Butterbeer!

Butterbeer!

So, here's how it is.

I have a friend.  We'll call her Stormcrow.  Stormcrow is, despite the gloomy name, one of the most positive people I've met.  She's always in a good mood, or if she isn't, she fakes it so well that I can't tell.  Stormcrow was competing in the contest I won and submitted this delicious drink.  To be honest, I think I liked it better than I liked any single item on my plate (and I tend to cook things I think are awesome).  So, naturally, I asked her for the recipe and made up a batch of my own.  And even more naturally, my kitty had to come jump into the picture.

Butterbeer comes to us from the Harry Potter universe.  Along with pumpkin juice, it is one of the most commonly-mentioned comestibles in the books.  It is served to children, so the alcohol content must be low-to-negligible, and yet at one point a house elf is completely sauced on the stuff.

Historical Accuracy:  This is one of those weird things.  I've had conversations with several people about how "period" Harry Potter is.  The stuff I cook for tends to draw from a wide variety of fantasy settings, but HP is clearly "modern."  That said, Hogwarts apparently existed for hundreds of years, and so therefore butterbeer is likely nothing particularly "new."  I'll call it a 6/10 for being "fantasy."

How's It Taste?  This is basically a lightly-alcoholic (I added this from Stormcrow's recipe) butterscotch-flavored hot chocolate.  It is rich and creamy and fills you up in a hurry.  Yum.

Difficulty:  You need a candy thermometer to do this.  Aside from that, it's not tough at all.  4/10 at the most.

Ingredients:

1 cup dark brown sugar
2 tbsp. water
6 tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup heavy cream, divided
2 shots dark rum
48 ounces vanilla cream soda

In a saucepan, combine the brown sugar and water.  Heat, stirring, until the candy thermometer says 240F.  Remove from the heat and mix in the butter, salt, vinegar, and 1/4 cup of the cream.  Allow to cool, then add the rum and remaining cream.  Warm up the cream soda.

To serve, fill a glass halfway with the cream mixture and then top with the cream soda.

Food Fight Feast!

Food Fight Feast!

Okay, guys, this is going to be a LONG post.  Bear with me here and we'll get through it!

One of my local LARP groups is participating in a fundraising project for local food banks.  As part of this, I prepared a little feast for the fighters and players.  This feast was also my entry into our monthly Arts and Sciences contest.  I won with an average score of nearly 4.6!

People seemed to really like this meal.  It used some past recipes and some new ones and came out pretty darned well.  I mad thirty pounds of chicken, tons of salad, etc., and only came home with a little bit of salad.  So, here's what was on the menu:

Chicken Quarters with Mead Sauce

Cabbage Salad with Berries and Pears

Honey-Roasted Beets

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

Blackberry and Blueberry Akutaq

Berry-Basil Lemonade

I would like to throw out a shout-out to my friend Karazelle for helping me with the planning.  She's an amazing person!

Chicken Quarters with Mead Sauce

These were good.  I adapted the recipe from Jesper Lynge.

Historical Accuracy:  You know, this is one of those things where my source claims it is accurate, but I honestly disagree.  I would give this a 3/10 for "feel."  It uses plausible ingredients, but even the original recipe didn't seem like anything I had ever read in my limited studies.  If I am incorrect, please, let me know!

How's It Taste?  To quote one of the least-popular Spider-Man films, "So good."  The chicken is simple, but the sauce is so hearty and delicious and umami.

Difficulty:  You can reduce, right?  5/10.

Recipe:

4 chicken quarters

1 cup mushrooms

1/2 cup chopped bacon

1 stick butter

2 cups heavy cream

3 cups mead

salt and pepper to taste

Brown the chicken in half of the butter.  Transfer the chicken to the oven and bake at 400 for 40 minutes or until cooked through.  Saute the mushrooms and bacon in the pan with the chicken drippings, then deglaze with the mead.  Reduce by 1/2, then add the cream and reduce by 1/2 again. Season to taste.  Serve the chicken in the pan with the sauce.

Cabbage Salad with Berries and Pears

Another Jesper Lynge recipe that I adapted.  I needed more vinegar in my recipe, but people still liked it quite a bit!

