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stitchwhich) wrote2013-04-23 04:02 am
stitchwhich) wrote2013-04-23 04:02 am
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I'll probably write more about his weekend later but I'm wading through five days of email messages and this is just a quick break. Brought to you by a recent message from one of the guys who was a guest in our living history demo area and who went home with a recipe I gave him for a snack I'd brought to feed the group (I was the cook for the group this time. As pretty much normal.)
So... one of our guest groups told us that they had a guy who only had a Norman kit. We changed our timeline to the early 11th century in order to allow for a Norman to be interacting with Viking Norse. And we set it at a "thynge" in the Isle of Mann, just in case we had any other suprises from either of our two guest groups. In honor of our Norman, I made a little snack from a recipe found in a book I had not actually recorded (Drat. Darn. And I need to remember to go through the various source books and find that stupid provenance). All I had at the top of my entry was "from the Norman section", which leads me to think that it may be in Jaqui Wood's latest book. Wait. I couldn't stand it and I went looking. Yes, It is on page 36 of her "Tasting the Past" book. And I made an error with it as the recipe is supposed to be dated post-Crusade, which takes it out of our era by 40 years.
Anyway.
Everyone who ate it loved it. Except for me, actually. And I ended up sharing the recipe with five people during the event, including one visitor who snuck a bite of it while we conspicuously looked in the other direction, who fished for a piece of paper and a pen to get me to write it down for her. Another woman, a very sweet 18th century reenactor who came to us twice to share her shortbread (yum) did the same... over the last few hours the wonder of its popularity and the rather constant raves about it keep surfacing in my mind.
Take equal parts almonds, pistachios, and (one half) dates. Crush them separately then combine the just-larger-than-meal results. Cut in the same amount of butter as you had of chopped dates, then add enough breadcrumbs to gain a stiff dough. Shape the dough into small balls and if you wish, roll those balls through a bit of fine sugar. Ta-da! Very Expensive (for the times) Norman "powerballs".* Conjectural recipe only, of course.
And apparently very, very popular. I promised the Austlandr that I'd bring it back next year - now what am I going to do, knowing that it was based on later-period wartimes?
*And even more weird for me was that I mis-read the recipe, which had a rather large amount of breadcrumbs in the list of ingredients, and combined everything, including all those crumbs, before adding in the butter. Which was in no way sufficient to bind everything. Neither was doubling the amount of butter, which led to me cussing a moment and folding in two eggs then dumping the whole mess into a shallow baking pan and baking at 325 degrees for 20 minutes until it was just starting to separate from the sides of the pan. It was still moist enough two days later to be chewy but not too sticky. We just cut it into little 'cakes' sort of like Rice Crispy Treats and served it up.
So... one of our guest groups told us that they had a guy who only had a Norman kit. We changed our timeline to the early 11th century in order to allow for a Norman to be interacting with Viking Norse. And we set it at a "thynge" in the Isle of Mann, just in case we had any other suprises from either of our two guest groups. In honor of our Norman, I made a little snack from a recipe found in a book I had not actually recorded (Drat. Darn. And I need to remember to go through the various source books and find that stupid provenance). All I had at the top of my entry was "from the Norman section", which leads me to think that it may be in Jaqui Wood's latest book. Wait. I couldn't stand it and I went looking. Yes, It is on page 36 of her "Tasting the Past" book. And I made an error with it as the recipe is supposed to be dated post-Crusade, which takes it out of our era by 40 years.
Anyway.
Everyone who ate it loved it. Except for me, actually. And I ended up sharing the recipe with five people during the event, including one visitor who snuck a bite of it while we conspicuously looked in the other direction, who fished for a piece of paper and a pen to get me to write it down for her. Another woman, a very sweet 18th century reenactor who came to us twice to share her shortbread (yum) did the same... over the last few hours the wonder of its popularity and the rather constant raves about it keep surfacing in my mind.
Take equal parts almonds, pistachios, and (one half) dates. Crush them separately then combine the just-larger-than-meal results. Cut in the same amount of butter as you had of chopped dates, then add enough breadcrumbs to gain a stiff dough. Shape the dough into small balls and if you wish, roll those balls through a bit of fine sugar. Ta-da! Very Expensive (for the times) Norman "powerballs".* Conjectural recipe only, of course.
And apparently very, very popular. I promised the Austlandr that I'd bring it back next year - now what am I going to do, knowing that it was based on later-period wartimes?
*And even more weird for me was that I mis-read the recipe, which had a rather large amount of breadcrumbs in the list of ingredients, and combined everything, including all those crumbs, before adding in the butter. Which was in no way sufficient to bind everything. Neither was doubling the amount of butter, which led to me cussing a moment and folding in two eggs then dumping the whole mess into a shallow baking pan and baking at 325 degrees for 20 minutes until it was just starting to separate from the sides of the pan. It was still moist enough two days later to be chewy but not too sticky. We just cut it into little 'cakes' sort of like Rice Crispy Treats and served it up.