Aren’t you glad that the Otari Hoodie Sew Along is finished?

First, it means that some of you have awesome hoodies that you can wear.  And second, it means that I can stop blogging hoodie instructions, and go back to blogging about random historical things, and whatever else I’m working on.

Right now, the ‘random historical things’ means catching up on all the stuff I haven’t been blogging about while I was hoodie-ing, starting with the Sew & Eat Historical Retreat.

I promised menu details in my first post, so here is more information.

The real credit for the menu and cooking goes to Nina, who put together all the more spectacular and involved items, most of which I would never dare attempt*.  Hopefully she’ll blog more details about her food, so mine will be a briefer overview.

I didn’t manage to photograph everything, as I got too excited about actually eating things, and just having fun.

Friday Dinner:  ‘Malaga-tawnee Curee’ with potted hare

Friday’s dinner was based on two extent Regency curry recipes (one belonging to Jane Austen’s sister in law), the description of curry eating in Vanity Fair***, and recipes for potted hare.

I couldn’t find an original Regency curry recipe that used potted hare as the meat, but it was certainly a common meat source, and I was able to find a whole wild hare at Moore Wilsons (the fancy Wellington supermarket†).

The curry included apples and lentils, and there was so much of it that we had it for lunch on Saturday too.  And it was delicious.  In fact, a vegetarian version†† of it has become part of my regular meal rotation.  You can find a similar-ish recipe here (just omit the coconut milk).

Saturday Afternoon Tea:

Menu:

Cucumber sandwiches
Devilled eggs variations on devilled eggs date back to Roman times, and the little savoury egg-parcels were definitely popular in the 19th century.  
Salmon & capers with cream cheese on pumpernickel  â€ â€ â€ 
Fruit
Ginger honeycomb biscuits‡
Rice flour Victorian cake‡
Lemon ices (Jane Austen wrote of eating ices at her brother Edward’s estate, and Gunter’s Tea Shop, which took over from the Pot & Pineapple‡‡ in 1799, was famous for its ices)
Tea
Rhubarb & Ginger Cordial  

Sunday Lunch: Salmagundi

I used the recipe in the 17th century The Good Huswives Treasure  (quoted on Wikipedia) as my starting point, and added lots of lettuce and sprouts.  Instead of chicken (which I don’t eat) we used smoked mackerel as the protein, as well as hard boiled eggs, which appear in numerous other salmagundi recipes.  We omitted oysters because of a shellfish allergy‡‡‡, and olives, because I forgot to buy them.  We meant to include broombuds because there is feral broom all over Wellington, but sadly we didn’t see any around our cottage.

And it was delicious and wonderful and just what we all wanted to eat…

Sunday Gala Dinner:

First Course: Swiss Soup Meagre  

There are numerous historical variations of this recipe, dating from the early 18th century, to the late 18th, but generally it calls for you to take any sort of spring greens you can rummage up, saute them in copious amounts of butter, add beaten eggs, and push through a sieve.

We used the one given here as a starting point.  Our vegetables were spinach, lettuce, cabbage, watercress, leeks, and, for a very authentically harvested-from-your-spring-garden touch, onion weed collected from the cottage yard.  You can see the onion weed flowers as garnish.

Second Course:  Salmon mousse and cucumber salad with toast

Main Course: Venison en croute (gluten free)

Dessert: Orange Jelly

Nina made this spectacular jelly in the tiny kitchen, in an antique mould, using vegetarian gelatine.

She was understandably quite pleased with herself when it came out of the mould

Nina had been so excited about making a jelly dessert the whole time we were menu planning that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I absolutely loath jelly. §

So I thought I’d be in food purgatory for the last course, gagging down jelly and pretending to like it.

Happily, it turns out that true homemade jelly, made with vegetarian gelatine, two dozen oranges and no food colouring at all, is an entirely different beast § than the jello we got served at school.

It’s delicious…

Breakfast

Just in case you were wondering, our morning food choices all three days weren’t quite so historic, but we didn’t let our standards slip:

Lace tablecloths, roses, marmalade in fancy bowls, pots of tea and fancily arranged fruit!

And, just because it’s funny, aprons and fancy dresses:

*And she did it all while on crutches!

** I will spare you images of the actual whole hare^.

^And the caption that says “things are getting hare-y”*.

* You have no idea the effort it took to resist that temptation…

*** Which I really just included as an excuse the dial the spices and spiceyness up by a factor of about 400%.  I just can’t believe that a girl who comes from a culture that eats mustard and horseradish would be so overwhelmed by anything but a seriously robust curry – and I like my curries on the robust side.

† We used to joke there should be a ‘People of Moore Wilsons’ website, a la ‘People of Walmart’.  It would feature ladies with 30 artichokes in their cart, and children wearing designer outfits that would cost more than my entire wardrobe.

†† With even more spices!  Because mmmmm….spices.

††† True story.  I couldn’t remember the name of the bread, but I can remember what it means.  So 30 seconds before writing this I was googling ‘devil fart bread’.

‡ These were both made by Nina from recipes from Mary-Anne Boermans’ Great British Bakes.  I’ve gotten their names completely wrong, but I’m definitely not mistaken in how delicious they were….

‡‡  Which is clearly a much better name.  Wouldn’t you rather eat at the Pot & Pineapple than Gunter’s?

‡‡‡ And also because frankly, that sounds a bit much…

§ When I try to eat it my mind becomes absolutely convinced that I’m eating slugs.^

^And you know how I feel about slugs.^^

^^Also, slugs in Hawai’i can carry rat lung disease, so eating one could literally kill you.

§ § Not a slug beast, for starters.