Winter Court Feast 2012

Winter Court is the Barony of Three Rivers’ winter event. It’s for the baronial family and associated persons – it’s not an official Kingdom event, and it functions as the baronial Christmas/yule gathering. As such, it’s the place where we try new things, safely and with a small gathering. It’s also the host of our annual auction, one of the major fundraisers for the barony, during the feast.

I’ve wanted to do Winter Court feast for a few years now. If you’re going to be a virgin feast steward, this is the place to do it. Besides which, I had in my head an idea having to do with the fact that we do the auction as feast entertainment. Why not do a feast mostly consisting of finger food? We want people to be paying attention to the auctioneers, not looking down at their plates.

In Sept at a local meeting, I walked into a group of friends gently pushing one of our newer members into putting in a bid for Winter Court, and I said, hey, I’ve been wanting to do that feast if you need a feast steward. Annnnd, done. Bids were due 4 days later, so I threw together my 3 courses with the theme of fingerfood, pulling from memory from favorite feasts and medieval cookbooks. I had two joint goals – mostly finger foods, and comfort foods that weren’t going to be strange or push anyone’s boundaries. This is our version of Christmas dinner, and I didn’t want any “what’s *that*?”

We got the bid, obviously. I had it on the condition that I add a course, and add more bacon, and do a below the salt feast. I can do all those things.

Now that it’s over, I’m glad I did it. I may do another one some day. I don’t really need to – One was my goal, and that’s now accomplished. But there may be an event some day that I go, “oooh, yeah, I want to do that feast.”

Note Bene: Most of these recipes are period-ish. At least 75% of them have documentable medieval antecedents, though the form may be somewhat changed.

RECIPE LIST

On table:

Bread, cheese, dried apples & apricots, spiced nuts, pickles

First course

Spinach & Cheese pielets

Chicken Lombard pielets

Beef Hedgehogs, w/ aoili & red wine sauces

Roasted green beans

Second course

Pita & hummus

Sliced lamb on a bed of greens

Chicken shish kabobs