Spicy MoFo Pickled Eggs

3 dozen eggs
4 Cups water
4 Cups distilled white vinegar
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon Pickling Spices
1 Tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 Tablespoon dried minced garlic
2 Tablespoons brown mustard seed
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon hot hungarian paprika
1 Cup pickled jalapeño slices, with brine

Hard boil and peel the eggs (I can't recommend the Instant Pot enough!).  Place in giant glass pickling jar.

Combine all ingredients, bring to a boil, and pour over eggs.  Make sure all the solids make it in in case there is leftover liquid.

Cap, refrigerate, and let pickle for at least a week.

Hoods and head coverings

Eventually I want to run a small workshop on simple head coverings that would take only a couple of hours to make with very limited skills.  Here are a couple of examples that people are interested in:

Viking (Skjoldehamn) hood

- thorough study

- pattern

- full wardrobe study

- another pattern with measurements

- with decorations
Someone else's instructions:  measure from nose to back of head, then shoulder to top of head that gives you hood size (add +2" to each measure) the shoulder squares are then the same as the nose to back of head measure. With care it can all be cut (and sewn) from one single piece of fabric but separate squares make the seams nicer.

Jorvik (woman's viking) hood

- 10th century silk cap

- Jorvic and Liripipe hoods

St. Birgitta's Huva (cap)

- another tutorial

- tutorial with videos

Cofia y tranzado
- from a simple rectangle

- covered with a second veil

- study of portraits

- another study

Assorted headwear for sale

Beer Pickled Eggs

On the recommendation of the tea lady at the Hornwood archery event, I decided to make beer eggs. I started by hard boiling the eggs with an Instant Pot based on the recommendation of my friend Cassie.  They peeled like a dream!  Then I made pickling spice (because I was too lazy to go buy it) and followed this recipe for the actual pickling juice.  This is how I adjusted them for the jars I had that only fit 7 eggs each.  Since you aren't actually drinking the solution, the eggs should still be keto with minimal traces of carbs, but you might want to avoid if you are allergic to wheat.


INGREDIENTS

14 eggs, hard boiled and peeled

1.5 Cups white vinegar
8 oz Budweiser Reserve Copper Lager
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
1 tablespoon pickling spice

PICKLING SPICE

1 tablespoon brown mustard seed
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 bay leaf
1 mexican cinnamon stick
3 cloves (the ones you shove in oranges at christmas)
1 tbsp dried minced garlic (because I misread the clove part)
couple of shakes of nutmeg (instead of the allspice)

RECIPE

- Borrow gallon Instant Pot from friend.
- Fill with one layer of eggs (about 15) and 1 cup of water.  Close lid and vapor valve.
- Use EGG setting to hard boil eggs.  It  takes a couple of minutes to reach pressure, then it will count down 5 minutes. Once done, open valve to release steam.
- Place eggs in cold water in fridge to cool.

- Place all spices in grinder and turn into a powder. Place in air tight container. Can be stored for a month, but will lose potency with time.

- Combine vinegar, beer, parsley, and pickling spice in pot on stove and bring to a mild boil and remove from stove.

- Shell eggs, wonder how you have shelled 180 eggs this year without going to jail for murder, and divide into two jars.

- Pour liquid over eggs and try to distribute the solids evenly.

- Lid jars and place in fridge.

- Let pickle for minimum of three days.  If you go longer, flip the jars once a week so top and bottom eggs get better contact with liquid.

Red Beet Eggs, Kelda Edition

RECIPE

2 cans 15oz sliced beets, saving the juices

1/2 cup dried onion

1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp whole cloves (about 30)
1 tsp salt
33 eggs
2-3 cups water
2 cups apple cider vinegar

• Boil and peel 3 dozen eggs. Donate three eggs to science!  Or have them explode in the pot, because one always commits sepuku.

• Combine the juice from the beets and all the spices and bring to a simmer.  Let sit until onions are reconstituted.

• Alternate layers of sliced beets, eggs, and onions in a gallon pickle jar, trying to get a decent distribution.

• Pour remaining onion mixture, water, and vinegar into jar.  Add some water if you need to reach the shoulder.  Flip lightly a few times to get the liquids mixed in.

