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I did not have time to comment on our meal because we had a premier to watch and then sleep and then work.  So here is our assessment of the meal.

The Frumenty was pretty boring as expected.  Tom did not try it.  The leftovers went to the chickens who were initially skeptical but then ate it.  But it definitely seemed medieval.

The Girdle breads were also pretty boring as expected.  Tom did try one though.  They also went to the chickens who loved them.  But these breads also seemed medieval.

The Sweet-sour spiced rabbits was surprisingly good.  The spice to it was wonderful.  For Tom this was his favorite part of the meal, and for me it was my second favorite.  We will definitely be eating this leftover rabbit.  Very medieval and rabbit does taste like chicken.

The Lamb stew tasted like lamb stew.  It tasted like lamb and onions which is basically what it was. Tom, of course, did not try it.  I will freeze this leftovers and have them from time to time.  Very medieval though.

For me the Grilled quail was amazing.  There was a smokiness to the barbecue that was amazing.  Tom did not like it, said that it tasted like dark meat, but I (like my mother and grandfather) like the dark meat.  They were amazing and incredibly medieval.

No spoilers but for me the GOT episode was not that exciting.  it was nice to see all the characters again, but there was no major event or unexpected news.  Some seasons have started off with a bang, like Arya killing the Freys, but nothing like that this year.  I am sure it will pick up steam over the next 5 episodes though.  And this meal was amazing to eat in the dark in front of the premier.  I did all feel very medieval.

I am really looking forward to the next meal and episode.  The plan is for a Chaucer meal.  I have to work Saturday so it depends on how tired I am whether I will be able to cook a major meal on Sunday or if we will have to wait until Monday for our meal and episode #2.

 

The evening started with a bath with a dragon’s egg I have been saving since I received it from my cousins for Christmas.

I accompanied the bath with a Hodor cocktail.

Then I cooked the lamb stew,

The sweet-sour spiced rabbit,

The frumenty,

The grilled quail,

And the Gridle bread.

Here is the meal all assembled:

I will let you know how it all tastes and how the premiere episode is.

So for the GOT premiere, I am going to recreate the meal that Duke William had before the Battle at Hastings where the Normans then took control over England from the Saxons.  This meal is depicted beautifully in the Bayeux Tapestry.  This meal is shown about 2/3 of the way through this large tapestry.  It is in scene # 42-43.  The author of The Medieval Cookbook Maggie Black discerned from her knowledge and the tapestry what food was likely served at this meal and translated medieval recipes for it.  So on tonight’s menu is Frumenty, Girdle breads, Sweet-sour spiced rabbit (BTW rabbits were imported into Britain by the Normans), Lamb stew and Grilled quail.

The first of the many steps for creating this meal was to gather the ingredients.  The rabbit I purchased at Silvana Meats.  The lamb came from our neighbors at Prairie Road Farm.  And the quail came from University Seafood and Poultry.  The rest of the ingredients came from local grocery stores.

This morning involved prep work.  The first step was figuring out how to crack the barley.

The recipe suggested pounding it, but google said you could use a blender or coffee mill.  I thought if a blender worked, a cuisinart should.  It did not.  I got out a large mallet to start pounding when I remembered that we have an antique coffee mill.  After I cleaned it up, I put a tablespoon of barley in it, and it worked great.  It was a lot of work though but now we have cracked barley, and a new appreciation for how much work our ancestors put in for their meals.

Then came cutting up the lamb into 2 inch cubes for the stew.

Then came cutting up the rabbit into joints and saddle.  I had to google to figure out how to do this.

Finally I flattened the quail and tried to figure out how the wooden skewers are going to go in.

There is chicken stock thawing as well.  Here is the initial preparation work all completed.

And here are the brains of the operation with the dishes clean and ready, the cook book, and my notes with dish starting times.

I made these dishes for the rewatch of last year’s season finale.  So it had to be good!  Thankfully two of the dishes are prepared early and served cold.  So that made it easier.

I started with the “Departed” Creamed Fish.  I poached some halibut.  Then I steeped some ground almonds in some of the poaching liquid.  I pressed the liquid out to the fish and then the fish and the almond sludge went into a blender ( I am wondering how medieval a blender is).  Some rice flour was mixed with some more of the poaching liquid in a saucepan and then heated until it was thick.  This was added to the blender with some salt.  Half of these mixture was colored with saffron water and flavored with ground ginger and sugar.  They are then chilled in the fridge.  For serving, dollop of each were placed in a saucer.  Ginger-sugar was sprinkled on the yellow one and just sugar sprinkled on the white one.  Here they are ready for serving.

