Midwinter Feast – a larp event

Midvinterfesten

This weekend I hosted a larp event themed as a medieval (inspired) midwinter feast. Most of the food served was medieval or renaissance inspired. I thought I would gather the recipes together here and show a few pictures.

The event went extremely well both as a larp event and as a dinner. Everyone loved the food, though some of course didn’t like everything. The roleplay was the type we were hoping for, we had no battles or combat at all but rather a lot of character development and political maneuvering. I really couldn’t be happier with how it played out.

Preparations and process

Because quite a lot of food need to be cooked and baked, I started out making quite a few list. We went grocery shopping, with a huge shopping list, Wednesday. I also baked the tree clover cakes that evening.
Thursday I made the dough for the pies during the afternoon and in the evening a friend came over and we baked all the pies.
Friday I cooked the pumpkin puree, boiled the sausage and prepped the kale so it was ready to be cooked Saturday.
On the day of the event another friend helped in the kitchen (and doing the dishes – hallelujah!) and we cooked the pork, sausage, roasted the lamb, cooked the porridge and kale before the first serving. We also heated the red cabbage salat. As soon as the game was under way, he toke over in the kitchen and kept an eye on everything. After the first serving we used the break between courses to cook the peas and the carrots as well as heating the pumpkin puree and the pies. We also served the spiced wine with the second course. For the last course everything just had to be put into serving dishes.

Menu

We of course had bread, butter, mustard and gherkins on the side throughout the dinner. We also served Lutendranck and Hypocras with the second course. I have put a * next to the dishes we had brought finished. I link to the posts about the dishes here and you can find the recipes bellow. 

First course

Barley porridge

Sausage

Creamed kale (Grønlangkål)

Pickled herring*

Roasted pork/bacon

Red cabbage salat*

Second course

A leg of a lamb with garlic

Beef and grape pie

Pear and apple pie

Pork and chicken pie

Veal pie

Spiced and steamed peas

Spiced Carrots

Pumpkin puree

Buckberry jam*

Third course

Cheese

Nuts

Dried fruit

Pears and apples

Three Clover Cakes

The dishes

Sadly I mostly forgot to take pictures. Everyone found something to like and everyone ate their full. A few people complained that there was cinnamon in everything, meaning the pies and there were a few people that didn’t like the dried fruit in the pies either. But you can never please everyone and not everyone are open to new taste experiences, and it is pretty different from our regular Scandinavian way of eating meat. However much of the other dishes look pretty familiar to Christmas dishes, such as the herring, kale and sausage. Not every dish was cooked from a medieval recipe, but most did have a historical source.

Planing the event required a lot of lists

The plan I brought with me to the site

The finished meat pies/postej

The veal pie

The apple and pear pie

The beef and grapes pie

The pork and chicken pie

Baking of three clover cakes

The original recipe from the 1980’s cookbook. The smaller size of the finished cakes means that I dropped the date decorations as it became to fiddly to work with.

The first course underway

The first course underway

The first course underway

The third course layed out just before it was served.