Cook Like a Viking

Daniel Serra is a culinary archaeologist from Sweden specializing in the food of the golden age of Vikings. He'll be passing through Chicagoland in early October, and as part of his tour, he has arranged a cooking class featuring Viking foods and methods for October 8, in Mount Prospect. Thought at least someone here would be interested. Here's the link to his FB event page. https://www.facebook.com/events/1744586122474818/

I figured I'd report on this, in case Daniel Serra ever comes through town again and offers another chance to do this, because it was a good time -- and the food was, on the whole, wonderful.

Only a couple other LTHers showed up for this -- but between the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Hiking Vikings (some of them all the way from Pennsylvania), there was a good crew of adventurous folks who were happy to tackle everything from making fresh cheese to stuffing sausage casings using cows' horns (so really and truly sausage horns).

The group was divided in two, and we tackled different dishes, but we then got to sit down and eat them all together. Food ranged from tasty to really good. About half of the fresh cheese was flavored with thyme and served as cheese with Viking bread, while the rest went into the kale, leek, and cheese soup (which was lovely). The bread we made was created from mashed, boiled, split yellow peas with enough water and barley flour mixed in to make a stiff dough, and then flat "cakes" were patted out by hand and pan fried. The sausage was made with pork, beef, and bacon. There was an outrageously good bacon, leek, and barley soup. Both goat hearts and lamb hearts were stuffed with herbs and berries and roasted, and were delicious. (Having just had my first beef heart at the LTH picnic, I was amused to be dining on two other hearts so soon afterwards.) Roasted turnips with butter were the only veg other than the kale in one soup and the leeks in both soups.

All the recipes came from Daniel's book -- in case you're intrigued by the descriptions of the dishes but missed the class.
http://chronocopiapublishing.com/authors/daniel-serra
A lot of fun -- better than expected food -- some interesting history -- nice people -- and even had leftovers to take home. So a thoroughly well-spent day.