Colegio de Iberio II

 I taught two classes on 16th century Portugal at the Colegio de Iberio II

One on Pasteis de Leite 

 

and the other on the gowns from the St Auta Altarpiece

Baronial Anniversary 25 Feast

I was in charge of the feast for the 25th Anniversary of Southron Gaard.  The concept was a Feast of Favourites where I would cook the food that people in the Barony had enjoyed the most over the years.  I created a Google Form where I asked people to nominate their favourite dishes and any special memories that went with the food.  I also had several verbal suggestions.  People were most excited by lozenge, mushroom pie and variants on cheese pie.  It became obvious that a course of pies was necessary!  The Stewards were keen to do a peacock soteltie and while it is very difficult to get a peacock to cook but chicken was easy.  We decided as part of this soteltie to do a gilded chicken as is found in Pleyn Delit.  On the night we added edible glitter to the coating to make it extra gilded!  One of the most popular dessert suggestions was pears in red wine so I made sure we had plenty of pears. I ended up cooking them in the slow cooker which worked nicely.  The full menu for this feast with references can be found here.

Photo of one of the many test cooks for this feast

Chemise Mark 2

I did not like how the first chemise/camisa I made was sitting wiht the dress. The fabric i had chosen was too heavy to sit like the chemise in the portrait. It was also very itchy! A friend suggested that the linen fibres had been cut to a similar length to the cotton and so I was being spiked by many sharp linen threads.

I therefore chose to make a new chemise out of a much lighter fabric, which was a cotton voile. This is much cheapier than a linen and finer than any linen sold in my country. I felt this made it a good alternative to use. I used exactly the same construction method as the first so hand sewed the entire garment. I found a different gold trim for the neckline and I much prefer the colour of gold in these two the first one!

New chemise front and back

Chemise neckline detail

Layer 4 Dinner!

I will come back to do a write up of Layer 2 and 3 but for the moment here is Layer 4.  The recipes can all be found on this document.  Here I created a Spanish/Portuguese dinner for a friend and I of Moorish Chicken, Moorish Eggplant and a Pottage of Onions with Portuguese custard tarts for dessert.

The furthest small brown dish is the eggplant, the closest pink dish is the onion and the chicken is on the left by the candle.

Portuguese custard tart!