EAT MEDIEVAL: A TASTE OF THE PAST

Interactive online 5-day cookery course | £99 per person (Students 30% off)

A partnership between Blackfriars Restaurant and Durham University’s Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), Northern England: steeped in history and working with the best of modern cuisine. 

Medieval food was one of the great cuisines of the world: sophisticated and a wonderful mixture of local ingredients and spices from the caravans and traders across the Steppes, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean.

During this week-long online course, we’ll take you on a gastronomic journey through 15 recipes from the earliest medieval recipe collection, dating from 1170, originally composed by the monks at Durham Cathedral Priory. We’ll move from spiced ginger sauce to herb relishes, and from pepper and garlic condiments, to accompany all manner of meat, fish and vegetables, to a medieval spiced wine, the amazing digestif Hypocras. 

With the help of professional chefs, you’ll get top tips on how to prepare the dishes, cooking techniques, and balancing flavours. This isn’t re-enactment cooking but learning how to bring a ‘Taste of the Past’ to life! At the end of the week we’ll give you a set of recipes for a dinner party or medieval banquet that you can cook at home. 

Our academic experts will take you through the history of the period and reveal just how much we can know about the past through its food. 

Blackfriars is the perfect venue for the course. Housed in the medieval buildings of a Dominican Priory, the culinary team under its owner Andy Hook, joins forces with Professor Giles Gasper and colleagues from Durham University and further afield, to bring you this course of sauces. 

WHERE: This is an online course for you to enjoy from the comfort of your own kitchen!

ACCESS: Before the course starts, you’ll receive a code for pages on our website. The first code will unlock your shopping list, and some substitutes for the more unusual ingredients so you can buy the necessary food you’ll be cooking at home. The second code will unlock the pre-recorded films – from chefs and scholars, as well as suggested reading and other online resources

TIMES: online resources will be available throughout the week of the course. We have two live cookery sessions within the week and Zoom Q&A sessions as well with consideration given to participants in diverse time-zones. In terms of allocating yourself sufficient time to enjoy the course, there will be a daily introduction and summary, two or three short academic films plus short films of the chefs cooking – both live and pre-records – for which we suggest you might allow up to two hours in total per day. And time for your own cooking – so up to 3 or 4 hours per day. 

INCLUDES: Each day will include recipes and explanatory films on medieval food and culture, as well conversation with Andy, Giles, and their friends. 

By the end you’ll be able to … Eat Medieval!