Menu Suggestion

I just remembered that I promised to cook the feast for the Cudgel War, and that the deadline for the menu is the 30th.

I thought something simple in three courses (let's face it, the kitchen is designed for serving coffee and cookies for 20 people, provided you bring the cookies), loadsa fish and a selection of sauces.

And before I go into detail, a thing I must get off my chest. I swear that if I hear one more time "plenty of meat" as an answer to my question of what people would like to eat that's exactly what you'll get. I mean, thank you for summing up five hundred years worth of culinary history into an Errol Flynn movie. After planning carefully the tournaments and the general theme of the event, wouldn't it be nice to have a feast to follow? We aren't talking about just food here, but an essential part of people's every day life which has reflected the society itself, attitude towards religion, means to separate holidays and special occasions from ordinary days, means to show one's status in the social hierarchy and so forth. I don't expect everyone to become experts in telling how important a person is just by looking at the type of bread he's eating (goodness knows I know next to nothing about medieval food, at least that's the feeling I get whenever I open another book on the subject), but a little thought here would be appreciated.

It'd make my job easier, anyway, if I didn't have to start planning from the very beginning...

But back to business. The usual disclaimer follows: This is just the first draft, there'll be some changes as I get the list of people's allergies, info on how much money can spend and as I get more ideas.

First course:

Jellied pike
Herb, cheese and mushroom pies
Deep-fried cheese
Onion-pea soup

I realize that it's July, so it's not actually mushroom season yet, but there might still be some preserves left from the winter (like I wasn't going to use fresh mushrooms, but hey.. ;) ). Most of the dishes are served cold - there's only one crappy oven at the site - but it goes with the recommended order of dishes. Light, moderately seasoned dishes will open the stomach and prepare it for the hard-core eating.

Second course:

Barbecued perch
Stuffed salmon
Mutton
Chicken stuffed with whole oranges and lemons
Sauces - probably green ginger sauce, garlic sauce, maybe some version of cameline sauce as well

Still a lot of fish. It is July, like I said before, and the site is by a lake, so fish would have been the main ingredient anyway. Besides, the only animals worth slaughtering would have been chickens and sheep - says the city girl. I admit my lack of knowledge in the agricultural issues, but my reasoning goes that the calves born would still be too small to butcher, the cows and oxen that survived winter would still be used as workforce. There'd be pigs, of course, but I'm bored with cooking pork. Adult sheep would still be growing wool, so that leaves lambs and hens who'd quit laying eggs. The large-scale slaughterings have always taken place in the September/October when the animals would be big enough to be worth the trouble and there'd be no more need for them as working animals - there's also the winter coming up and only a few select animals would be left alive, there was no possible way of feeding a large number of cattle through it.

I have some creative ideas about the decoration of the stuffed salmon (or pike-perch, haven't decided yet) which I must try some time. I'm planning on cooking the mutton in the ground under a fire (rosvopaisti in Finnish, have no idea what that'd be in English. Poacher's roast?) or buying it cooked and serving it cold.

Also, all the vegetarian dishes and the side dishes are still missing.

Third course:

This course is under construction. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Any commets? Requests?



As for Real Life (tm), I'm in pain. The sudden interest in jogging has left my poor body aching all over but on a some strange, almost perverted, level I enjoy it immensely. Go figure. Just put some Sepultura, Megaherz and Rammstein on my loyal companion, the mp3-player, and watch me go (Ok, ok, I'm in no great shape so it's been walk a little, run a little, walk some more, then run again but you know what they say about baby steps. I'm still proud of myself).

Current soundtrack: Sleep by KMFDM and Herrin des Feuers by Subway to Sally.