Teaching, inspiring others, and discovering new inspirations have been the focus of May and June. May's Gardens of Thyme, at Elchenburg Castle, was the premier of my over the fire cooking class. From start to finish, I reviewed with my students how to create a safe fire space, how to build a fire, how to build coals around your cooking pots and what kind of equipment you need for over fire cooking. I also prepared two dishes there. One was a caramelized onion and blue cheese tart. My second dish was a single pot dish which with some tweaking became the Coleworts and Salmon Pottage whose preparation and presentation helped me win the Grand Champion prize at Trial By Fire in July - more on that later.
My second teaching event was Summer University, also at Elchenburg Castle, where I debuted a new class about how to research pre-1000 foods and preparation methods. This class evolved out of my own research building first an herbal list for the Anglo-Saxons and then justifying my choice of ingredients (veggies and meats) to support the development of my conjectural recipes. I've put a copy of the outline on my webpage https://sites.google.com/site/scaannorahall/my-teaching-topics. I have received a great deal of feedback and encouragement with this line of recipe development. I hope to extend my recipe repertoire.
Before I can get into too many details about this ongoing research and experimentation, I need to finish my pictures and stories about the Gulf War cooking adventures. Thank you for reading - I hope to see you at the fire.