While the creamed fish was chilling my attention moved to the Cherry Pottage.  I could not find ripe cherries so used two quarts of our canned Rainier cherries from last year.  These were pureed in the blender with white wine and sugar.  This was then added to a saucepan with melted butter, breadcrumbs and salt and simmered.  Once it was thick, it was poured into serving bowls and put in the fridge.  For serving whole cloves were added to the edge and coarse sugar was sprinkled on the top.  Here is some of the pottage ready for serving.

The last step was getting the salmon ready.  Tom warmed up the grill while I prepared a sauce with white wine, onions and cinnamon heated in saucepan.  A little vinegar and ginger was added.  The salmon (and one halibut fillet for Tom) was brushed with oil and just simply grilled.  The fish was then served with the wine sauce on top.  Here is the whole meal assembled.  I did add a thawed mushroom pastie and some of the mixed pickles.

One thing I did notice is that the departed (which just means bicolored) fish looked a lot like the profile of the moon’s face.

But it did not taste good.  The rest of the meal was great.  The salmon was smokey from the grill, and the sauce was nice.  The pickles were strong and tasty.  And the cherry pottage for dessert was really yummy.  So this meal sustained us through the finale.  So next weekend I am taking a break, and then it gets really medieval!

This is a fun medieval recipe. I sliced up our turnips and parsley root and added purchased carrots and radishes (2# total). Here they are in the pot.

I added a sliced up cabbage and water, boiled it and then added 3 cut up pears. I boiled it a little longer and then strained them. They went into a shallow dish sprinkled with salt, vinegar, ginger and saffron. Here it is at this point.

This was covered and sat out overnight for 12 hours. This morning I strained it and added currants. I boiled Chardonnay, vinegar and honey and added Dijon mustard, anise seeds, cinnamon, fennel seeds, pepper and a little sugar. The fruit and vegetable mixture was packed into sterilized quart jars, and the hot liquid was poured in. Lids and rings were placed. Here are the resulting 3 quarts of mixed pickles.

I will let them sit and be ready for the new GOT season!

First I had to figure out how to poach a whole chicken. I found this recipe on thespruceeats site. While the chicken was poaching I prepared the 2# of spinach for the Jowtes. Here is the chicken just poached and the destemmed spinach.

Spinach, leeks and chives were boiled and then the spinach was drained and puréed. A paste of ground almonds, water and rice flour was added with some of the leftover spinach water. Salt and pepper were the only seasonings. It was simmered again and made a thick green soup.

For the chicken dish, rice was simmered with chicken stock. Ground almonds were soaked in chicken broth too. The rice was drained after cooking and the soaked almonds and poached minced chicken were added. Again only salt and pepper was added.

Here is my meal assembled. The chicken and rice were classic comfort food. The green soup was boring but healthy.

With this we were able to sustain ourselves through a rewatch of Season7 Episode 6. Only one more episode to rewatch and then the new season will start. I have been running around collecting weird meats for the new season. Stay tuned!

The first step was finding the right roast. The recipe called for a pork loin bone on the joint. Our local grocery store butcher, food co-op butcher and independent butcher shop could not help us, but the Whole Foods butcher in Bellingham did. He even chined the joint ( whatever that means). Here is the hard to find roast.

The recipe called for cooking it in foil with red wine and spices (caraway seeds, garlic, ground coriander, salt and pepper) but the wine leaked out so I put it in a roasting bag. Not very medieval but neither is foil. Here it is after cooking in the bag for 2 hours and then with the bag open on top for 1/2 hour.

While it was roasting I made the Pasties. I made a shortctust pastry using my British Baking Show cookbook and put it in the fridge. Cleaning and chopping 1# of mushrooms took a while. They were mixed with a little oil, Swiss cheese, salt, pepper and dried mustard. I then rolled the pastry, cut it into circles and put them in a muffin tin.

The filling was put in the crust and the remaining crust went on top. They were cooked for just 15 minutes. Here they are out of the oven.

Here is the roast partially carved in the oven staying warm while I made the sauce.

I added a cup of our chicken stock and simmered it with the wine taken from the roasting bag. Tom thought it was too thin so we thickened it with corn starch. Here is the sauce after straining it.

And here is my meal. It took a awhile but was totally work it. The port and sauce were yummy. And I loved the Pasties (Tom wouldn’t try one because of the mushrooms).

and it went very well with Season 7, episode 5.

