food one has to tiptoe around. (I have eaten eel, at a feast. Twice, actually, same group. Same event in two different years.) But there are either a lot of people who don't eat fish for a number of reasons, or a lot of people who are scared by the possibility of eating fish. And I don't want to tie up a large chunk of my budget in a dish that people won't eat. So, I guess I'll try some smaller savoury morsels, some of which will include a little bit of not-too-scary fish.

[Besides, I'm not sure how far afield I'd have to go for eel, and while I wasn't too squeamish to eat it, I'm not sure how intrepidly I'd be facing it in my kitchen! Cooking seal flipper at L'Anse aux Meadows kind of floored me...]

v.

A Different Tack

2009-04-30T11:16:00.003-04:00

Still food, still historical... I've been invited (or bullied my way or whimpered enough) to design and execute a feast for another canton in the SCA. Not my local group, assuming I can even call that one my local group, since I don't go to meetings.
Anyway, I enjoy the planning and cooking, and this 3 hours-distant group has no cooks this year who aren't already busy doing other jobs, or didn't just cook the last feast!

They had suggested Henry VIII as the possible time frame, but aren't necessarily holding me to that. I'm widening the net to "Tudor", and am willing to accept a dating I found of 1485 to 1603, because that will open up the range of cookery information I can look at. (There aren't really a lot of English or english-language cookbooks from the 16th century.) But this means I can haul out a few 15th c ones for a look, and flip through Hugh Plat as well. I may not actually use them, but the more sources to start with the better.

I'm beginning by gathering up a list of foodstuffs that were popularly used, and from there I'll decide what's liable to be available, and what's liable to fall more within budget. Then I have to cross-reference those ideas with known allergies within the host group (that's a definite politeness!) and have a little think about what is more likely to appeal to the general population that will cross our paths. I'm lucky that this group tends to draw a crowd more willing to be fed some historical food. So that will make the voyage more fun.

I'll keep you posted as we set sail.

v

Temperatures, an Experiment

2009-01-10T12:29:00.001-05:00

So, as part of learning some of the stuff I feel I need to learn to really get a handle on trying to make skyr, I did some experiments in maintaining a temperature.

A number of cheeses have a much quicker process time; higher acidity, and higher temps, may work to form a curd in a shorter time period. The recipes for skyr all seem to suggest a coagulation time of 12 to 24 hours. That’s a long time to maintain a temperature. Certainly 24 hours means going overnight, and a period of unsupervised sitting.
Up until now I had been following an idea I’d read somewhere of putting the pot in the oven with the oven light left on. (Mind you, I also had a less concrete idea of what temperature I was trying to maintain.)

Today I tried a series of tests.
First, a whole lot of reading had suggested that a good temperature to maintain during this process would be between 100 and 110 F. Apparently that’s an optimum temperature for rennet to coagulate the milk solids into curd. Even if it ends up not being the temperature I finally decides works best for skyr, it was still a good starting point.
So I tried a container of water at 110F in the oven. I had preheated the oven just a fraction, by turning it to it’s lowest setting for a few minutes only, then placed the uncovered container in the center and left the light on and door closed. Within an hour and a half the temperature had dropped to 96 degrees.

A second test had water at a temperature of 106 F in a wide-mouthed thermos. (I felt that I had better thermoses with narrow mouths, but didn’t fancy the idea of trying to get coagulated milk out of them. Certainly it wouldn’t work for anything that I’d hoped would form a firmer curd!) In the hour and a half, the temp had dropped to 96 degrees.

A third test had water of 109 F in a crockpot. Unfortunately, it’s a slightly older style slow cooker, and has only a low or high setting. I gather the new models also have a warm feature. In an hour and a half, the temperature ROSE to 126 degrees.

These had been my first and easiest ideas. And I guess I haven’t found an easy answer. I have a couple of other things to try next…

Not Skyr

2009-01-06T14:28:00.003-05:00

Yet again, I have been vanquished in the quest for skyr.
This time I again tried the skimmed milk recipe. I was hopeful, because early on I was seeing some curd separation, but in the end didn’t get anywhere near a useful degree of coagulation. (Is there a happier word one can use to describe the actions of rennet when making cheese products?) And to my sense of taste, there really wasn’t any kind of marked degree of change from the flavour of milk. It was ‘not milk’ in flavour, but without any of the tang or faint acidity I’ve come to associate with skyr.
I did get to try out the new piece of equipment my loving husband gifted me with for Christmas.

A nylon jelly strainer system from Lee Valley. Far simpler for clean up. Cheesecloth may really be washable, but I think I prefer to save it for theatrical costume uses, because it’s nothing but a pain for use in the kitchen. (Well, perhaps if I had a kitchen dedicated to culinary experiments that wasn’t also full of the rest of our lives…)

But I’m starting to think that some of the comments I’ve made about the iron-smelting experiments that go on outside our house also apply here. Too many unknowns and too many variables, and never working towards setting some constants.

I’ve had several recipes I’ve been playing with simultaneously. There are several possible types of milk I can use; some of the recipes specify, some don’t. I have two different kinds of rennet, both of which are vegetable-based, so are a variable in themselves. There are a couple of different methods suggested. There is the variable of quantity: do the reactions I’m looking for require certain quantities before they occur? Are the proportions for reaction a constant?

In many ways as with the iron smelting, some of the same questions occur, and I can just plug a different noun or verb into the question, and it’s just as valid when applied to my experiments with skyr. (Scary, eh?)

