Dragons Laire has held a major public demo for over two decades. In that time it has evolved from a mere handful of merchants and half a dozen fighters into a major regional event welcoming hundreds of SCA participants and thousands of modern visitors.
A few years ago I was able to shift my efforts from purely administrative services to the Arts and Sciences. I demonstrated drop spinning or card weaving and gave talks on garb, but my real love was cookery. And while I often spoke with visitors about medieval food and cookery, a static display of books just didn’t attract the eye and mind the way the sights, sounds and smells of an active hearth could. By 2003, however, a number of circumstances came together that made a live cooking demo possible.
The year before, Junefaire, or Medieval Faire as it is known to the modern public, had moved to its current location at Port Gamble. The Arts and Sciences area moved from a dank fairground barn into an outdoor pavilion, eliminating serious danger from open flame cooking in an enclosed space. By this time Mistress Gwen had expanded her pottery repertoire well past the basics of bowls, plates and goblets into cooking implements like strainers, pipkins and skillets. A fine large brazier had also been gifted to the Barony. Mistress Gwen, myself, and others began talking about the logistics of a live cooking demonstration.
Then a series of mundane considerations, including a broken wrist, threatened to derail the whole project, but by late spring the kitchen was on again.
With basics of a Medieval Kitchen starting to fall into place, the next order of business was what to cook. Should we prepare generally period-style dishes or actual period recipes? Prepare a full medieval feast or just an assortment of random dishes?
Since the goal of the demo was to show real medieval cookery, actual period recipes were the obvious choice. (I also included a basic pease porridge, as the old rhyme makes a great connection to medieval food for the modern public.)
While it would have been fabulous to layout a proper medieval feast, several factors made an assortment of dishes a better choice. Since Junefaire would be the first opportunity to work this demo with all the factors in place, an assortment of dishes would be more adaptable to unfamiliar and variable circumstances such as weather, available equipment and space and novice assistants. Random dishes also made it possible to have something actively cooking throughout the day to discuss with visitors. Plus the menu could be drawn from several centuries and from Rome to Scandinavia for recipes without having to balance humors or stick to any narrowly defined menu and avoid difficult or expensive ingredients.
So what to cook? A range of dishes, meats, vegetables, fruits and starches was desirable. I wanted to include some things that were quite familiar; something the visitor may have eaten recently, like a salat. I wanted to showcase some of the differences in spicing and flavors between modern and medieval food as well as show the use of period techniques and ingredients.
I began scouring my period cookbooks with an eye for dishes best suited to outdoor cooking. Now technically any medieval dish can be cooked outdoors and may well have been, but I’d grown up with electric stoves, thermostatically controlled ovens and Frigidaire. I needed to learn how to work with fire well beyond the skills for roasting hotdogs, marshmallows for s’mores or even a bit of shrimp on the barbie. Even my camp cooking had run more to bottled gas and foil-wrapped parcels on the coals than real hearth cookery.
I began experimenting. My family ate 16th century Catalan stews spiced with cinnamon and cloves, 14th century German fruit dishes spiced with pepper and anise, Roman vegetable dishes, all cooked on our poor little Webber grill out back. They were (and are) incredibly good sports about this sort of thing and we only resorted to Chinese take-out a couple of times.
By Junefaire I had a selection of recipes that seemed practical for the demonstration. (For some of our demo recipes check out Junefaire recipes on the Baronial website.) Plus there was one particular item I wanted to include, the very symbol of sustenance to Medieval Man, bread. For that I had a baking cloche made by my daughter in her pottery class. (The story of that process is told in An Experiment in Bread baking Junefaire 2003.)
Fuel choice remained another question. Wood fires would generally have been the norm in period. So I started with assumption of needing firewood, but when a bag of mesquite chunk charcoal caught my eye at the store, the more readily handled commercial product, augmented with the wood shavings from my husband’s woodworking demo, was in.
We took short cuts that first year, pre-cooking fruit and resorting to canned items and pre-cut meats. We learned a lot: how to break ceramic skillets mid-fry, that a dedicated fire tender is a godsend and the smell of mesquite charcoal is really annoying.
Year Two (2004): This time we went onto the demo with more confidence; core people knew what to expect and we had the previous year’s experience under our belts. Plans expanded and several concerns were addressed more aggressively. The addition of a second brazier dedicated to auxiliary tasks, such as water heating, freed more cooking space on the main brazier. New dishes were added and a shift to another brand of chunk charcoal relieved our neighbors’ noses and reduced the smoke.
Fruit was roasted this time on skewers over coals. This made a wonderful display both visually and aromatically. Visitors were seeing something they expected of medieval cookery, spit roasting but with a twist.
We had the opportunity to flex our cooking muscles once more at September Crown that year. This time we got more adventurous with our spit roasting, tackling a chicken as well as fruit. We also got to try out Mistress Gwen’s latest project, mortar and pestle.
Year three (2005): New equipment included larger cooking pots from Mistress Gwen and our new water pig, creating a much more convenient and generous water source. A vented gazebo pavilion saved our fire from a Sunday downpour.
We also redacted two new recipes right on site this year. Armored turnips and garlic sauce both called for direct roasting in the coals, making them prime candidates for our hearth. A previously redacted recipe, French meat balls, responded spectacularly under the more authentic conditions. The inclusion of a spice box and rainbow carrots in the display made good talking points to engage the visitors.
Are we providing a completely authentic medieval kitchen demonstration? No. But each year, I hope, we are getting a little closer. In the meantime, we give the modern public a peek into what might have been and have a great time doing it.
What I’d like to see change in the future; A way to provide a real bake oven that makes the cost and effort balance against only two days of baking. An earth oven seems like a good possibility but the logistics still need to be worked out. Adding better skewers and other hearth tools is highly desirable.
The better water source is only the first step for the scullery. Next, something more period than an old canning kettle for heating water and an improved scullery setup, perhaps even interactive would be nice.
Some sanitation issues are still not ideal. While the goal is a medieval kitchen, allowing visitors access to samples remains problematic without modern health department standards, but we do have hand-washing facilities and artfully hidden coolers to keep more perishable items on ice.
Upcoming for 2006 - We are planning our first appearance at Maypole. This will be a one day demo and our first foray out of Dragons Laire. And At Junefaire this year we will have a second cooking brazier which we will need when we cook up a small dinner for their Excellencies. July Coronation may also present another opportunity to strut our stuff but that is still to be decided.
Update 2006 - This year saw tragedy and triumph for the demo.
Maypole 2006 - Our first foray out of the Barony was as close to disaster as we have experienced. While Druim Doinan's event is only a short hop out of the Barony, it is still more than the 10 minute drive we usually have, making multiple trips hauling the equipment impractical. A pared down version of the demo was planned. The water pig was left at home along with our larger pavillion. We also chose to only participate one day of the event. Of course, we chose the wrong one and ended up with a typical An Tirian downpour. This early season wet and cold made cooking longer and miserable as gusts kept the heat low and got everything and everybody wet. Our baking cloche was broken in transit. We did, however, have new table legs made to a period design.
Junefaire 2006 - A triumph
July Coronation 2006 -
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