Historical Accuracy:  This is a lot more accurate, in my opinion, as I have seen similar salads on several "period" websites.  Call it 5/10.

How's It Taste?  It's a simple salad with delicious and surprising fruit.  I'm quite fond of it.  Plus, for a feast, it is so easy and cheap and can bulk up the offering quickly.

Difficulty:  Pfft.  This isn't tough at all.  2/10 just because you have to fry some onions.

Ingredients:

2 cups green cabbage, chopped

1 cup red cabbage, chopped

1/2 cup blueberries

1/2 cup blackberries

1 pear, sliced

2 tbsp. chopped parsley

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, or more to taste

3 green onions, chopped into thirds

Fry the green onions in a little canola oil.  Pat dry.  Toss all ingredients together and dress with the vinegar.  Serve.  Yum.

Honey-Roasted Beets

I'm not a big fan of beets, but these were a huge hit.  I had people who initially were freaked out by beets come back for seconds.  And these are so darned easy to make!  Another recipe adapted from Jesper Lynge.

Historical Accuracy:  Period ingredients, period preparation.  Give it a 6/10.

How's it Taste?  Yum!  The honey and butter on the beets wind up giving you something that's like a dark purple carrot/sweet potato hybrid.  It's good.

Difficulty:  1/10, if that.  Seriously.  The hardest part is finding fresh beets!

Recipe:

2.5 lbs beets, peeled and halved

1 cup honey

1 cup butter

Melt the butter in a pan and mix in the honey.  Toss the beets in the mixture and then bake for 30-45 minutes at 350 or until nice and tender.  Serve warm.

Blackberry and Blueberry Akutaq

Akutaq is also known as Eskimo ice cream.  It's seriously delicious, but oh so bad for you. Traditionally, it was made with various animal fats, berries, and dried fish.  Nowadays, people substitute solid vegetable shortening, skip the fish, and add sugar.  This was a BIG hit at the feast.  I made a ridiculous amount and brought back nothing.

Historical Accuracy:  Modern take on a period (if American) recipe.  Give it a 3/10 for using modern ingredients and being made for modern taste buds.

How's It Taste?  This is basically frozen whipped cream with fruit thrown in.  If that doesn't sound good, you haven't been paying attention.

Difficulty:  Not terrible, although it uses a few techniques and a couple of pieces of equipment.  Call it 3/10.

Ingredients:

1 cup solid vegetable shortening (Crisco)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup berry juice (I used the billberry soup from HEB)

2 cups frozen blueberries

2 cups frozen blackberries

Cream the sugar and shortening together.  Whip it until it's light and fluffy and rather like whipped cream.  Mix in the berry juice, then fold in the frozen berries.  Freeze to allow to set up, then serve.

Berry-Basil Lemonade

Okay, a little bit of a concession here:  nothing about this is period.  It uses fruits from both America and Europe/the Mid-East, plus sugar.  However, lemonade and tea are a common staple of feasts around here, and I wanted to make a little spin on it to provide some variety.  Plus, I had extra berries left over and the akutaq was rather "full."

Note:  This recipe is for 1 "pitcher" of lemonade.  I think my pitcher is 1.5-2 gallons, but I honestly don't remember.  Feel free to adjust to taste, of course!

Historical Accuracy:  It's a recipe made by me with no research whatsoever.  0/10.  I fail!

How's It Taste?  This is a refreshing and somewhat surprising drink.  The basil adds a nice little underflavor, which the berries and lemons provide a sweet, refreshing beverage.

Difficulty:  You have to made a flavored simple syrup, zest and juice some lemons, 2/10 at most. Cooking is easy, guys.

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup honey

3 cups water

10 lemons, zested

1/2 cup blueberries

1/2 cup blackberries

1 tbsp basil

Cold water to fill pitcher

In a pot, combine the sugar, water, and honey.  Heat until all ingredients are dissolved.  Add the lemon zest, berries, and basil and allow to steep under low-medium heat for 10 minutes.  Strain the syrup into the pitcher, then add the juice of the lemons and fill the pitcher with water.

Jamaica Cheesecake!

Jamaica Cheesecake!

No recipe this time--this is a quickie post.  If you remember, I made a recipe for cream cheese.  This was just an experiment to see how it would work in a non-period application.  Turns out, it's a lot more "grainy" than commercial cream cheese, but it's still darned tasty!