* To begin with, I’m trying to experiment to create a product I don’t have much familiarity with. There is almost no experience with skyr in Canada, other than in specific communities with a cultural heritage that has kept it alive. (As in so much else in my life, I had never particularly heard of skyr, or had any interest in its existence, when I was growing up in Manitoba, a stone’s throw from Gimli and its Icelandic community. Turns out my mother knew about it, and liked it, and used to be able to buy it in the grocery store when she was younger! Thanks to the whole new world of major grocery store chains, and countrywide supply lines, that’s no longer possible. And now I live a wide province away…) So all I really know of skyr is from other people’s descriptions, which are never quite the same, and recently, thanks to a friend’s importation of some from a small producer in Manitoba, or some commercially-produced skyr brought back from Iceland. And whether either of these is typical, true skyr, or the skyr one might expect to make from the few available recipes, is as much a guess as any other.
Even from the few tastes I’ve had of skyr, I can’t really describe to my own satisfaction how it tastes. Before I’d ever had any, my interpretation of other descriptions led me to think it would be a little bit like yoghurt meets creamed cottage cheese. (Again, I had to work with products I’d already tasted. I’ve never had Quark; so don’t know where it fits in the spectrum.) When I did taste skyr, I think I was surprised that it wasn’t tangier. Because I’d been thinking about yoghurt, perhaps like a yoghurt cheese, I was expecting the same amount of acidity. (One of the things that keeps me from really enjoying yoghurt in large quantities. Too sharp a taste.) It wasn’t. But it also wasn’t like clotted cream, though the texture wasn’t that far away. It was less ‘glossy’ and loose than sour cream. (Oddly, although much sour cream is “sour” in taste, I find it less acidic than yoghurt. I feel there’s probably science involved here, which I need to know more about.) And again sour cream is still too sharp a flavour. And skyr can be more dense-seeming.
I have had some cream cheeses that are more like skyr in taste than either yoghurt or sour cream. They seem to be less typical of cream cheeses though.

So, here I am, trying to make something I’ve only tasted occasionally, can’t happily describe, even to myself, and have only very intermittently had brief access to.

Good start!

*I’m also not finding a lot of concrete information about skyr. Mostly just the same stuff re-paraphrased elsewhere, or some vague descriptions. And not much by way of recipes. I have one recipe that came via a friend, and one cookbook of Icelandic recipes from the Lake Winnipeg area that has two or three different takes on it. There’s a bit of discussion on the internet, which I’ve gleefully bookmarked, but nowhere near the amount I thought I’d find. Which is odd, because I know I’ve talked about skyr and figuring out how to make it for years now, and only recently got down to seriously trying to do something about it. I am sure I’m not the only one. In fact, by the number of Google searches that have hit on this blog by the search word ‘skyr’, I KNOW I’m not alone in this quest!

*What recipes I can find, seem to have no consensus as to what milk to use, skim, partly-fatted, whole milk, buttermilk… Admittedly, in searching for information on Viking Age skyr, it’s not like there’s likely to be a recipe or archaeological evidence, so information from traditional practices would be a good starting point. But even that seems a bit vague.

[I should point out that I’m mostly working from my own culinary library, which isn’t totally sketchy, or what I can find on the internet. I live rurally and have no easy access to libraries anymore. Give me a lovely university library and I might make some more headway. Or not. Even if the information is really available and out there, sometimes it can be well hidden!]

Part of my brain says higher fat content milk would give more milk solids. And that maybe my lack of coagulation is because I was using skim milk. But common sense suggests that historically milk would be processed differently and separated into different components for different uses. Cream becomes butter. So it would be the thinner milks and whey that might be made into cheeses. And there are Scandinavian cheeses that are made from whey: Gjetost and Mysost. Some of the things I’ve read about skyr, say it is a low-fat cheese. But then some of the recipes don’t mention that at all. I may not be able to find a definitive answer to that, but some further experimentation may be able to tell me how I need to make it to have it work.

*I need to figure out what the differences are between animal- and vegetable-based rennet. I have no particular preference which I use, being a carnivore, but if I can get the vegetable-based version to work, then it will be suitable for my non-meat-eater friends and relations. In the long run, it will probably hinge on what’s available to me. But I do need to learn if there are variations in how well each work, and in the amounts that should be used. The recipe I was just trying asked for twelve drops per 4 quarts of milk. I noticed that the rennet bottle itself suggested five drops per 1 litre. Hmmm… Mind you, I based my amount of rennet on that 5drops per litre, and did NOT get any really tangible curd formation. It ‘looked’ liked it was working, but when I went to strain off the liquid, it was far more liquid than solid.
And I don’t think that just giving it more time is the answer either. I did that with one of the very first attempts, and by the time I’d developed some thickness that was strainable, the milk was somewhat past human consumption. Even our cats, who adore dairy in any way, shape or form, were completely disinterested!

*Temperatures. When they say heat to boiling, do they mean heat it till it IS boiling, or until it reaches that temperature? Or maybe even boil for a bit of time? And cooling to lukewarm… What is lukewarm exactly? Does it matter? Am I over analyzing?

Hmmm… I was just grubbing about in yet another cookery book, thinking about an offshoot from this project that would involve trying to make something else, where I can find more info, and lo and behold! Have come across some instructions to do with yoghurt making that say: Sterilize 1 litre milk by bringing it to the boil, and simmering for two minutes to kill off any undesirable bacteria.
Now, there is the first reason I’ve seen for heating to the milk to boiling. No other source has given a reason. Is this why I should be heating the milk? And this one gives the instruction about two minutes of simmering.
This same recipe also gives a temperature for ‘lukewarm’ of 38-43 degrees C, or 100-110 F. (which is different than what I’d been doing in this last experiment.) I’d found some other suggestions of 80 – 85 F.

Entirely possible that temperature is one of the variables that is contributing to the different results. Certainly I suspected that the temperature I’ve been leaving it to sit at might have an effect on coagulation and formation of a curd, and is a bit hard to control. It is winter here in Canada, and I live in a cold house (electric baseboards and a programmable thermostat to save on hydro costs.) At a different time of year, the ambient temperatures will be greatly different.

