Evil Eyes!

I found cute documentation on these. Ward off the evil eye. I sat down with my torch and made 12 the first night. I am going to make more to give to my feast helpers as a thank you. They ranged as trade items between India and Denmark it seems. They were very popular in Turkey and still are. Plus, this is a great way for me to learn my rudiments.

Stuff that I did today....

the r
h

This is the new Baronial favor. The top is a tassle that Magge Nettlewood and Margaret Woodbury came up with for the feast that I autocrated. Tassles for camels. I thought they were festive, and wow.... That was insane. The two of them did it by themselves. I thought they were so spiffy. I never would have come up with something that good.

I come up with site tolkens that involve a draft and war rations. Unsuspecting Wolfscairners! I had half their barony drafted before they started yelling, "Hey!" Garth gleefully said we needed a war to fix it.

The two coins on the left are the coins Princess Oonagh and Prince Helgi the Dread gave us. That was nicer than being beaned in the head with a pillow.
The grape vine is from their Excellencies for being feast autocrat. Everyone seemed happy. That felt great.






This is the dress I made today. I think it is the last working normans I can ever do. I will take more care and do my next rig right. Even dig out that jar of bugs and dye some fabric.

Camel in Red Soup

The Redacted Recipe:

22 lbs of camel, cubed to 1 inch with the glands removed
1 pound of white butter*
9 onions, chopped
10 large carrots, in chunks
3 cups of honey
water or camel stock (I thought I would have bone in, so I would have roast the bones and then made stock from them. Instead we got boneless. )
1 teaspoon tragacanth gum or 1/2 cup of gluttonous flour
1 quart of yoghurt
2 teaspoons of kosher or tibetan salt
1/2 long pepper

Be very careful with the camel meat. I rinsed it twice and bled it off a bit. I rinsed and patted them dry twice. Then I cut up the meat. I think we had leg meat as the parts I thought I knew corresponded with the gland location on sheep or pigs. I saw one right away, so I was ultra careful about removing the glands. If you buy meat from a good butcher, they will do this to the large meat slabs. I started looking for them and removed all glands as I was cutting the meat in 1 inch cubes.

We then browned the meat in the butter. We used unsalted churned butter because that much
white butter would add about $16 in cost to the meal. We browned it in small batches in cast iron pans and the pot in order to get carmelization to take affect. The scent was pleasant at first but I found it got to smelling 'charred' right away. I think it is the sugar in the meat.

We then threw the onions in the extra fat from the browning of the meat until they were nice and translucent. We put those in the stock pot with the camel and added our carrots. Then we added the honey and enough water to cover it. We deglazed the browning pan with water and put that in the soup. We let that simmer for about 4 hours and then chilled it over night for the feast.

The next day we put the pot on simmer for the day. When it came time to prepare for the last course, I stirred the powder into the yoghurt. I then added as I was told, by gently heating the yoghurt in the ladle, then spooning in broth, then incorporating the yoghurt in little increments. Serve with more white butter on top and over or with steamed millet with onions.

*White butter is the fat off of whole, unhomogenized milk that is left to hang for about 2 hours. It cannot be substituted with salted butter, cream, half and half or oil. It can be substituted with unsalted butter, mutton or camel fat.

Recipes...

Katira asked for some recipes

Pigeon or Chicken Pie

2 lbs ground chicken (dark meat is better)
3 teaspoons thyme
3 tablespoons parsley, fresh
1 tablespoon white pepper
1 tablespoon fenugeek leaves, crushed
1 juniper berries, mashed
3 cups almonds (ground)
1 cups pinenuts, toasted and ground
2 lemons, juice of
1 teaspoon salt
12 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup pomegranate mollasses
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3 large onions, ground
1 large carrot, ground
1/4 cup of rose water
3 cloves of garlic, groud
1/3 cups honey
1/3 cups water
9 leaves phyllo or mountain bread

Grind together the chicken, onion, garlic, carrot and the juniper berry. Melt the butter in one pot and melt the honey and water in another. Brush a tin with butter and lay in the mountain bread of phyllo. Brush that with butter. Repeat three times. Mix all the remaining ingredients and pack on top of the phyllo. Cover with three more buttered layers of phyllo and then one layer of phyllo that is brushed with honey water and bake for 25 minutes at 320 degrees.


Chelow:

3 cups basmati rice
9 cups water
2 tablespoons salt
1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
1 teaspoon saffron threads
2/3 cup butter, clarified melted, unsalted or olive oil (see note)
1/2 cup of white butter (this is made only from the fat from the top of whole milk)

Wash the rice 4-6 times until it runs clear. Pick it over as needed. Boil the rice between 6 and 10 minutes at a full rolling, boil. Drain the rice. Steep the safforn in a tablespoon of boiling water. Whisk 1/4 cup of white butter, clarified butter and enough water to thin it (I am thinking 1/2 cup of water from the modern recipes.) Pour the butter mixture into the pot. Pat half the rice into the pot so it makes a shell, then mound the rest in the middle. Cover and cook it covered 8 minutes. Then turn it off. Sprinkle the rice with 1/2 cup of water. Get a dishtowel and wrap the lid of the pot, or put paper towels between the pot and the lid. Cook on low for 40 minutes or until golden crust forms. Now, our cooks decided to parboil this for 24 minutes instead of 6-10 so it got mushy and puddinglike. We only allowed 12 minutes for the crust.

All Hallows Feast!!!

Here we go! This is the first dish I made from the feast. The interpretation is simple. I believe the mention (with no recipe) is from Perry. Enough folks are putting the information where I can get it and the artist formerly known as Anahita has been a huge help. Anyhow...

The dish is described as almonds and nuts boiled in honey. Remember those pigeon towers? This type of dish is a halwa or sweet from there. It is cute. There is not really a word for dessert. Halwa is a term of endearment for a girl or a sweet. There are many different types. A carrot and raisin pudding is one of the best known. They also did it with grains or shredded roots we normally would treat like vegetables. Ah, more medieval genius. I looked at both modern and old recipes and called or harrassed everyone I know. Poor Sam.

I decided to boil the honey to almost the hard crack stage.

It has to do with the sweets from the area I was studying. High sesame seed production and almonds, and known for a sweet a bit like medieval nut brickle. This is one of the few dishes in the feast that

I boiled honey, milled sugar (yes, they had it), saffron, rose water, oil, a dash of kosher salt until it was nearly hard crack, then I pulled it off the stove and added the nuts and sesame seeds. Then I dropped it onto cookie sheets in about teaspoon sized lumps. It tastes wonderful and came out so pretty, that I wanted to show you.