Anybody interested in a challenge?

A lot of reenactment level work is about learning appropriate historical crafts and skills. This board is for all general skills that don't have their own forum.

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Eric C
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Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Eric C »

Okay, I don't exactly know why I started watching these videos, but there's some pretty good stuff in them. Thinking of the recipes used on the youtube site, I see many of them fitting into Middle Earth. For this particular one, we have evidence of apples in ME. We know there was bread, so there was some kind of flour. So, here's a video about apple dumplings. I personally love cinnamon, so I'd fill the hollow where the core was with cinnamon and a little sugar if I had them on hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0foHjPVbP4

I know we've had discussions on recipes before, but I just wanted to reopen that can of worms. Anybody else got some recipes they would like to post?


OOooo! An idea just occurred to me! What if we each try a new recipe and post our findings here on the site? We can say what the dish is, what the ingredients are, how we prepared it and of course a taste test. Then we can say what we would do differently next time. You can do this outside over a campfire, or in your kitchen. Considering they are calling for rain this weekend, I'll do the apple dumplings here in the kitchen. You can also do different variants of the same recipe and try each. Just explain the differences.

So, who's in?
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Brownno
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Brownno »

Oh My God that sounds like a great idea. You have no idea how man times when I went camping and just threw some food in my pack. With this we can create amazing meals and amazing campouts. Plus we can use these we we have any ranger gatherings. I am definitely down for this wonderful idea.
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Eric C
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Eric C »

Brownno wrote:Oh My God that sounds like a great idea. You have no idea how man times when I went camping and just threw some food in my pack. With this we can create amazing meals and amazing campouts. Plus we can use these we we have any ranger gatherings. I am definitely down for this wonderful idea.
Yep! Just because its trail food doesn't mean it has to be bland.
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Elleth
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Elleth »

Oh fun! Sure, I'll give it a go. We've got some red wine left over from a party a couple weeks ago, and pork and coriander from the farm, so I'll experiment by trying cormarye.

http://medievalcookery.com/recipes/cormarye.html

I think I'll have to cook it conventionally - we're still not set up for fireplace cooking yet - but it'll be fun. :mrgreen:
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Peter Remling
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Peter Remling »

I'll see if I can come up with something.
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Eric C »

I'm looking forward to this. 8) I'll have to try apple fritters this weekend as we really can't get everything together for the dumplings. I know that sounds funny, but I need some osnaburg to wrap the dumplings and we aren't going to get to a store that carries it this week.

By the way, feel free to share as many recipes and experiments as you like. I'd like this to be a bit of a resource for folks too.
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E.MacKermak
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by E.MacKermak »

I would be up for this. I have done some campfire cooking over the years including baking apples in the body of a sweet pumpkin with a little cinnamon. It made a good dessert. I have done cobblers in dutch ovens before as well.

I need to work out a few recipes soon, so I will get in on this challenge. I need to get a few recipes straight before September.
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Peter Remling
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Peter Remling »

Ok tried something a little different but something that might be doable on the trail.

I wanted something not a meal but more desert like so:

Ingredients: one half tart apple, one cup of oatmeal, honey, cinnamon and brown sugar, oil or lard

Heat up oil/lard in a fry pan or pot till a drop of water pops
mix together oatmeal a little water (enough to wet the oatmeal), add in the 1/2 tart apple diced, 2 table spoons honey and a heaping tea spoon of brown sugar
drop rounded spoonful into the hot oil
turn and brown
spoon out and drain off excess oil
cool and eat


I tried several variations of the sample ingredients but this worked best. The honey bonds the components together. You can roll the cooled cakes in a piece of cloth and eat on the trail.
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Eric C
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Eric C »

That sounds a little like the apple fritters we made. It also sounds really good.

We mostly used Jas Townsend and sons' recipe for the fritters. For personal reasons I substituted pure apple juice for the hard cider.

Ingredients:

1 pint apple juice
2 cups flour (for starters)
1/2 cup raisins
1 diced fugi apple
a little cinnamon
cooked in lard

Heat the lard
I mixed the apple juice and the flour and found that the batter was way too runny. So I added flour until it stiffened up.
Mixed in the raisins, then threw in the diced apple. I could have cut the apple up smaller but it was still good.

Drop small dollops into the hot lard, brown one side, flip, brown other side and remove. Drain excess lard and sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

On the train, you most likely would not have the powdered sugar and maybe not even cinnamon. But these were very good. I'll try to get some pics up.
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

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Elleth
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Elleth »

Drat!

I had meant to make the cormarye yesterday afternoon over a fire, but we were both exhausted I didn't. It's still in the menu rotation though, so I'm sure it'll happen some time this week in the mundane oven. Pictures won't be as interesting, but it should still be tasty on the plate. :)
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Elleth
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Elleth »

And it's underway! I'd thought I might be able to get outside after all, but as I was setting up a firepit outside the wind-with-hint-of-rain picked up, so in the modern kitchen it went:
cormarye.jpg
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*crossing my fingers* :mrgreen:
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Eric C
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Eric C »

Looking forward to seeing how this goes.
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Elleth
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Elleth »

Came out alright - my fella noted it was very much in the space of beef burgandy.
I really should have roasted it longer in lower heat, and the recipe is fairly undersalted.
cormarye2.jpg
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Tomorrow we're going to put the leftovers in the roasting pan right after breakfast, and let them just stew in the sauce for hours until lunch. I'm betting it will be even better. :mrgreen:

Hrmm.. also I'm thinking some kind of fresh garnish would really dress it up. Maybe a bit of raw minced garlic, some fresh thyme or basil....
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Greg
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Re: Anybody interested in a challenge?

Post by Greg »

Well if THAT doesn't make me drool...
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