I think I also need to experiment with some other methods for maintaining a temperature, and maybe try a higher ‘lukewarm’ temp.

I do believe, though, that I need to put aside questing for skyr until I’ve learned a little more about the rennets I have available. If I can get a handle on the processes and results when I’m working with something a bit more obtainable, like making a yoghurt, where I can easily buy commercial yoghurt for a starter, and know what it should taste like, or some soft cheese, then I may be able to apply the experience again to trying for skyr. Though I may also be limited to the suggestions of how to make a skyr starter, since the availability of real skyr is extremely intermittent.

Sadly, all my previous experiences with cheese-making and the like are just too many years behind me now to be of use. I’m really starting at the beginning all over again. I just have to hope I’ve learned a bit of patience, and can approach this methodically, and solve the mystery!

Tweaking the Bakeoven

2008-12-10T11:17:00.001-05:00

[Apologies. Two, no, THREE shows at the theatre intervened. One, 22 actors, 23 characters; then 4 actors, and 22 or 23 or 24 characters. I lost track! And the last one, A Christmas Carol with eleven mainstage actors and a choir of 75, all in Victorian costume... This should have been posted ages ago!]

So, long long ago, up north on a friend's farm where we have an annual historical event, we built a bread oven. We'd actually envisioned it being used as a community bread oven for them what likes to bake bread. Of course, visiting the site only once a year does not make for healthy and productive maintenance.
We'd already discovered with our experiments here at our place, that weather can take a huge toll on an unsheltered, infrequently used stone oven.
Add to the general wear and tear of weather and time, the fact that one short weekend, full of a number of other time intensive projects (building a forge, smelting iron, making glass beads, earthworks and levelling...) meant that the oven just wasn't getting regular TLC. And with the passage of more than a decade, it was in sad shape indeed.

So, it was very exciting this year that a couple of ladies decided they'd like to put some effort into restoring the oven to its former glory and usefulness.

With the home oven, we'd already experimented with a number of building methods: stone, stone and sod, stone and clay, overhead cover, and eventually had just decided to mortar it. The snow load in our area is quite heavy, and the freeze/thaw cycles are extreme. Local clay eventually just degraded away. (Something we are now watching experimentally in our iron smelters.)
So our ladies decided to try a more effective attempt with clay, and brought a better grade with them. We'll have to see how it fares.

Their first step was just to find the oven!

It had been a very rainy summer this year, and the bracken was thriving. Normally the oven shows up a little bit better...

They had to clear away the bracken and accumulated dried vegetation, broken bits and pieces, and make sure the original stones were seated firmly. Then they mixed up their clay and began a serious mortaring effort. After getting thoroughly muddy in the process, they were eventually rewarded with an oven-like object, and were able to make a small fire to preheat and dry the clay.
"Useful tools" were found and created. Other friends had slaughtered one of their ducks and brought it to pluck and cook. A wing became useful to sweep out ashes. Another friend cut and carved a peel (a thin wooden paddle that allows you to slide the bread into the oven.)

Wood for the real heating was prepared, and the fire in the oven started. When it was deemed hot enough, the remains of the fire were swept out, and a loaf of bread dough placed inside, and the opening blocked with a stone. Later, after nightfall, the bread was removed, and declared a success.
Hopefully, next year the oven will still be in decent enough shape that so much time won't be spent on preparing it, and more time can be spent on using it. Ideally, if the heating is started earlier (not late in the day at the end of the weekend!) we may be able to use the oven to bake several things, utilizing the temperature curve that is part of the natural process.

A New Cookbook

2008-07-16T09:40:00.003-04:00

Another one of my birthday presents, brought back from Denmark, turned out to be a cookbook I've heard mentioned and have actually been looking for, Prehistoric Cooking by Jacquie Wood.

See here:http://www.history.uk.com/reviews/index.php?archive=24

I've seen it mentioned a number of times, and read a few comments about it, but beyond that I wasn't finding too much info, or anything in the way of quotes or samples. So it will be very interesting to actually be able to sit down and take a serious look at this, and maybe try, and experiment, with some of what she says.
We'll have to see...

v

Little Pots

2008-07-12T11:05:00.002-04:00

Aren't they charming?
It's not like I have any lack of pots, or the man to make them, but this series of three (coincidentally nesting) pots came from one of the museums in Denmark, a birthday gift from my husband. (Yet another reason Homeland Security was anxious about his luggage! Not just iron blooms or maple syrup...)

I'll have to seal them up, which means a chance to try several different methods, but I'm quite delighted by them!

v.

Feeding Re-Enactors

2008-07-06T09:46:00.004-04:00

Or how do we reset our modern sensibilities?

(expanded from the posting on the DARC blog.)

** Random thought warning: No guarantees of a beginning, middle, or end, here. It’s an ongoing discovery!**

Over the years of being one of the main food providers at the varying levels of demo that DARC takes part in, my biggest challenge has been mostly, finding the time ahead, in a life that’s pretty full of other activities or work, to get ready. Fortunately, I find that food fascinates me, and drying fruit or meat or vegetables, or making flatbreads ahead, and planning it all, amuses me. The one recent conundrum has been in crossing borders. All of a sudden I’ve lost my easy ability to prepare our own supplies to take, especially meat and fruit, and have to rely on local grocery supplies. (No, the Norse didn’t really eat pepperoni, but it was the only dried sausage available at your store!)

