This week was a little on the crazy side. We got a lot done with the garden harvest and winterizing and then had a good potluck to round out the week!

Isabeau has a bunged arm. Hoping for quick healing there and that it’s *not* broken.

Mugging sisters

This coming week has all meetings at the normal times.

  • Herb Bunch – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 11am-1pm
  • Sewing Time – At Ancient Light, Saturdays, 3-5pm
  • Project Day – At Ancient Light, Sundays, Noon to 6pm
  • Next Potluck – 11/18, 12/16
  • Winter Feast Date is 2/17/19

Here is the direct Portfolio link which has all the past Project Day reports and various projects, original here:  https://housecapuchin.wordpress.com/portfolio/  and new one here:  https://housecapuchin2.wordpress.com/portfolio/ and number three is here: https://housecapuchin3.wordpress.com/portfolio/

Early Week 

Sunday night, right after the report went out, the cheese finally curdled! That meant that Loren had to scramble to get the molds drilled and Anja needed to sit with the cheese to make sure that it was going to be ok.

=On Monday the cheese got finished after a snafu with the brine and was left to cool and drain. On Wednesday the next batch finally curdled

and got finished on Friday.

On Thursday another was started with the unripe figs and it didn’t quite work, so it got some rennet added and finished on Friday.

From Facebook on 10/14/18

Mea Passavanti – Dad has a saying about what we call peers… kitchen help. Last night after a long and lovely feast, the dish washer broke. I walked into the kitchen to see what help to give and nope… It was more than handled… By his Highness, Sir Einar, Sir Brand, Master Charles, Master Armand, Duchess Zanobia, Mistress Elanor … And that was just at glance. 💗#mysca

Kasilda Kubasek – The SCA I remember and love

Amy Rich – cleaning up yesterdays coronation…. 70% old Peers…

Amy Carpenter – When I was a newbie in Caid, I heard this:
”What do you call the last person out of the kitchen after the feast?”
”Your Excellency!”

Another SCA story

Cookery

Sauce Bob – a better version: 2 sticks butter, 2 bunches spring onions, 1/4 cup dry mustard, 1/4 cup black mustard seed, NO RICE FlOUR!

Sauce Bob, or a trial run, was part of Loren and Anja’s supper on Sunday and then again on Friday.

Sauce Bob is what the Stromgard culinary group called it to be funny. It’s actually a recipe from Le Viandier de Tallivent.

  1. Barbe Robert [Sauce]. (aka Taillemaslee) – Take small onions fried in lard (or butter according to the day), verjuice, vinegar, mustard, Small Spices and salt. Boil everything together. (A 1583 cookbook quoted by Pichon et al., p. 109.)

So we used:

  • 2 stick butter (1/2 pound)
  • 6 spring onions (rinsed with dry or slimy parts cut off)
  • 1 small shallot (this was ‘coz we had it)
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp pickled caper buds
  • 3 Tbsp mustard
  • 1/4 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 Tbsp rice flour.

Method

  1. Melt the butter in a frypan on high.
  2. Cut the onions and toss them into the butter. (We cut the shallot and added it likewise because it needed to be used up, otherwise use 10 spring onions)
  3. Cook until fragrant. (just a few minutes on high)
  4. Turn the heat to low.
  5. Add the mustard powder and stir it in, well.
  6. Add the capers, vinegar and salt.
  7. Stir well.
  8. Add rice flour and stir until it cooks. (This was because there seemed more grease than it should have from the butter)
  9. Cook on low until flavors blend.
  10. Makes about 1 cup of sauce.

Note – Next time we’ll start with 1 stick of butter and only add it if it looks to be needed, which would make 1/2 cup and some change of the sauce. The capers were saltier than we realized, too, so might cut down to 1/2 tsp of salt. The sauce set up, too, after it sat for a bit… so maybe 2 Tbsp of the rice flour?

Sunday’s version

  • 2 sticks butter
  • 2 bunches of spring onions (about 25 small ones!)
  • 1 tablespoon capers
  • 1/4 cup caper juice
  • 1/4 cup dry mustard
  • 1/4 cup black mustard seed, crushed

No salt, no flour, no vinegar needed!

Moar Cookery – Cheeses – Fig sap rennet

This was started Saturday evening. By Sunday morning there was only a little touch of thickening, so Anja barked a 2nd twig (total of about 22 inches) and added it. It suddenly curdled at about 7pm! It was a soft curd again, but not quite as bubbly or wet as last time. We added garlic and onion powder and dill weed. By 10:30 it was in the molds and being pressed. By 11, one of the bottoms was done and in the mold and the cheese flipped. They sat in the fridge overnight, then were unmolded and brined in the morning. We used 6 cups water, 1/2 cup salt for the brine.

…and people on one of the cheese fora were kinda weirded out by brining in a cloth, so I didn’t. 🙂 …well, the cheeses started to fall apart! So, they got scooped up, put back into the molds and listened to me cuss…. So, they started brining at 11:20 and were put back into the molds at 11:40 and left until 12:40. Once they were pulled out they were put in “drain boxes” (made for veggies) and set in the fridge.

