Thursday, May 11, 2006

A Medieval Camp Kitchen
























The Caer Galen Cook's Guild got together for a lesson in outdoor cooking, presented by Mistress Lijsbet vande Vischereye. We created a meal using period recipes, ingredients and tools, cooking it all over an open fire.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

interesting pics :]

its a cool way of cooking and it looks fun.

are all these pics taken in the countryside? it looks so peaceful.

cya :]

Daisy said...

One of our group lent us her backyard for all this. The fence, trees and bushes made a nice backdrop for the activity.

STAG said...

Looks like fun, and a LOT of work.
Clearly the most dangerous thing the SCA does is not hitting people with rattan, but rather, cooking! This prosaic activity is really very complex, and difficult to do safely, and STILL be able to follow medieval recipes.
I find it VERY encouraging that the teaching chef d'cuisine inserted skewers through the breast meat of the chickens to help them to cook faster and more evenly. And refused to stuff them. This person knows what she is doing! I would eat at her table any time.
The use of plain iron skewers and spits is acceptable, though I make and prefer stainless steel ones for the purpose. Plain iron is a material which needs to be "seasoned" by rubbing it with smoking hot oil to ensure there are no bacteria living in the bottom of microscopic rust pits. (or laying in the coals before it is brought into service...same diff. Stainless merely needs to be washed before use. Otherwise, the set up seems to be a remarkably well made bit of blacksmithing.

Daisy said...

Thank you for the interesting info! Spitting the chickens was quite difficult. Period illustrations seem to show chickens with one spit and several skewers. This doesn't work in practice as the chickens aren't fastened tightly enough to turn when the spit is turned. Using two spits and skewering between them solved the problem, though we aren't sure it's strictly period.

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