A number of years ago now, my husband gave me a food dehydrator, which sat for a while, until I finally discovered how truly marvelous it is. I’ve tried other methods of drying, but a dehydrator sure beats the oven, or the vagaries of sun and weather, or the klutzy feet of cats who just want to be a part of everything. Now I can dry foodstuffs all year round, for me as well as for camp purposes. And truthfully, I find that some of those stocks get used up in my daily kitchen before they even have the chance to be part of a period menu!

When it comes to a demo situation, it’s far easier to adhere to a more plausible menu of foodstuffs. On the one hand, I’m preparing it before the public, so my methods will only be the appropriate ones, especially as dictated by the cookware I’ll be using. And I find the people I’m feeding are far more accepting of whatever I give them, when it’s the oasis in a busy day of talking to the public. (Not to mention that after the demo, there’s a good chance we’ll be eating out somewhere, and they can suit their own tastes!)

However, there are occasions where we camp for ourselves. What then? We had already decided in our formative period, that morning was often a time of relaxed authenticity. Partly because some of us like our coffee in the morning; but also because that gave us a period of time in which we could discuss aspects of the whole process, and review gear, etc.

When it comes to food, though, beyond that pot of coffee, I truly prefer historical foods, and more appropriate methods. And when cooking for myself, that’s not really an effort. Historical food intrigues me, as well as the processes of preparing it. (Mind you, I occasionally stray out of one time zone a bit, if I really have urges for experimentation with some other things… I don’t get enough time cooking over fires to work my way through the entire list of things I want to try! Or favourites I’d like to revisit.) But I don’t think I’ve ever had any problems avoiding modern cooking or recipes. After all, this is my chance to escape all that!

I have found that when cooking for others, it’s much harder to toe that historic line. Or when cooking for a longer period of time. Our modern tastes, and sensibilities, and habits get in the way, no matter how much we try to suppress them. Not only will the varying ‘needs’ and requirements and differing senses of taste, and experience of the members of the group get in the way, I have my own perceptions of what constitutes an adequate meal, a balanced menu, and a need to please my audience. Even that is probably a far cry from a busy huswife concerned with making a timely meal from materials to hand.

It’s very hard to turn off our modern taste buds. Easier, perhaps, to follow a period recipe and accept the results. But in earlier period cooking, we’re working from known ingredients and methods, far more often than from actual recipes. There’s an automatic assumption that comes into play, about what we should be doing with those ingredients.

I often dry meat, for example. And while I’ve adapted the ingredients in varying jerky recipes to be something more in keeping with the spicings available to the Norse, it seems highly unlikely that they spent time adding flavourful marinades to meat they were drying as a means of preservation. A simple brining makes sense, because of the useful properties of salt. But plain brined and dried meat really just doesn’t cut it as a ‘snack food’ to the modern tongue. It works well as something for the soup pot, and I’ve used it as such. But for eating? Not so much.

Yet, in the real context, a bit of dried meat would probably have been quite the decent item to stave off some hunger, and the fact you had it at all would probably have been all that mattered.

I suppose I should be pleased with myself that I have tried the more logical ‘plain dried meat’ even, but the fact that I immediately opted back to a marinated jerky bothers me. That’s my 21^st century taste buds chiming in.

And so, when faced with a small crowd of people who find plain water something for washing with, not drinking, or a simple soup of dried vegetables or salt fish, less than inspiring, especially if it’s what you had yesterday and the day before, and the day before that…

It definitely becomes a bit more of a challenge.

Particularly when I want them to not feel cheated out of a real meal.

Consequently, we end up with far more extensive meals than I can imagine being the norm. Which, when paired with an inadequate knowledge of period furniture, means a more awkward serving setting. (And way more dishes to clean up!)

And more meals, period. What I’ve read of the Norse suggest a morning meal, and a nighttime meal. Now admittedly, I’m fairly used to a two meal day, and when I worked at my previous job in the city, often a one meal day! But many people in the modern day really are more familiar with three meals a day.

Even the modern perception of what constitutes a meal can get in the way. If the Norse might have been content with a bowl of broth or gruel for a morning meal, with perhaps a crust of bread or an unleavened flatbread to sop it up, why do we feel we cannot start our day without a buffet of tempting items? Sausage, bacon, fresh griddle cakes, fruit… I often make an attempt to offer up a bakepot of some grain porridge, but there are times where I’m the only one willing to give it a go.

Admittedly, the North American diet makes far too much use of meat. We’re spoiled by accessibility and modern methods of preservation. And quite probably, our ideas of a hearty breakfast don’t match with the workload we’re about to undertake in our day! But certainly our choices are not as likely in a culture without large-scale farming, or food-processing, or refrigeration.

And whether or not there were fewer food allergies in history, or not, certainly there are many more scruples about food today, as well as sensitivities, and food choices, and dietary concerns. All those factors can come into play, and then the whole game becomes more complex.

I was lucky recently, at least, in that it was only a very small group of people I was cooking for, which made the variables a bit more finite. Another friend ended up cooking for over two dozen people, and found that in many cases, the entire idea of period food had to be set aside for the sake of efficiency, and group and individual needs. Also, in her case, a goodly quantity of those two dozen people may have had little or no experience with period food, and might not have had the ability to adjust their expectations. For my part, I discovered that although I had a fair array of appropriate storage vessels, and a goodly quantity of period foods along, they got lost in the chaotic shuffle of making sure there was adequate breakfast, lunch, ‘tea’, and dinner that matched up with the varying needs people had brought with them, or the extra bodies that always seem to accumulate.

Certainly, I believe it to be a learned association of ideas: both surrendering what feels natural, and your regular expectations. Particularly when we’re basing the whole thing on extrapolation and conjecture at best. That’s a difficult step to take. I’d like to be able to do it more often, or at least make the attempt.

