My boyfriend and I are talking about doing some reenactment markeds – at some point in the future. We are talking about the possibility of going as spiced wine merchants. In the past I have made a spiced white wine, Lutendranck, which is really tasty. So when I had two liter of red wine sitting around and ran into a recipe for hypocras I of course had to try it.
Last night I made lamb culotte with baked root vegetables (I can not recommend baked turnip) and this kale salad. The rest of the meal wasn’t very historical inspired but the salad was based of one I found in one of my books about medieval cooking. I thought I would share it with you because it turned out to be pretty yummy.
I had brought some kale today while out shopping because I am in kind of a medieval mindset right now. When I came home and looked at what else I was planing for dinner (barley frumentry and a steak), the traditional dish of “grønlangkål” didn’t really make sense. I decided to just google kale and see what came up. Luckly aarstiderne.com had a good recipe for a salad of kale, so I went with that. This is my version of that salad. It tasted great with the beef steak by the way.
As always I was craving sweet this afternoon so I decided to make something sweet after dinner out of the fruit that was sitting around. I had two grumpy pears and a few grumpy apples sitting around as well as some puff pastry in the fridge – which of course meant that I had to do a version of a medieval or early modern pear postej/pie. As fare as I know puff pastry is not really medieval but more of a early modern thing. So lets call it a renaissance pear pie. Yeah that sounds nice. I decided to use a medieval recipe for the filling though. But Denmark was renowned for having old fashioned food tastes, I will call it plausible. Also I really like the taste of powder douce. The renaissance pear pie recipe I was looking at used only ginger and cinnamon though. If I had my postej pastry out of the freezer I would have mead a more medieval pie.
My sister visited my parents’ summer house this week with her new baby and I of course had to come as well. On Tuesday a lot of the family came to visit so we were eight grownups for dinner and a three weeks old baby (who is adorable). I offered to cook for everyone because hey test subjects!
I had had my eyes on trying out more postej1 recipes. After looking in my recipes books and my time frame I set my eyes on a pork and chicken postej2, which is a 1300’s recipe. I also decided to make my game pie as it uses the same crust doughs – and I had made it before and it was good. This time I made it with beef and more grapes which worked really well.
Pebernødder are the perfect Christmas cookie to make with children as they are very easy and the shaping works very well with small grabby hands. I know one of my friends had her two year old “help” when making a batch a few years ago.
The cookies are probably one of the most made Danish Christmas cookies, because they are so easy and because the ones you buy tend to be really borring. I have this recipe from my mother, but I don’t know where she has it from – it could be from her family or from a magazine.
A few years back I learned how to make fresh cheese from buttermilk. It is really quick and easy to make and don’t really require any weird equipment. And it is perfect for larping events. It also has the added benefit of producing whey, which is super handy for baking. Traditionally this cheese is made at home and is called “knapost”.
I have made cock-a-leek twice for events over a campfire. Once it was fantastic and once it turned out watery and really borring. But I think I have figured out why it worked the first time and why it was a fail the second. I do not have a picture because I am really bad at remembering to take pictures of my food at events.
As I have talked about before I am planing a medieval & renaissance inspired larp dinner. I just started testing out recipes. Thursday night I had a friend over who will be part of the event so that was a good chance to test out a few recipes. I made a game postej (or game pie) and a pumpkin puré.