• Place in a pot of water (on a stand so the jar doesn't touch the bottom) and heat up until egg mixture is almost boiling, with the lid OFF.  Once hot, remove from heat and replace the lid, let cool at room temperature.  This will help create a vacuum seal once it cools down, after which you can store in the pantry or fridge. 

SCHPIEL

What, the recipe at the beginning?  BURN THE WITCH!

Yeah, it pisses me off when I can't find how to make something until scrolling through seventy three pages of memories and pictures.  I can just add them at the end.

Like I recently posted, I've been getting back into the SCA quite a bit and will be feastocrating a vigil this Pennsic for my friend Kelda.  I saw her at Crown Tourney three weeks ago and was complaining that I had hardboiled 90 eggs and very few were eaten at the event because it was so freakishly hot for early May, so I was thinking about pickling them.  Luckily, she said she loves pickled eggs, so now I've made five dozen for her this week!  The last three dozen are in that beet jar, and the first couple went into Pickled Ramp juice that I got from Astrid at Aethelmeark War Practice a couple of weeks ago.  She said she mostly followed this recipe and they were beyond amazing!  Should do a good job with eggs, too.

After complaining to a coworker about peeling them, he suggested I steam the eggs (I normally bake them when in large quantities) and then tumble them in the bowl after they are cold to lightly "bruise the shells".  This apparently makes even the freshest eggs come off very easily.

Limoncello

So what do you do when you get guilted into participating in a brewing competition and only have four days?  You make a cordial! Limoncello isn't completely "period", but there's enough speculation around it not-not being period.

RECIPE

10 lemons
1 naval orange
1 blood orange
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup water
750ml vodka

• Strip all of the citrus of their gorgeous skins, avoiding as much pith as possible.

• Macerate the peels with enough sugar to extract a lot of the oils through abrasion.

• Transfer sugared peels to a sealed container that can be closed and rubbed, like a ziplock freezer bag, along with half a cup of water and half a cup of vodka, and place in hot-but-not-boiling water for a few hours to coax more oils to release.  I used a closed steamer basket to keep the bag from touching the bottom of the pot.

• Let sit in a dark place for a couple of days (or as long as possible) to continue extracting.
• Throw the mixture into a blender for further maceration.

• Extract all the liquid from the peels by passing through a sieve and then a fabric filter (like a clean bar towel or cheese cloth).
• Throw the peel solids in the blender with enough water and/or vodka and extract three more times.  Between each iteration, taste to see which of the three is necessary.  Later extractions will get mellower, sweeter, and less tart.

• Once you have enough liquid and are pleased with the flavor profile, make sure you have filtered as much of the solids. I didn't manage to get it to go through a coffee filter because of the combination of oils and water surface tension.

SCHPIEL

I had a blast participating at the Brewer's Competition at AE War Practice XXX, despite having no idea of what I was getting myself into.  I've had experience in the past with making a simple strawberry cordial and krupnik, but they take at least a couple of weeks to get a proper extraction.  This one only took three days in a cupboard and a couple of hours the first and last days for peeling and filtering.

It went well; I won the cordial competition!  Mostly because I was the only entry, but I got very good reviews despite that.  I got a little medallion from Anna Leigh at court and a sweet bar rag that I plan on embroidering with the event name.

Oddly enough, I never blogged about the Strawberry Ghosts (Pennsic 2014) or the Mexican Krupnik (Pennsic 2017) that were also very well received.

Strawberry Ghosts were pretty fantastic!  I put a pound of frozen strawberries in a container covered with vodka and left them in a closet for four weeks.  Eventually I was left with the souls of the strawberries in a beautiful liquid to which I added I think a cup of simple syrup and called it a day.  The leftover strawberry corpses were just little bursts of vodka that were very entertaining to eat.

The krupnik was for a competition at Caledonia that I also happened to win.  To the best of my knowledge, I stewed a pound of honey with cacao nibs, chili peppers, and dried mangos, and ultimately mixed it with Luksusowa potato vodka.  I got a nifty sipping crown out of it and I need to organize this year's competition (because I completely forgot to do it last year >.>)

Oh yeah!  Almost forgot.  I also volunteered to help run the Boozy Food division at next year's War Practice...