I find that some easy steps are to simply include only appropriate foodstuffs, even if sometimes the net is cast just a teeny bit wider; ‘to include Britain, as well as the Scandinavian homelands.’ This, to possibly give some scope for wheat as the primary grain, or allow us to include almonds and walnuts. Or to perhaps allow a treat from ‘far away’. (In the case of a few olives for a special snack.) I do end up playing a few mind games with my planning, if only because I live rurally, and don’t have access to preferable options. In cooking for demos, I sometimes build in a supply trip so I actually can buy and use barley flour, or hazelnuts.

[For my experimental cooking, I’m far stricter with myself. It actually ends up being more rewarding.]

Perhaps it might be worth another post just to muse about what might make for good re-enactors’ food?

Duck for Dinner!

2008-07-02T12:17:00.001-04:00

Historic Food Out-dated?

2008-06-09T08:29:00.002-04:00

Was having a visit with some fellow historic re-enactors last Saturday, well, a work weekend actually. But after the smelter was built, and we were sitting around, post-work, and pre-dinner, the topic of historic food came up.

There has been a discussion recently on a re-enactor list about food allergies, and how to work around them for feasts. Several times I almost made my own contribution to the conversation, and then deleted it. On the one hand, I tend to only be willing to go as far as denoting meat and non-meat dishes in a menu. I’m far too afear’d of the complex issues of food allergies to even feel comfortable giving assurances about something I’ve prepared by myself in my own kitchen, let alone in a rented kitchen with other helpers. Particularly true, as I learn more and more about all the variations of allergies. And unexpected links and molecular similarities… Eek! It just gets way too tricksy.

But that led us both to comment how on the one hand it becomes very difficult to try to reproduce any of the food from varying periods in history with any kind of attempt at veracity. And on the other hand, how it seems that not many people are even trying anymore.

In fact, I’m starting to wonder if historic cooking is becoming a thing of the past! (Now doesn’t that start to sound like something Carrie Bradshaw would be typing?)

When I first started in this whole re-enactoring thing (long, long ago and reasonably far away) we didn’t have a lot of resources. There was Pleyn Delit. And….hmmm… maybe there was Pleyn Delit. Certainly that was one of the most available books.

It wasn’t even till I’d been in Ontario for a time that others even crossed my path, though I was already on the lookout for them. But perhaps we would have been excused for using the same recipes again and again. Or filling in gaps with something conjectural, just to flesh out the menu.

But there are so many new places to turn to now for easily available information. I ended up having to move my historical cookery book collection out of my kitchen bookshelves because they take up so much more room now. And I don’t can’t afford to collect even a fraction of what is out there.

But it seems we were doing more historic cooking when we had fewer recipes to choose from. Instead, it’s appeared over the last few years, that ‘ethnic’ cookery has replaced any use of historic cookbooks. (Where once we could have pointed that finger at ‘traditional’ recipes as standing in for real history.) And recently, even ethnic food seems to be giving way to what more resembles fairly ordinary restaurant food. ???

So…is period food old-fashioned?

V.

Taking the Cauldon for a Test-Drive

2008-05-21T11:20:00.003-04:00

We spent the weekend at a 'black powder rendez-vous' (roughly 1750 - 1830) at a small county museum.
I had a chance to use the new footed kettle. And discovered quite by chance, that the lid of one of my other cast irion pots fits just perfectly! We still have to do some clean up on the pot before it gets heavy-duty cooking use, but it certainly worked beautifully to keep a welcome pot of hot water to hand. (Weather was not quite what I look for in spring camping!)

And yes, I cooked with some of the wild leeks. Yum.

Lovely!

2008-05-05T15:40:00.002-04:00

The first wild leeks of the season! I may have to stop talking about pots and talk about food instead...

Pottery Pipkins

2008-05-04T12:02:00.002-04:00

Ah... the Jamestowne pipkin. No, I don't know if they assume a wooden extension was inserted into that pottery handle. Certainly it would be possible, and that's the way our potter friend has designed his versions. That *is* a handle though, not a pouring spout. I didn't think to set up a shot to make that clear, but the last picture is taken looking directly at the inside where the handle is. In fact, if you really peer, you can see a slight circular mark, which is either discolouration that's occurred during use, or possibly a slight depression and shadow from actually working the clay in that spot.
Turns out I don't have any of the similarly handled cookware that David made. I'd thought I had, perhaps because there'd been such a lot of cookware all being tested at once, and then different shapes went home with different testers.

I have taken some pictures of the two pottery pipkins that I have. Obviously the smaller one has seen more use, as you can see by the smoke marks! I wondered why, until I remembered that my favourite cookpot in this series is an unfooted one. And that may be my favourite because the one firepit I use a lot actually has some flat rocks set around the bottom, and it's probably easier nestling a round bottomed cookpot in there, than getting good seating for a taller footed pot. I do find that the shape curving in towards the mouth of the pot is preferable. It contains the heat and the food better, as well as keeping ash out. I'm hoping to make up some simple wood lids this season, and that will help as well.

But with the hope of spring, there's also the chance of starting to cook outdoors again. So maybe some of these can get a bit more use and experimentation.

Road Trips & Pipkins

2008-04-14T09:18:00.005-04:00

Sorry for the absence. I was off to Virginia for ten days in March, and as soon as I got back, was busy working on the last show of our theatre season, Mesa, about a road trip from Calgary to Phoenix. Kind of got in the way of organizing a new post.

However, one of the things I did while down south was visit the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeology Project, http://www.apva.org/jr.html, with some of the people we'd been visiting, and some of the Colonial Williamsburg staff.
The trip down to Virginia had been all about iron smelting, so the visit to APVA was actually about iron production in Jamestown and early Virginia.

But Jamestown was about a lot more than just that, and the lab at the archaeology centre was full of something for everyone!
I was particularly taken with a lovely find of a footed pottery cook pot. It was nice in itself, but additionally interesting because I have some period-style cookware made by a potter friend of mine, including a footed pipkin.