Always experiment! 

Gravlax!

Gravlax!

Gravlax is a cured raw salmon dish VERY popular in Scandinavia.  The word itself translates to "buried salmon," which is appropriate because it was originally made by fishermen who would bury salmon filets above the high-tide line.  Nowadays, no digging is required, thankfully.

Historical Accuracy:  This is a more modern take on a traditional dish.  Give it a 5/10, I suppose.

How's It Taste?  If you like smoked salmon, this is somewhat similar.  It's quite enjoyable, in my opinion, and a high-protein, healthy snack.  The steward sauce is likewise quite good.

Recipe:

1 salmon filet

4 tbsp brown sugar

4 tbsp kosher salt

TONS of dill.  Seriously.

You're going to make a fish sandwich here.  Cut the filet in half.  Get a pan and put one half-filet in it, skin-side down.  Rub the flesh with salt and sugar.  Add in TONS of dill.  No, more dill.  There is no such thing as too much dill in gravlax,  Rub the other half-filet in sugar and salt and place it on top of everything.  Cover the pan with foil or plastic wrap and place weight on the fish.  Refrigerate, turning each day and covering the fish with the collected brine, for four days, then serve with Steward Sauce (see below).

Steward Sauce:

5 tablespoons mustard

2 tablespoons white vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons finely-chopped dill

Combine all ingredients until mixed well.

Pemmican!

Pemmican!

Look at that picture!  Campsite cooking at its best!

Pemmican is an ancient Native American meal.  Made with dried meat, rendered fat, and various dried berries and such, pemmican is an extremely energy-dense meal.  There was actually a war fought over pemmican.  I entered a pemmican dish in a recent Arts and Sciences contest and came in first place in the Food and Beverages category with an average score of 4.1/5.  And here's the recipe!

Historical Accuracy:  Pemmican was traditionally made out of a variety of meat.  Due to cost constraints, I used beef.  Aside from that, this is an accurate wedding pemmican dish.  Call it 8/10 for accuracy, or 10/10 should you source venison, moose, elk, etc.  Please note:  Pemmican is Native American and thus not "period" for a European feast.  That said, it is period, albeit just in an odd location.

How's It Taste?  Apparently good enough to win a cooking contest!  Pemmican tastes like beef jerky mixed with fat, with just a little bit of sweetness added.  It's definitely not something you want to eat in large quantities--along with everything else, it's way too energy-dense.  But when fried up with onions and potatoes (see below), it's darned tasty.

Difficulty:  Difficult here is a function of equipment.  If you have a food dehydrator and food processor, it's ridiculously easy.  Without, things get a little tricky, but you're still looking at (at most) a 4/10.

Recipe:

1,75 pounds lean beef

1 pound beef fat

1 pound blueberries

4 ounces dried cranberries

4 tbsp. honey

salt and pepper to taste

To start off, we're going to dry everything.  Slice the beef thin.  Like super-thin.  Season it heavily with salt and pepper, then transfer it and the berries to the food dehydrator.  Should you not have one, you can dry the ingredients in an oven set to 150-200 with the lid slightly open.  Dry the meat and berries until they are crispy and extremely dry.  Render the fat--basically, heat it on low until you get a nice, clear liquid, then filter it through cheesecloth or a paper towel or similar to remove solids.

Place the beef and berries in a food processor and powder everything.  Transfer this into a bowl and add the rendered fat a bit at a time until you have a dense, wet pulp.  Add the honey, a little more salt and pepper, and place into a pan.  Cut into bars and wrap in waxed paper.  Kept dry, pemmican will last for 2-3 years.  Seriously.

Fried Pemmican with Onions and Potatoes (Rechaud)

Here's how I served the pemmican.  Unfortunately, I don't have a decent picture of it.  Maybe later!

Take a large handful of the pemmican and fry in a pan in its own fat.  Treat it like you're browning ground beef.  It will smell like burning as the honey caramelizes.  Throw in about 1/2 of a large white onion (chopped) and 1/2 pound of boiled baby yellow potatoes (quartered).  Mix everything and cook until the onions are slightly caramelized.  Serve hot.

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