The Majgreve menu and some thoughts

Friday

No food served. There was fire so that people could heat food that they brought. Erik graciously offered to stuff my sausages with cheese and wrap them in bacon. Yes, everything is better with bacon.

Saturday

Breakfast
Due to the uncertain number of participants and wanting to keep the budget I opted for pancakes and no other form of eggs served for breakfast. Otherwise it was a rather simple breakfast. The coffee filter holder worked fine directly in the thermos.

Lunch

Stew with chicken boiled in beer , bacon and root vegetables
Bread
Butter
Cheese

The stew went down well, but given the small amount of participants adding a kg of bacon was unnecessary and there was way to much food left although we decided not to chop all the vegetables.

Dinner

Smoked and dried beef (Bosnian style, with garlic)

Smoked pork tenderloin
Smoked salmon
Cream cheese
Butter
Honey butter

Bread

Flatbread
Radishes

Soup of greens

Mustard
Sauerkraut with apple and cumin
Pork belly

Rosehip and apple soup
Whipped cream
Hazelnuts
Dried apples
Dried plums
Dried blueberries

The iron age house had two indoor fireplaces and two outdoor fireplaces. All the water had to be brought to site and there was no electricity. Most stuff went well anyway, but more could have been prepped. I forgot the vegetables that I had peeled and chopped at home, and I had not done all of them anyway.

I did a lot of the shopping on my way to the event and was pleasantly surprised at the lack of stressed Friday evening shoppers at that store. 

We did not use all the smoked pork tenderloin, and did not have any hard cheese for dinner. Most of what was put on the table was eaten. I think that there was enough food, but it might have felt good to have some more leftovers to prove it.

I had bought some meat for a stew as well, since the numbers I was given the day before the event suggested there would be a lot of people. Given the actual turnout I decided to leave it in the cooler since cool leftovers are better than warm leftovers. 

There should have been a frumenty-like dish as well, made from barley, but it got burnt very early in the cooking process. We decided not to scrub the pot and wait for the water to boil again and just let that dish disappear. 

This interpretation of viking food seems to go well with the fussy eaters. Not to complex flavours and the foods can be identified

The numbers are likely to change late when cooking for local Holmrike events. I need to shop less ahead and have a plan to add food late in the process. 

I would like to recruit at least one dedicated kitchen helper ahead of time. It worked getting a bit of help here and a bit there, but it would have felt good to not have to rely on the event steward constantly helping out. 

On the subject of the event steward: she did well and I would no doubt work with her again if she decided to do another event.

Whipping lactose free cream is hard. Not sure if it is the lack of lactose, or that it was only 35% fat plus some thickening agent. 

Green soup

I am planning on making a soup from chopped green leaves since they are one of the few fresh vegetables around here this time of year. I meant to pick nettles, but will have to substitute buyable greens. Apart from spinach there will be parsley and rocket in the soup I think.

The soup will be simple, just greens, stock and cream.

Flatbread

I tried a simple flatbread recipe yesterday.

300 ml flour
125 ml water
a pinch of salt

I combined several different flours and kneaded a dough, and made 8 flat cakes which I cooked on a frying pan with no grease. They were a bit on the thick side, but the proportions of the dough works.

On numbers

It is less than two weeks to the Majgreve event and the deadline for registering was last Sunday. The number of attendees still seems to be a bit uncertain although we are soming to some sort of decent approximation. There was a group meeting on Monday and the progress report from the event staff group made a surprisingly large amount of people remember that they had intended to come.

I have prepared some stuff in advance although there was some uncertainty, but might need to add a dish to the feast, or do some other late tweaking. It is a good thing that the store is close to the site.

Pork belly

A longhouse calls for pork, right? This is a test run of a piece of pork belly boiled, sliced, glazed and fried. I plan to do the boiling and slicing at home and the rest on site.

I used the following for the test:

500 g salted pork belly

500 ml water

2 tsp salt

50 ml elderflower cordial

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp mustard powder

And then I glazed it with:

1 tbsp honey

1 tsp malt vinegar

0,5 tsp mustard

a little fresh horseradish

salt

I am a bit unsure about the use of rosemary for Viking age and might use some other herb the next time. For the real deal I will probably also put more salt and spices in the cooking water since the meat itself could have been spicier. All in all it was rather good, though.

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.

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.

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.

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.