-vandy

The Bronze Cauldron

2008-03-12T16:04:00.003-04:00

I was asked for a few more details about the interesting bronze cauldron I'd posted the scan of. Unfortunately, the book I found the picture in says nothing more than:
"Bronze cauldron, Etruscan, early 7th century B.C. Purchase, 1954, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest (54.11.1)" It's from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unfortunately, no amount of Googling thus far has pulled up any other pictures, or any more information.

It does seem quite possible that it's not for cooking in, though. I could well imagine it being a serving vessel for wine. But I suppose it could just as easily be a funerary urn to a fruit bowl. It's also not overly helpful that I have no idea of size.

But it *is* a pretty cauldron, and I love the legs!

v

Another Footed Cauldron

2008-03-07T12:02:00.003-05:00

Way early, 7th century B.C., made of bronze, and the legs look a bit fragile, but what a pretty thing.

(I found the picture in Christmas Feasts from History, by Lorna J. Sass. It lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

v

The Footed Pot

2008-02-29T09:45:00.004-05:00

Well, I went off and scrabbled around through some of my books. Of course, they're not sorted with an eye to identifying cookware, so this is what I could find quickly.

This is a picture from Food by Audrey Noel Hume, from the Colonial Williamsburg Archaeological Series. #9. The two large pots are from before 1797, when the house they were excavated from, burned down in Williamsburg.

The second picture is from Cooking at Jamestown Settlement, which oddly lists no author at all. The pot in the picture is being used in the living history interpretive section of the museum, the reconstructed settlement, so I imagine it is a reproduction, but much closer to the source, and likely to be reasonably accurate. (Somewhere we have more info on Jamestown. I'll have to figure out which library it's in.) Jamestown Settlement dates from 1607 to the mid-1620's.

The third picture is from A Taste of History, The Origins of Quebec's Gastronomy by Marc Lafrance and Yvon Desloges. Unfortunately they give no more specific credit for any of the photos than what's included with the picture. I'm assuming there's a good chance that this pot is part of the Louisbourg artefact collection. (Again, somewhere we have lots more photos from Louisbourg, but I'll have to hunt them down.)
The caption with this photo merely describes it as a pot style used in the 18th century. It is definitely a much more elegant casting than my reproduction. Thinner, not as rough.

I also have bookmarked, an interesting article on the history of cauldrons and cast iron:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jselmer/cauldrons.htm
And the author includes a picture of a similar kettle from his own collection as the last image:
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jselmer/cauldrons.htm#fig_12

Interestingly to me, this shape of metal pot seems to follow the shape of earlier earthenware pots. Maybe I'll try ferreting out some pictures of those next....

v

A Valentine's Gift

2008-02-24T17:39:00.003-05:00

I realize this blog is looking awfully text-heavy, so...
This is a picture of a nice little reproduction footed pot that my husband gave me for Valentine's Day.
It's a modern repro, and a bit of a rough casting, so might end up only being good for boiling water or soups, not something too sticky for cleaning. And historically it will only work for so far back, but still, a sweet little pot. I'll root out more info on the style for a follow-up post.

Adventures in Skyr, part 2

2008-02-22T16:03:00.002-05:00

Carrying on with the skyr saga…

Two of the recipes I had on hand were pretty much word for word the same:
Take 4 quarts of milk. Bring to the boiling point. Cool until lukewarm.
Stir 2 tbsp. Skyr into ½ cup milk. (or use recipe for starter) Stir into lukewarm milk.
Add 12 drops of liquid rennet, stir well. Set aside in warm place for about 24 hours.
Drain off liquid through cheesecloth. Remove cloth, put in bowl, beat well. Chill. Serve with cream and sugar if desired.

So, definitely I was going to try this recipe, since it had cropped up twice. But…. 4 quarts of milk? That’s a lot of milk for a highly speculative venture. (Note my lack of confidence in the whole procedure! Perhaps it harks back to my adventures in brewing. You never know till it’s done if it will be what you want, so you never want to make five gallons. Of course, then it turns out perfectly, and you only made a small bottle!)

I decided I was up for playing with one litre of milk. (And of course, now we not only get to have fun with scaling recipes, I run into that wonderful dark zone of differing rules of measurement. Sigh.) And these two recipes did not make any comment about ‘type’ of milk. No mention of milk fat at all. It had only been from poking around on the web that I’d found mention of low fat at all. Hmmm…. Since both my husband and I have a strong aversion to skim milk, even on principle… (Maybe if it actually cost significantly less than 2% or whole milk?) I opted for 1%. (There’s something about the ‘blue’ quality of skim milk that just gives me shudders.)
And I had no rennet. (This was a sudden experimentation, brought about when Neil had sent me home after a visit, with a small container of leftover skyr from Manitoba.)

Now, you’re supposed to be able to make rennetless cheese by using an acid to curdle the milk. And this is a soft and creamy final product, not a firm cheese. So, would it be possible?

I divided my one litre of milk into two portions, one to try with vinegar, and one to try with lemon juice. I followed the instructions, and waited. And waited. Neither batch was giving me any sort of coagulation at all. I waited. Maybe the kitchen was too cold? Or the entire house? (This was winter in Ontario, in the Snow Belt, with wretched electric baseboard heaters and a programmable thermostat and a thrifty husband, after all!)

The recipe had said to leave it sit for 24 hours. I left it for 36. And a bit longer. Never the slightest hint that my milk had ever heard of the concept of curds. And then it started to smell a bit squiffy, so I cried ‘uncle’. (And when all four of the cats said ‘thanks, but no’, cats who will normally knock you down in a rush to get at anything that even looks like it might be a milk carton, I knew I did NOT have a winner!
Not only were there no curds, in either batch, there wasn’t even the suggestion of thickening. Instead I just had to lots of thin smelly milk to offer up to the septic system gods.

