Wafers – Part 2

So two years ago, Richard made us a beautiful wafer iron and we tried to make it work. Wafer Part 1

This year, Baron Drake Morgan was running a wafer class and so Louise, Richard and I all trooped off to the St Florian campsite at Rowany Festival to get some new tips about making wafers.

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Garlic Tart Redaction – Libro di cucina/ Libro per cuoco

CV Garlic tart
Take garlic cloves, peel and boil them.  When they are cooked put them to soak in cold water and then grind them and add saffron, enough fresh cheese, beaten lard, sweet and strong spices and temper the mixture with eggs, add raisins and then make the tart.

 

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Sambocade – Form of Curye

A favourite of Company of the Staple’s Sambocade makes a delicious dessert. Effectively, it’s an elderflower cheese cake.

 

Original recipe from Forme of Cury

Sambocade. Take and make a crust in a trap and take cruddes and wryng out the wheyze and drawe hem thurgh a straynour and put hit in the crust. Do thereto sugar the thridde part, and somnodel Whyte of aren and shake therein blooms of Ellen and bake it up with euros and Messe it forth.

My translation: Take and make some pastry and put in in a trap [open pie case] and take [cheese] curds and wring out the whey and draw it through a strainer and put it in the pastry. Mix Sugar and egg whites and shake fresh blooms of elderflower in top, bake it with rosewater and serve it forth.

 

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14th Century Curfew

Medieval curfews, also known as “couvre-feu”  or fire covers, are ceramic or iron covers used to keep the embers of the fire overnight. They are an example of how doing things the medieval way is easier than trying to adapt modern ways to this lifestyle.

The current convention, and a requirement of many sites, is to put the fire out each night ,and then restart the fire each morning.

This causes a lot of additional work, particularly if water is used to put the fire out each night, as new kindling and tinder must be used to build up the fire to the ember stage.

Using a curfew to keep embers overnight, allows the initial work to be skipped, and the fire can be built back into a proper cooking fire quite quickly. It also takes less skill and know-how to get a fire going again when there are embers as a starting point, compared to starting completely from scratch.

 

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Mistakes were made

We talk a lot about the dishes that went right, where we tried them out and people say nice things about them and ask for the recipe.

And then people say “oh no I couldn’t do it, I don’t know how to cook”. Well, I didn’t know how to cook before I started cooking for medieval events. I’ll do a blog article about how to go from being unable to boil eggs to cooking on a campfire for 100 people another time. But today I want to talk about the three biggest mistakes I’ve made when trying to make a medieval dish.

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