Ye Big Feaste

Today I cooked a grand medieval feast. All by myself. Three courses of six dishes each, plus some things to take home afterwards. At least that was the plan!

The actuality was that I hadn’t done nearly enough preparation beforehand. I had spent several days on the fun stuff of making little flags to stick in the pies, making little booklets about feasting in the Middle Ages, researching all my recipes… and I had only got around to making one single food item, some marzipan fruits (which looked pretty good, though, I have to admit!), the day before. That was it! I hadn’t done the gingerbread, or any of the pies which were also supposed to be made in advance ready for heating. I then also didn’t start cooking until this afternoon and I should really have got going at about 5 o’clock this morning!

Once I had begun crenellating pie crusts and strewing saffron about, I quickly realised that I didn’t actually have enough kitchen space, or cooking pots, or time to make all of my planned dishes and therefore had to cut out some of them. Pity, I never like to be beaten, even by a menu! I also ended up throwing the first course onto the table in front of my guests and disappearing back into the kitchen to carry on cooking, which wasn’t exactly sociable! All in all I suppose I did pretty well for just four hours of preparation and cooking, considering what I was attempting. But I’m never happy with anything less than perfection though, so grumpy with myself that I didn’t manage to do everything I had planned. Next time I WILL damn well start at 5 o’clock in the morning!

That said, there was plenty of food left over at the end. I shall ignore the little voice in my head that says, “Hmm, maybe that’s because nobody liked your cooking missy!” and assume I filled all bellies adequately! Everyone except Ben left their booklets behind, though, the bastards – they could at least have pretended to like them! Does anyone out there have any need for a flag with a deer on it? Or a book about feasting? Oh well, never mind then.

For those who are interested, the menu that I served my guests (as opposed to the one that I planned to serve them!) is below.

Ye First Course
Makerouns
Mushroom pasty
Spynoches yfryed
Seethed salmon

Ye Second Course
Tourte parmerienne
Tarte in ymbre day
Chyches
Buttered wortes

Ye Third Course
A custarde
Frytour blaunched
Payne foundow

Voide
Fruits made of marchpane

And to drink…
Potus Ypocras
Grape juice
Apple juice