Sunday, April 28, 2013

Rose hip soup, take two

So I tried again, using ground rose hip this time, which was much easier. Proportions this time:

100 ml rose hip powder
500 ml water
30 ml honey

I whisked rose hip powder into water and boiled it for a couple of minutes. The texture was less smooth than when I boiled pieces of rose hip for twenty minutes and then strained it. Soaking or maybe boiling for at bit longer might improve that.

It had much more twang now that some of the acidity is left and would probably be nice with a dollop of whipped cream. I think that a combo with dried apples would also work fine if one used less honey.


Sunday, April 21, 2013

Boring sewing

Now I only have the last little bit of hemming left on my new shift and I find it boring.

Ah well, I need it done in two weeks for Double Wars. I got rid of all the less good ones when I moved a couple of months ago.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Seasons

We were looking at eating in season at Majgreven. Late May/early June around here is buzzing with life, but not much of the new growth is really ready to eat.

I am thinking of salted/smoked/dried foods as a base, add dairy products and small amounts of fresh early vegetables. If I have the time I might dry some food myself, otherwise there will be what is easy to get, for example apples, prunes and rosehips. There will also be bread and grains in some form, barley is likely to appear.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Playing with sourdough

I am testning bread recipes using sourdough. Having moved a couple of months ago means that the oven and I need to get to know each other. Things come out darker than I expect and I am not yet in the habit of using a thermometer on my bread. I might start doing that soon. Funny that, how much electrical ovens can vary.


Yesterday I tried this overnight sourdough bread recipe and made buns for brekfast. They turned out good, but involved a bit too much waiting for breakfast to really become a favourite. 

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Rose hip soup

Rose hip were mentioned among things vikings ate, and being Swedish I decided to try a rose hip soup for Majgreven. Not the very sweet version from a box, but a darker home made one made from dried rose hips and honey.


Most modern versions contains potato flour or some other starch, but thicker soup can also be achieved by adding more rose hip. I tried these proportions:

100 g dried rose hip, no seeds
1000 ml water
100 ml honey

Boil rose hip in 900 ml water for about 20 minutes. Mix. Depending on how good your mixer is and how much body you want to your soup you might wish to strain it as well. I did, and then I added the honey solved in the rest of the water.

I found it much too sweet and will use less honey next time. I have no idea what I was thinking adding a large chunk of honey rather than adding a little and tasting it. I will also consider using ground rose hip instead of whole pieces.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Things to do

This is the current list of things I want to try:

  • Rose hip soup from scratch
  • Barley porridge (sweetened and fried?)
  • Dried berries (no sugar added)
  • Something tasty for the vegetarians

If possible I would like to make sausages as well, but that is a bigger hurdle to get over.

I will probably make some bread as well, but it will probably be "just bread" rather than "well-researched viking bread".

Things to do:

  • Visit the site to get a better idea of how it works
  • Set the menu
  • Estimate amounts to buy
  • Make bread
  • Prepare at least part of the food ahead of time since there is no running water and no refridgerators on site.

There are a number of other things happening during spring as well, so the available time and energy will be limited.

On a more personal note I would like a new apron dress for my viking garb.

Viking food revisited

Some time ago my old group Gotvik used to have an event at Ale vikingagård, a reconstructed longhouse outside Gothenburg. I cooked some viking-ish food there and found it intriguing given the lack of actual recipes.

My current group Holmrike is running a May count event (first weekend in June, though) at another "new" longhouse, Tostesta and I have volunteered to cook. This site is more primitive, there is no running water and all the cooking will be done over open fire. It should be fairly small though, we are estimating somewhere between 20 and 40 people.

So now I have started over with the Viking food. Research will be quick and dirty as the goal is to set plausible food on the tables and having fun cooking over fire.

Research will be quick and dirty. I started with a quick web search and came up with these for a start:

http://eldrimner.wordpress.com/category/viking-age/
http://vikingfoodguy.com/wordpress/
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml
http://www.danishnet.com/info.php/vikings/viking-food-140.html
http://www.ydalir.co.uk/crafts/cook.htm
http://www.fotevikensmuseum.se/art_50_99/viking_art60j.htm
http://www.sca.org.au/st_florians/university/library/articles-howtos/9-12C_Norse_Food_AR070604.htm
http://home.swipnet.se/~w-83431/mat.html
http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=407&artikel=277164
http://hem.passagen.se/susbrom/RECEPT.HTM

I was going to look into books as well, but will probably have limited time for it. I am very interested in An early Meal by Serra and Thunberg that will be published later this year, but probably not soon enough to be useful to me this time.

Spring cleaning

I have decided to start writing about my SCA interests again and decided to move from LiveJournal to Blogger. I have another Blogger blog and I am reasonbly content with both the web interface and the app.

New entries will be in English. I might move some stuff from the old place in order to keep recipes and ponderings in one place.