Medieval hand pies with three types of filling. Each pie can be cut into four pieces and shared. I have included three ideas for filling but you can vary it to your heart’s desire. They are the perfect lunch food for a busy event and can be made well beforehand. They are quite sturdy and keep well. They taste best reheated either in the oven or over the campfire, but they can be eaten cold.
This weekend we attended our first ever medieval market as part of the reenactors of the event, rather than as part of the public. We sold our spiced wine (lutendranck & hypocras) in our stall, that was a part of a larger camp, which we shared with a friend and his family. It was a bit crowded but it was fun and we had a great time. We sold most of our wine, so we were very happy about that.
One of my favourite salads is one based on boiled pearl barley. I love pearl barley salad, because it is filling, fresh and easy to make. I often serve it instead of pasta or potatoes and people generally seem pretty happy with that. More often than not, we have it with fish or a steak on the side but sometimes I serve it with some fried goats cheese on top instead of meat on the side. I do quite a few variations on this salad, but the boiled barley is at the core of each variation.
One of my favourite salads is one based on boiled pearl barley. I love it because it is filling, fresh and easy to make. I often serve it instead of pasta or potatoes and people generally seem pretty happy with that. More often than not we have fish or a steak on the side but sometimes I serve it with some fried goats cheese on top instead of meat on the side. I do quite a few variations on this salad, but the boiled barley is at the core of each variation.
Maumenee is a kind of sweet wine stew with game meat, dates and nuts. It is a lot tastier than that sound. It works really well as a sauce for other game dishes.
I think it can be made with any game meat. We used rook, the original recipe calls for chicken or hare.
The original recipe from 1390 from Forme of Cury1
Mawmenee. Take a potell of wyne greke and ii poude of sugur; take and clarfye the sugur with a quantite of wyne & drawe it thurgh a strynour in to a pot of erhe. Take pynes with date and frye hem a litell in grece oþer in oyle and cast hem togydre. Take clowes & flour of canel hool and cast þerto. Take powdour gynger, canel, clowes, colour it with saundres a lytel yf hit be nede. Cast salt þerto, and lat it seeþ warly with a slowe fyre and not to thyk. Take brawn of capouns ysteysed oþer of feauntes teysed small and cast þerto.
I will recommend using less sugar than the recipe calls for. I will post an updated recipe once I have tested it. We used powdour fort in addition to the spices listed – because we like it. But this is the recipe as it is in Middelaldermad, I added our variations in parentheses. I would also recommend making a half portion unless you are cooking for a lot of people as the portion is really big.
You can find other versions of the recipe @medievalcookery.com
Source: The original recipe from 1390 from Forme of Cury. Form of Cure, originally from Curye in Inglysch, edited by C. B. Hieatt and S. Butler, London 1985). From Middelaldermad by Bi Skaarup & Henrik Jacobsen. There are many other transcriptions of this recipe, but this is the one I used.
You can find other versions of the recipe @medievalcookery.com
On the blog I have talked about medieval spiced wine before. My boyfriend and I have decided that we want to start going to medieval reenactment markeds as spice wine merchants. To do this we of course had to get the clothing and gear, more about that in another post. We are going to our first marked in little under two weeks.
For the last month I have done experiments to source the best (cheap) wine to use for the spiced wines.
For the midwinter feast I couldn’t find period recipe for carrots, that didn’t involve mashing them, as we already had one purée on the table. I decided that I didn’t want a second one, so I found a modern recipe for carrots steamed in lemon juice with fresh theme.
I don’t really like cooked carrots all that much, but I liked these steamed carrots. They were gone by the time we removed the dishes of the second course, so I can’t have been alone in like them. It is a very simple dish, that is quick to make and quite tasty.
This is a super simple recipe for lemon steamed carrots, that we cooked for the medieval inspired larp event this winter.
Source: Smag på maden
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.
This is the new and improved and thoroughly tested version of lutendranck. The recipe is based on a recipe from a original German cookbook by Anna Wecker from 1598 (from the Danish edition).