This was last night’s dinner accompanied by GOT season 7 episodes 3&4. I started by roasting one of our chickens at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. Then I cut the skin and bones away, making bite sized bits of the meat. I added our chicken stock and simmered it for 25 minutes. I then strained the stock off and added saffron, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, cinnamon and ginger. I boiled this for a bit and then mixed it all back together. Chopped hard boiled egg whites went on the perimeter and 6 egg yolks crowned the center. Here it is ready to serve:

While the chicken was roasting I chopped up a cabbage and an onion and sliced 2 leeks. I added a quart of our chicken stock, salt, coriander, cinnamon, saffron and a tiny bit of sugar. While the chicken simmered, I simmered this for 20 minutes. Here it is ready to serve:

And here is my dinner all ready to eat with a glass of Chardonnay.

The spices are different. We like the chicken but Tom avoided the egg bits. This is a recipe I will make again. Tom would not try the cabbage soup. For me it was OK, kind of boring. I don’t think I will make it again but it seems perfect for a mid-March meal. And it all went well with episodes 3 and 4.

As I was making this I was pondering medieval cooking. I was thinking that if these recipes were amazing we would still be eating them. Instead they fell into obscurity for good reasons. But I still think it is fun to eat meals similar to what our ancestors ate.

I went a little crazy cooking this meal yesterday getting ready for watching the season premiere again for Season 7 of GOT.  I wanted to make the “Pike in galantine” and “Haddock in tasty sauce” recipes from The Medieval Cookbook.  But we do not have Northern Pike nor Haddock in our local grocery store.  So I googled around trying to find substitutes.  In my googling, cod in a reasonable substitute for Haddock and Atlantic Salmon is a reasonable substitute for Pike.  Not sure how accurate this is, but these were the fish I could get easily.

So I poached the front end of an Atlantic salmon in salt water with parsley, wine and vinegar.  Here is it poaching.

This recipe requires brown bread so I had started some “Barley bread” from the same cookbook.  After the salmon poached and sat in the hot water off the heat to cook more, I poached the cod.  Here it is:

As a side dish, I made “Leeks and sops in wine” from the cookbook.  I sliced all the leeks up beforehand to be ready when they needed to cook.  I added the olive oil, salt and a bottle of white wine so it would all be ready.

I forgot to take a photo of the barley bread before I started hacking it up.  I needed three slices to go into the pike/salmon recipe.  Two of these recipes called for brown ale.  So I had purchased Moose Drowl brown ale and got to drink the leftovers while I cooked.

I made the tasty sauce that goes with the haddock/cod.  I fried a diced onion in lard.  Half went to the salmon recipes and the other half went into the tasty sauce with white pepper, white breadcrumbs and brown ale.  This was put in the blender and then back in the pan for more warming.  Here is the sauce and it actually was tasty!

The pike/salmon recipe had a blended mixture of wetted brown bread, onions, cinnamon and white paper added to it.  I did not use the optional gelatine.  So here in my meal all assembled.  The cooked leek mixture is served over toasted bread.  The salmon dish is more of a soup but it was surprisingly tasty.  I have the barley bread and some leftover brown ale to drink.

And here is Tom’s dinner.  He has the leeks, the barley bread and the poached and then broiled cod with the taste sauce.  He had hard cider with his dinner.

And with this we rewatched the first two episodes of Season 7 (I had wanted to only watch one, but it is hard to stop at one).  I thought my salmon soup was quite good, better than I thought.  The leeks were OK, nothing amazing.  I thought the barley bread was a little dense and moist but Tom liked it.  Tom is not a fan of fish so he was not thrilled with the cod, thought it was boring despite the tasty sauce.  But he thought the leeks added some pizzazz to the meal.  The episodes were amazing, of course.  It is amazing how much you can forget in a year and a half.

I have decided to revive my Feast of Ice and Fire blog.  I have added some recent medieval cooking and plan on adding more frequently as we finish rewatch Season 7 and especially have some intense and weird cooking planned for Season 8 starting in April.  So go over there and follow along, if you wish.

I made these pasties for last night’s dinner. I used the recipe from The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black. To make the shortcrust pastry I used my kindle Bake It Better Pies & Tarts from The Great British Bake Off. I used the leftover chicken from the Pho. Here they are after baking:

And here is one on my plate with some well roasted carrots.

We watched the Season 5 Game of Thrones finale and are on track to have rewatched all episode before April 14.