Disappointed, but not vanquished, I turned again to the collected recipes. The Culinary Saga of New Iceland had three different recipes. The second one didn’t even require rennet. So I thought I’d give it a try.
This one, Lyla Thorarinson’s Skyr (An Alternative Method) only wanted 1 quart of buttermilk. It didn’t even ask for a dollop of skyr.

Pour buttermilk into baking dish. Cover and place in a preheated 325-degree oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Shut oven off.
Leave dish in oven overnight, for at least 12 hours, after which the whey should be visibly separated from the curd. Separate the curd from the whey as much as possible and drain curd for about 4 hours or until fairly firm. Put curd into bowl and beat until smooth. Add sugar to taste and serve with cream and/or fruit.

I DID add a bit of the skyr to this, since I wanted to encourage the correct flavour development.

Now this experiment did actually go somewhere. I don’t think it was towards skyr, though. I did develop curds. I was able to separate the whey and the surds and put the curds to drain. However, my suspicion is that I was too successful. My cheesemaking book includes a recipe for buttermilk cheese. For a dry buttermilk cheese, you go through exactly the motions I’d gone through, heating the buttermilk and then draining the curds. And what I’d ended up with was a fairly dry curd. No way did it resemble skyr. And it wasn’t just a case of whisking it up to creamy…
(Mind you, as a dry crumbly cheese product, it wasn’t totally awful. I added some herbs, and used it on some foccaccia, and with some pasta, and eventually my husband blended it with some sour cream and finished it off in a sandwich. But it wasn’t skyr.)

The cheese book suggests that you can achieve a wet curd buttermilk cheese without heat, and I may look into that.

I did eventually have some rennet, thanks to another friend, though it’s a vegetarian version, and I’m not sure how that changes the process. And there was another, even weirder recipe to try from the New Icelandic cookbook.
So stay tuned.

v

Adventures in Skyr

2008-02-21T12:48:00.002-05:00

Ah, so what is “skyr” you are asking? Well, now, that’s a very good question, and so far I haven’t found an answer of only a few words. It’s kind of like cheese, or yoghurt, or cottage cheese, or sour cream, or maybe Quark (having never yet met Quark face to face, I’m not sure.)
It’s supposedly a traditional and well-loved foodstuff of the Norse. Dating back, at least, to the Viking Age. Still favoured (and modernized) today in Scandinavian countries, and now being imported into select areas of North America.

It’s one of those things I’ve known about for ages, but never really thought about. It wasn’t till recently that I’ve actually tried to find out some more concrete info, and realized just how hard it is to define.

So, let’s turn to some references. I’ll start with the old-fashioned kind: books.

From The Cooking of Scandinavia, one of the Time-Life Foods of the World series:

“If fermentation sounds like an exotic way to preserve food, bear in mind that the same process also yields wine, cheese, anchovies, olives, sour cream, yoghurt and buttermilk. Without the blessing of fermentation, the Scandinavians would never have been able to turn the greater part of their spring and summer milk supplies into storable dairy products. Nor would they have become the important cheese and butter makers they are today.
“Some milk had to be kept on hand to drink, and inevitably it soured. A virtue was made of this, and in Viking times, as later, it was considered fit food to offer company. One of the sagas tells of a man called Bard who served his guests bread and butter and ‘large bowls filled with curds.’ As they were very thirsty, they swallowed the curds in large draughts; ‘then Bard had buttermilk brought in, and they drank it.’
“What those curds may have been is not certain. Perhaps they were nothing more than skyr, or curdled milk, which used to be a common food of Scandinavia. Today skyr is found under that name only in Iceland, and there it is eaten fresh, as a kind of yoghurt.”

[Actually, this article goes on to talk about a whole bunch of weird dairy products that may also bear some investigating and experimentation…]

Another book, The Culinary Saga of New Iceland [thanks, Karen] by Kristen Olafson-Jenkyns, says of skyr:

“The seafaring Vikings brought this ancient dish with them when they settled in Iceland. Skyr is a smooth curd with a creamy texture and is classified as a cheese. It is made from 2% or skim milk and is very low in butterfat content. Protein rich, skyr was for centuries one of Iceland’s most important staple foods and in earlier days was made from sheep’s milk and preserved all winter in casks.
“The traditional way to eat skyr is with milk or cream and a little sugar. It is also delicious with fresh fruit. On farms in Iceland, it was also served mixed with porridge, which is called ‘Hraeringur’. It was served with milk and accompanied by the traditional ‘black pudding’ and ‘liver pudding’ which were made at the slaughtering time in autumn.”

Okay, then. Some kind of thickened milk product. Dare I say, “curdled”? Our connotations of the word ‘curdled’ aren’t great, although by definition it merely means ‘form into curds’ or ‘thicken’, which doesn’t sound so bad. Cheese is made up of the curds of milk. Cheese curds themselves are a great thing, and poutine wouldn’t be poutine without them!

Googling, good ol’ Wikipedia, imperfect though it may be, says:

“Skyr is an Icelandic cultured dairy product, a type of fresh cheese that has been strained, not unlike Greek yoghurt. It is said to have originally come from Norway, brought to Iceland by the Norwegian Vikings, but is currently unique to Icelandic cuisine.
“Traditionally, skyr is made with pasteurized skimmed milk and live active cultures such as Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus. Then, "skyr condenser" — good skyr, used to ignite bacteria growth, and rennet was added, and the milk was left to coagulate. The skyr was then strained through fabric to remove the whey, called "mysa" in Icelandic, a by-product that Icelanders used as a thirst-quenching drink. Today it is made from non-fat milk.”

