Oatcakes, Redux.

 So. It was Robbie Burn's Day. And while I can be very open-minded about what may constitute a Robbie Burn's Day dinner.... (ie. I'm not committed solely to haggis), I do tend to always think of athol brose.)

 Now even recipes for Athol Brose have many variations. I just looked out a quick one from a cookbook and it says: whiskey, honey, cold water.
 But the one I've done for years has been to take oatmeal and soak it in water, then drain off the water, add honey, whiskey, and cream. (I don't even remember where that version came from, but it's danged tasty.)

 However, it leaves you with some soaked, softened oats..

 On an energetic Robbie Burn's Day, I've taken those softened oats, and made them into a pudding of some sort. Maybe adding fruit, like raspberries. Maybe not... but they've been used then.

 This time I put them aside to use the next day.
 Now I could have just made them into porridge. But I was slow off the mark and it didn't happen. And then, because I'd already been thinking about this blog, I decided to try some more oatcakes. What the heck, why not? [NOTE: it was soaked rolled oats, not steelcut oats.]

So, because I was thinking of oatcakes, and had bacon, I thought about oatcakes fried in bacon grease. And decided on aiming towards savoury flavours, since I often make oatcakes with dried fruit, and a change is a good a a rest. (Don't they say?)

 I had recently purchased some fresh sage, and had some left over, so I finely chopped some green onion, some sage, and crumbled in a small bit of dried dulse. I seasoned it with a small pinch of Breton grey sea salt. (Thank you, Diane.) I added flour to the batter; fortunately the flour I have on hand is an unbleached flour, since my alternate grain flours didn't come with me.At least unbleached wheat flour is a bit less in-your-face modern! (If I'd drained the oatmeal mixture again, it might have required less flour, but of course, I thought of this after the fact!)

 After reaching a workable consistency of the soaked oats and flour, I shaped some oat cakes. I rendered some bacon in a pan. (Not wasted, I ate it!) And cooked the oat cakes in the reserved bacon fat. I also took a second batch of oat cakes, tossed them in the warm pan to absorb any leftover bacon fat, and baked them on a sheet in the oven at 325 F.

 Admittedly, EVERYTHING with bacon is better, but the oatcakes were pretty good! Of course, because it had also crossed my mind I decided to make a quick cheese, a paneer, to go with them.

 At Christmas I'd treated myself to a favourite cheese, Boursin, a cow's milk cheese with pepper, and had wondered to myself if I could make a paneer that reminded me of it. I'd recently made a ricotta/paneer cheese that had left me with some ingredients on hand, so I just replayed that process, and flavoured it with some of the Breton salt and ground black pepper. I'd also decided to make the paneer with lemon juice this time, although I'd been warned it might be less precise. So actually, in the end I used lemon juice MOSTLY, and a bit of vinegar. [If I were doing this at a historic camp, I think I'd use vinegar for a more neutral flavour, though the lemon juice had a nice tang. Just not a Viking Age tang. And actually, to provide the tang I'd hoped for, I might try remaking this with a drained yoghurt cheese....

 But on the whole, the oatcakes were very tasty. (They were cooked in bacon fat, how could they fail to be tasty?) But also strike me as a very do-able bread for a camp. And not completely improbable for a Norse homestead. I think the jump would have to do with the bacon fat. a) is bacon likely? b) if bacon is a probable food item, would it be saved bacon fat, and how would they save it, or would it only be something they made when there was bacon fat?

 But I liked the savoury approach to the oatcakes. Very much. When fresh they were tender. Even better with the cheese. A day later, out of the fridge, they're tough,and dangerous to cut, but warm up to totally pleasant again, though maybe better with some broth to moisten them in. I can see them as a camp-bread! And if we answer the bacon and bacon-fat question, could easily imagine them as a norse food-stuff.

Oatcakes

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!

Cottage Beer

 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.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

(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.

What's for Dinner in Iceland, Part 2

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

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)

(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?

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.

A Different Tack

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

A New Cookbook

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

Feeding Re-Enactors

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?

Historic Food Out-dated?

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.