Hello guys and welcome back to Ancient Artisans where we're in this wonderful
setting known as the earth house and we're here with Caroline from Pario
Gallico which is a historical food catering company and Caroline can you
tell us about some of these wonderful's the spread that we've got in front of us?
Yes certainly well I would like to begin with the what I call the blood bread
call it black bread as well, yes there is real blood in it but from pigs okay
no sacrifice? No sacrifices! It's actually a real archeological
experiment, it's unfortunately not Iron Age which
is the food I present today it's based on a Viking find made in Sweden where a
flatbread basically was found in a grave and after they analyzed this it
contained animal blood and a very strange type of yeast that you can find in ales
beers or breweries which makes sense for all the or the historical bread I will
be making and made even the sweet one but for my taste afterwards is actually
not using yeast but using the ale bone so the sediment at the bottom of the keg of
ale when you brew to raise your bread okay and what just what's the difference
between the blood bread and and these breads here then? Well that's the
difference of rye flour wheat flour but essentially the interest is you don't
have to kill an animal to make blood bread black pudding if you want you can
just like the Maasai tribe in Africa or the Mongols things like that in
different culture puncture the neck of an animal take a bit of blood cauterize
and here they go and I'm trying to present that seasonality is very
important and we are really at the end end of winter end of spring so you can't
kill your animals anymore for they will give you milk or eggs
babies and labour in the fields so that's a good way of having iron and nutrients
added to your diets without killing anything. This bread I'm going to be
honest appeals to me more.
Tell us about this one? This one is what you would maybe call a brioche type of bread we call it an
enriched bread it's exactly the same as usual wheat flour bit of water pinch of
salt but you add butter and eggs the new ones that you have and fruits that you
kept from the winter, prunes, dried cherries, elderberries and flax seeds for
example to give a nutty taste so very much like your brioche with a bit less
butter, I have to say. I'm going to I'm going to try an ancient piece of bread here
then hopefully not from the era 5,000 years old oh that's beautiful
the fruits at that real sweetness to it as well don't know which is beautiful. Of
course you will have honey you're right but if you don't have honey just dried fruits
are so sweets for ancient palates but it will really makes a big difference at
the end of a meal. Mmm well I've noticed that the children are really enjoying
this one and they do look appetizing I notice you put Moorish on it what does
that contain biscuits? Oh yes they are they are not crunchy biscuits I think
you will try one maybe for you? if you insist.
Oh yeah I really do they are made out of broad beans that replace a Celtic bean
that we really struggled to find nowadays in in modern shops so broad
beans wheat flour flax seeds really I really do love them and butter and honey
basically when you don't have a lot of grain left in your larder or your granary
you will use any kind of pulses and reduce them into flour or puree them to
add to breads or porridges or things like that. I mean that's that's really lovely
that's quite savoury actually would go nice with some cheese as well. And
you notice that I have some cheese? I do! This this is quite an interesting
arrangement really because I think our ideas might be that the the food would
have been really bland but here you're showing us that actually it's
remarkably appetizing. Thank you yes that's one of the ideas that's really
what I want to transmit to everyone you don't have to have just the same boring
gruel or porridge and you hear that all the time through the reenacting world or
even you have even for historians archaeologists and cooks as well you can
make something very simple but very tasty and you have native herbs if I may for
example you have wild garlic you have salt so salt wild garlic, thyme and sage,
flax seeds, roasted barley malt and if you think about mustard seeds cumin even
coriander you can have them. Wow yeah so they were importing this? Well they
were native to Britain but if you want to go to imports oh you can have
black pepper from India through the Romans so you can trade with Romans and
you do and you go so much further but I actually hid it but I'm well posh
enough to have a bit of glassware and olive oil so as an Iron Age British
person that would be a sign of well contact with the Roman World certainly
and a fair amount of wealth I have to say. Grey well this is just fascinating
because I never knew that mustard seeds were in Britain at the time which is
great so I've learned a lot from you today thank you so much Caroline and
thank you for letting me eat all of your food and thank you again for joining us
guys we'll see you next week for another episode of ancient artisans