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If I was going to have a proper blog (like, a focused-on-a-single-subject blog, rather than my LJ, which contains pretty much whatever has caught my attention at the moment), it'd be on the history of food and particularly of historical cooking and cookbooks. My collection of medieval cookbooks is now up to nearly 20 (either in Middle English or translated; I could have more if I extended it to include cookbooks I can't read, but that's not very useful), and that's not even counting the tremendous wealthy of 18th and 19th-century cookbooks still extant. And I love to take a medieval recipe, parse it, and mess around with it in the kitchen until I've made a good dish out of it.

I'd love to cook an authentic medieval feast for friends, but a) I know a lot of vegetarians, and most existing medieval recipes (by dint of only the nobility keeping cookbooks) are meat-heavy, and b) even recipes from as recently as the 1920s and 30s often taste a bit odd to the modern palate, and so it's pretty much restricted to people who will try just about anything. I could probably get around the first (there are enough Lent recipes to put a fair number of vegetarian dishes on the table, though vegan would be harder), but the second would be tricky.

(I am in the process of handwashing jmpava's grandparents' fancy china. Dinner service for ten, or tea for a dozen. I seriously need to have a dinner party, or at least afternoon tea.)

Lamb Pita Salad

This was meant to be regular lamb pitas, but a) we didn't really have enough pitas left, and b) they were a tiny bit dry and therefore cracked when I tried to open them. So instead I served it in salad form, which worked quite well (and also let me use a higher ratio of vegetables to meat/bread).

( Lamb Pita Salad )

The seasoned lamb mixture here helps keep the lamb moist and tender, and the flavor of lamb is strong enough to stand up to the onion and garlic. I think it'd also be great for lamburgers, served on a toasted roll with lettuce, tomato and yogurt sauce. Or lamb meatballs, over lemony tomato-orzo salad. Mmm.