October 2022 Recap: The Curd Nerd Back At Work
My goals for October were:
Test run the new Pentathlon recipe.
Do the design phase of the gonete and begin sewing. For this, I need to start with a new body block.
Complete the commonplace book spreadsheet content. This is a stretch goal considering just HOW much of Manipulus there is to go through.
Research of the Month: Manipulus Florum. This is a digital version of a well known florilegium from the 15th century. It’s in Latin, so I’m going to be translating as I read but I’m looking forward to having the Latin readily available.
Working on my Pentathlon recipe got me back into baking bread, for which I am immensely thankful. I really enjoy baking bread, but I never remember to set aside the time unless I have a purpose for it. Evan and I don’t eat a ton of bread in our mundane lives, so that rarely happens. For this recipe, I started with a fairly standard 100% whole wheat loaf. For my whole wheat breads, I like a slightly higher hydration percentage, around 80% instead of the 75% I use for white loaves. I find this helps encourage gluten development and support the yeast with the harder to digest whole grain flour. I really like making these loaves. They turn out slightly sweet and nutty in addition to the sour. My usual batches make two loaves, so I used one to check in on my bread skills since it’s been a little while and one went in the freezer until it was time to test the recipe. Bea and Maggie are coming over for Crown Tourney weekend, so I’ll make the first full test run for them then.
My starter was a little slow out of the gate and I probably needed a slightly longer autolysis period for this batch. For those who don’t bake bread, autolysis is a chemical process that takes place in a short resting period after the wet and dry ingredients are first mixed into a dough. This time is very important to help relax the various protein and sugar structures in the wheat to help properly develop the gluten during kneading. Because of these two factors, the slightly immature leaven and slightly too short autolysis period, my loaves came out a little denser than I would have liked, but I’m still pleased with the result. I could have made four small loaves out of this and been equally happy too. For my next attempt, I’ll try that. I also tried two different methods of scoring based on the findings in El universal convite and was much happier with the X shaped scoring than I was the two straight lines.
The next phase of the recipe project was one of my favorites. I decided to do a taste test of a variety of cheeses that might fit the bill for what I wanted to accomplish in this recipe. This basically turned into me eating cheese for dinner one night while Evan was in Michigan visiting his mother, but it’s a life choice I can get behind. Be warned: this is where I put on my food professional hat and it’s about to get really nerdy about cheese.
The recipe I’m working on, called Almodrote que es Capriotada, specifically calls for “good cheese of Aragon.” Aragonese cheeses, as a category, are incredibly fascinating. Aragon is hospitable to all three kinds of major dairy ruminants (cattle, goats, and sheep)- the weather can be incredibly variable, making cultivated crops a challenge but for the right animals, a breeze (pun intended, Aragon also gets some extreme wind conditions). Major environmental factors include the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains and the Ebro river. Aragon is one of the regions in Spain that greatly benefitted from innovations in irrigation brought by the Romans and Moors but also has large areas of dry farming, which works well for grains and hay, further supporting the livestock in the area.
The cheeses themselves reflect many common young mountain cheese traditions. They tend to be aged anywhere from one month to a year, are made often with blends of milk types, and can be anywhere from bloomy rind soft cheeses in the summer to light and airy hard cheeses. This presents two really interesting challenges- what cheese would be the best choice and which one am I actually going to pick? The most well known Aragonese cheese is Tronchón, mentioned in Don Quixote. A young Tronchón will melt exactly as this recipe needs. However, finding such a Tronchón is a question of some amount of luck. Other options, like Queso Ibérico are just as interesting and sometimes easier to find but don’t necessarily melt as well.
My personal favorite Aragonese cheese is called Urgelia. It is a semi-firm cows milk cheese, aged about 3 months with a beautiful, bright orange washed rind and a gorgeous, bouncy texture on the inside. It’s nutty, bright, and approachable and goes with just about anything. If money were no object, Urgelia would be the cheese I chose for this recipe. It is, however, a little pricey and can be hard to find. For a substitute, both from accessibility and financial standing, Fontina does work in its place. Because this recipe is going to be presented at Kingdom Arts and Sciences Festival, and according to the bid committee on a Facebook post, the average attendance is about 227 people, having something I could make in some bulk is an important consideration. Thankfully, Trader Joe’s comes in for the win again and has good prices on both Fontina and Queso Ibérico, so I decided to try a blend of the two.