On Tuesday (10/17) some of the cheese got tasted. It *wasn’t* bitter, or if it was, the brining ameliorated the bitterness. It was incredibly salty, but I’m putting that to the explosion in the brine and putting it back into the molds. It was very dry, even though it molded well, almost crumbly, and some did crumble as it was cut. One of the two was wrapped in pickled grape leaf and left for Sunday.

Loren went out and got another gallon of milk, figuring to actually see how long the curdling takes with the smaller amount of fig twig. That batch was started at 11pm. At 11am you could just barely see that something was happening. At 3pm it got stirred well. and again at 7pm and 10pm and it still wasn’t curdling. It didn’t curdle and didn’t curdle and didn’t curdle even after 24 hours, so it got another batch of twigs in at 2am, Wednesday morning.

At 8am, still not much curdling, but you could see something was happening and then at 5pm it finally was turning to curds all through. Phew! It got cooked that evening, and Anja re-cooked the whey for recocta (ricotta), but didn’t get brined until Friday.

Thursday evening we started another gallon of milk with the unripe figs. The milk was brought to 110 or so, the figs chopped, and added and the pot left under towels overnight.

Friday – It’s possible that the Thursday cheese might have curdled if heated (didn’t think of it in time), but we added rennet and then it really did. The odd part was that there were two layers of curd. One was the usually foamy stuff that the figs produce (that floats), the other was the standard rennet (that sinks) that cut. If you look carefully at the pic of the curd, you can see the cut ones in the center. Anja cooked it by the schiz recipe and molded it for that purpose. …and then the Tuesday brined cheeses exploded out of the molds. There’s got to be a trick for that… but the 3rd cheese of the 2nd batch got *cold* brined. We’ll see if that works. So there are two over-brined cheeses (one of which is grape-leaf-wrapped, plus 4 schiz (which didn’t fit in the boxes either….) We quit at midnight with everything done and fridged and us, really frustrated.

Sunday – The tasting

One person loved the fresca and four liked it. Two loved the cold-brined ricotta/regular one and two liked it. 3 enjoyed the leaf-wrapped one and the others got tasted and pronounced, “ok”

Fig rennet cheeses – Clockwise from left: overbrined dill/onion, dill/onion wrapped in pickled grape leaf, fresca, cold-brined, plain

Yet more Cookery – Potluck foods – Saturday evening

We set up to do some meats in the roaster: a chicken, just for us, and some chicken parts to go with another incarnation of Sauce Bob. Those had to thaw overnight. A crockpot went together of a lamb shank stew with vegetables, and another of a lentil pottage with our homegrown carrots to cook overnight and we cleared a space to do the sauce and set up the roaster with the meats for Sunday.

Sewing – Anja’s still working on the same cuff. Rotten pic…. but  this is as far as it got over the week. Wrong side, btw.

Blackwork

Herb Bunch – Plant tending happened on Tuesday. Anja says she has enough greens for the potluck stew. Loren started helping with the watering of the small plants. More plant tending on Wednesday, the plants from Anja’s garden that are at a friend’s. We harvested some carrots, and a few herbs for the stew, too and the rest of the greens & herbs were harvested Sunday morning.

Saturday’s Workshop was on Infusions, Decoctions and Tinctures and then we made rose ball sachets.

Some harvest

Project Day

There were 5 of us, so some of the group projects happened, mostly working on ball sachets and sanding. Two people spent the day sewing on a couple of gowns, a pouch, etc and the third got to be the dressmaker’s dummy. 🙂 . Anja got some licks in on a spoon and the cuff. Loren did a little sanding, set up the lamb bones for sterilizing and found things.

Will and Ella

Potluck – We started on the lentils late in the afternoon because everyone was getting hungry, and the did some taste tests on the cheeses (see above) and Loren surprised us with his version of the Pompeii bread. Once Loryea arrived we had some of her cumin butternut squash soup and it was delicious enough that one of us had at least 4 bowls of it! (Might have been more…lost track!) The lamb stew turned out pretty disgusting, unfortunately, but at least we have the bones for needles. The chicken with Sauce Bob was pretty tasty, so that looks like a decent dish for Winter Feast.

Potluck Menu

  • Chicken with Sauce Bob
  • Cheeses
  • Bread
  • Garlic butter and Italian butter
  • Lamb Stew
  • Various pickles – bean, cabbage, strawberry, carrot and turnip
  • Butternut squash soup
  • Strawberry sekanjabin

Miscellaneous pix

Music

Links

Funnies 

Anja, Loren, Gogor (V), Gudrun (V), William, Æsa, Ella

divider black grey greek key

Largesse Item Count – (includes gifts, prizes, auction items, etc.)

  • ASXLVII = 24
  • ASXLVIII = 88
  • ASXLIX = 794
  • ASL = 2138
  • ASLI = 731
  • ASLII = 304
  • ASLIII – 82 plus 25 pouches for block-printing, 8 bookmarkers, 25 bottles of gall ink, 25 unfinished pincushions, 1 sewing kit (except for bone needle), varnished stuff (124)
  • Total as a Household = 3766 handed off

moving writing pen motifIn ministerio autem Somnium! Anja, graeca doctrina servus to House Capuchin
Page Created 10/8/18 & published 10/23/18 (C)M. Bartlett
Last updated 10/23/18