***

Anyway…. What happened is that a friend discovered a supplier of skyr in Manitoba, and managed to mail order some. He’d tasted it several years back on a trip to Iceland, and had been searching for a North American source ever since. Gimli, Manitoba is a major Icelandic community, and a logical direction to be looking for Icelandic delicacies.
But this means that suddenly we have some skyr on hand, and I now have some first hand experience with “what is skyr?” (Though Neil says it seems different tasting than he recalls.) And because making skyr seems to require some skyr to make more skyr, along the lines of making sourdough, I’m now in a scramble to figure out how to make it.

A number of the bits and pieces I could find out there on the interweb, remarked on how ‘skyr keeps forever’. Hmmm…. Not my experience. Mind you, there seem to be a multitude of different descriptions of what sky is actually like out there, so perhaps there’s also a wide range of opinions on how it keeps. It is a dairy product, so I’ve got it in the refrigerator, but I’m still thinking there’s a time limit on these experiments.

I started my experiments by tracking down recipes. Neil had one, given to him by a friend from Gimli, that was supposedly what her mother made. The Culinary Saga of New Iceland cookbook has several, one of which seems word for word like the Neil gave me. And I googled up several others.

Some mentioned that you use low fat milk.
Stephanie Zonis, of Whey to Go! wrote, in an article from July 2006:
“From everything I’ve read, skyr, by tradition, was a product low in fat. I found it strange that a traditional farmstead cheese (“farmstead” means a cheese is made from the milk of animals raised on the same farm where the cheese is produced) would be low in fat. However, it was explained to me that the Icelandic word for skim milk is “undanrenna,” literally “running from underneath.” Milk from cows or sheep would be placed into a container and allowed to stand for a day, sometimes on ice (the separation process was dependent on the milk’s temperature; colder milk meant faster and better separation). The next day, the milk was separated from the cream via a bowl with a hole in the bottom, out of which ran the skim milk. Milk separated in this fashion would retain a slightly higher percentage of fat than milk separated by more modern methods, but evidently skyr has been low fat for centuries. This isn’t just a modern fad we’re talking about, after all!”

This, at least, gives some logic for the lower fat. Not all the recipes I found specified a lower fat milk. Because I think of this as a ‘cheese’ of sorts, it confuses me a little to be thinking of low or no fat. I mean something has to turn into curds, right? The milk solids. And I guess I’ve assumed that milk solids are synonymous with milk fats.

Checking my book on cheesemaking, I see that milk is about seven-eighths water, and the rest of it is made up of proteins, minerals, milk sugar (lactose), milk fat, vitamins, and trace elements. Those are the milk solids.
It is casein, the protein part of the milk solid that forms curds. “When milk is converted to cheese, most of the fat remains in the curd, with very little going off in the whey. Homogenizing breaks up the fat globules into very small particles, and then distributes them throughout the milk, so they do not rise the top as cream. It is more difficult to make a cheese from homogenized milk because it forms a curd less firm than one made from whole milk.”

Hmmmm… In today’s world, it’s getting much harder to buy unprocessed milk. And of course, I started this whole adventure in the middle of winter in Ontario, when tracking down accessible sources of anything is difficult. While in summer, I might be interested in hying myself off to a farmer’s market for non-grocery store milk, or down to a local cheese maker for ingredients, in winter I tend to stick close to home.

Anyway, before I bore everyone to tears, let’s recap what’s happened thus far with this whole project.
I had some skyr to use as starter. (Apparently the starter works as the bacterial culture to tell your dairy experiment which flavour-way it wants to go.) I had some recipes. What I didn’t have, at that point, was any rennet. Excitingly, I did now have thermometers, too! New-fangled stuff in my kitchen. Whee!

Anyway, to make a long blog short, here’s the preamble. Next installment is the first round of experimentation.
v

Please Do Not Adjust Your Set...

2008-02-21T09:34:00.002-05:00

Yes, I'm off to a slow start with this one! Sorry.
Perhaps it wouldn't or shouldn't be quite so difficult, and maybe it all just hinges on my perceptions (or possible misconceptions) of what you should write on a "public" blog on a specific topic, and how it should be framed and referenced.

My other blog had no illusions of being literarily or politically or grammatically, (or any of several other 'ally's) correct. It's just thoughts strung together. Stuff about the theatre I'm working with, pictures of critters, mutterings of hobbies.... basic random thoughts.

But here I'm finding that even a random thought feels like it should have a lot more behind it. More research. More basic explanation of what I was trying to accomplish. Some background to the whole experiment. And of course, that slows me down.

I'm sure at some point I'll find a balance, and it will be easier to decide what to post, and how to frame it, and to make it happen. After all, the whole point of this was to find somewhere to jot down some thoughts, let them out before my brain explodes. (Such a messy thing!)
There's no way at all I can wait until I suddenly achieve some kind of intellectual greatness; ain't going to happen, no point in waiting. Godot will get here quicker!

So, as long as you, my unknown, and probably lean, audience are willing to roll with the stylistic punches, we may be almost in business.

v

The Dagda's Cauldron

2008-01-11T14:36:00.000-05:00

Because I'd mostly forgotten the Celtic legend until I was reading a book in this past year, that mentioned the myth...

an excerpt from the prologue of Lyn Hamilton's The Celtic Riddle:
"Now there was a god! An excellent one, by his own description. A giant, with appetite to match. It was the Dagda who had a cauldron in which pigs were cooked. This was no ordinary cauldron, nor ordinary pigs. Was always a pig ready, and the cauldron never empty, no matter how many came to dine. And, to top it all, the cauldron's contents were said to inspire the poet and revive the dead."

And it seemed like the right name for a journal about period food and cooking.

v