I spent some time on the design decisions for my gonete but that’s basically where the project stopped, for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, I need a new body block before I can proceed with the sewing. This means I need some help making said new body block and I am hoping we can get to that on sewing day. Second, I found a few more sources! My spreadsheet had been fleshed out in September but adding to it was a good idea. I’m happy with the number and variety of sources I have for the project, but I also don’t say no to more data.
Working on my commonplace book took up most of my month. The Manipulus Florum was just as challenging as I expected. First, the website is unwieldy. Second, there is SO much information to go through and it all has to be run through Google translate first. By the end of the month, I was about 85% done with assembling the specific excerpts I wanted to include. I do think in some ways this process is going to make for a more authentic experience of a commonplace book. The translating a translation and stealing from one source instead of the original is completely on par with what many people did for these books. I’m learning some interesting information about what this particular author considered important and how he communicated those values through his book. That declaration of values is one of the things I’m going for in mine, much like Queen Elizabeth I did in hers as well but balancing a source that was clearly written by and for a man with a resultant product by and for a woman is proving just as intriguing as I thought it would. I will say, Seneca writes like he knows someone someday is going to do a book report on him and Saint Augustine thinks very highly of his own intellect. I did, however, find a new favorite insult in this pursuit: I wish you the contempt of all those whose parents wished you plenty. Thanks Seneca.
All in all, I believe the commonplace book project will make the perfect centerpiece for Pentathlon that I hoped it would. I ordered a small bureau box a few months back to help the display and it finally arrived. I have a slightly obsession with boxes, but I honestly think this one is a great addition to my kit. I can keep a notebook, my various kinds of pens, ink, and my A&S favors in it and it’s easy to transport and beautiful. I really look forward to presenting it at KASF.
On to my not goal related things:
A conversation with friends this month did give me something I struggle with a lot: class ideas. Every time a University rolls around, I find myself trying to come up with what I want to teach in an attempt to teach as often as I can. That goal is because teaching actually really intimidates me and I’m trying to face that head on. But a discussion on cooking A&S and how to best present it got me thinking about my currently not used set of skills presenting food in a variety of mediums and I came up with a series of classes on food presentation and possibly to include food photography. These are in very preliminary stages, but I think a lot of people might benefit from it.
I also started working on a yarn project for a holiday gift that’s going well. I have high hopes of finishing that up in ample time for December and will post pictures and a discussion once it’s completed.
The Oak and editing is very much underway. I spent a good amount of time on existing articles this month and I think those are ready to go live on our new site as soon as that’s up. I also began my process of soliciting new articles or talking to people about submissions. I’m trying very hard to have this be a very collaborative process based on how each artisan envisions their own art displayed. It’s giving me a lot of opportunity to talk to new people and meet them and geek out about how varied arts and sciences are. I’m really happy I took on this position and I think it’s going to be a very rewarding form of service going forward.
Last but not least, I got myself a new feast gear box late last month (and some new feast gear to go inside it, but that hasn’t arrived yet). It’s a very modern looking but simple wood box so I decided to make it less innocuous by doing a single coat of walnut stain. I love how it turned out. It’s a little patchy but I finished it with a few layers of Tru-Oil to seal it. I’m still hunting for some handles to go on the short sides- I want to get some hinged handles so that it stores a little bit easier but finding those that look decent with the existing hardware and not obtrusively modern is a challenge.
Totally unrelated to much, but Tala also posted a great little interview with a Spanish professor of Hebrew studies that heavily implies that Maimonides was actively trying to learn Spanish/an unidentified Romance language and that might be the coolest thing I’ve learned all month.
My goals for November are:
Complete the commonplace book sheet, the translations, and begin setting up the book itself. This will require some additional practice with my goose quill before I decide what sort of pen I’m going to use for the project. I’m thinking of picking up a reed pen to try out as well but the quill would be amazing if I could make it work.
Get the gonete constructed. This doesn’t need to be completely finished, as I still need to do some research on how I’m going to close it, but I’d like to at least get it wearable in November.
Begin research and shopping for the chopines and quiver. I’m going to need leather for both of these, as well as a stamp for tooling the chopines (the extant ones all seem to either have some stamps to decorate the leather or be covered in velvet, and I’m going with the former for durability) and I’d like to get these moving so all five Pentathlon items are in progress before the end of the year.
Finally finish my Persona Challenge belt. Hakon and I have decided to get together the weekend after Thanksgiving to do our non-garb project day and I’m determined to have the belt finished by the end of November.
Research of the Month: The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe by Ann Blair, 2010.