Renaissance Pleasure Faire Cuisine: Good Queen Bess Might be Surprised : Foods: The annual Southland event offers a menu that reflects modern, local tastes as well.

In the beginning, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire was a money-raising event for a radio station, and the Renaissance motif was just for fun. Authentic recreation of the past was only one part of the idea.

Maybe not even the most important part. For a lot of faire-goers, the thrill seemed to be dressing up in costume and behaving as rowdy, bawdy, haughty “lordes and ladyes.” A surprising number of people, it developed, were in love with the biting tone of voice traditional to the Shakespearean stage. In fact, Richard Harris would still seem to be a major role model in our town, to judge from the Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

Elizabethanism did not even seem to be obligatory in the early days. It was the ‘60s, and Hobbits and belly-dancers were entirely welcome; the 1967 faire sometimes looked as if it would turn into a psychedelic “Be-In.” Since those days the faire has tried to clean up its motif. Booths have had to meet some minimal standards of appropriateness to the Elizabethan period.

Early on, however, quite a few things had become perennial features. It wouldn’t be a Renaissance Pleasure Faire without them. Above all, this is true of the food.

In the early days of the faire, the idea was obviously that Elizabethan food must have been hearty and rowdy and crude, involving a lot of tossing of bones over your shoulder for the wolfhounds to gnaw on. Turkey drumsticks are still a big favorite for this reason.

The rest of the menu was filled out with folk foods and street foods, mostly from England, on the theory that the common people of a country have always eaten the same. It’s not true, though. You can’t have Shepherd’s Pye until you have potatoes, and the Elizabethans didn’t. You can’t have ice cream or banger sausage until they’ve been invented. They had toads in Elizabeth I’s England, but not Toad in the Hole.

Non-British street foods were allowed at the Renaissance Faire too, on the questionable theory that 16th-Century London was a cosmopolitan place where piroshki and falafel could have been found, somewhere or other. In fact, there is no evidence that anybody, anywhere, was making falafel in the 16th Century.

It seems strange that these decisions should have been made ad hoc. They didn’t have to be. We actually know a great deal about what the Elizabethans ate, from several cookbooks written around their time.

We know, for instance, that they ate a lot of highly spiced dishes, heavy with cinnamon and ginger in the mincemeat tradition. They ate lots of pies; the Cornish pasty is the most authentic Elizabethan tradition at the faire, except for the potatoes in it. They ate pease porridge (pea soup), and vegetables suited to the English climate such as cabbage and parsnips. Bread and cheese and ale were central to their diet.

More and more people are aware of this. Maybe the faire will start insisting on more authenticity in the food booths. Maybe people will start looking forward to the faire so they can visit the Maumenye Ryall stall, and nobody will look for the Churros stall any more.

What am I saying? It wouldn’t be a Renaissance Pleasure Faire without churros! Forsooth, it wouldn’t!

The Renaissance Pleasure Faire runs through June 10 in San Bernadino.

SCONES

3 cups flour

3 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1/2 cup butter

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 cup golden raisins or currants

Sift flour, baking powder, sugar and cream of tartar into bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Blend egg and milk, then stir into butter mixture with raisins. Gather dough into ball and turn onto lightly floured surface. Knead lightly 10 times. Roll or pat 3/4-inch thick. Cut with floured 2 1/2-inch round cutter. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees 20 minutes. Serve warm with butter and jam. Makes 8 to 10 scones.

CORNISH PASTIES

1 medium potato, peeled and diced

1 small turnip or rutabaga, peeled and diced

1 tablespoon oil

1 small onion, diced

Salt, pepper

1/2 pound beef tenderloin tip steak, diced

1 1/2 recipes pastry for (two-crust) pie

1/2 cup beef gravy

1 egg, beaten

Cook potato and turnip in small amount of boiling salted water until tender-crisp. Drain and set aside. Heat oil in small skillet and saute beef until medium rare. Remove beef and set aside.

Add onion to skillet and saute until tender. Add potato, turnip and beef. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from heat.

On floured board, roll out pastry to about 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into 8 (6-inch) circles. Place about 1/4 cup vegetable and meat filling down center of each pastry circle. Top with 1 tablespoon beef gravy.

Brush edges with some beaten egg. Fold over and press edges with tines of fork to seal. Make few slits on top. Brush tops with more beaten egg. Place pasties on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees 5 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and continue baking another 30 to 40 minutes, depending on size of pieces inside turnover. Serve hot at dinner or cold in picnic basket with brown mustard. Makes 8 turnovers.

TOAD IN A HOLE

1 (12-ounce) package refrigerated croissant mix

1/3 pound ground veal

1/3 pound ground pork

1/3 pound ground chicken

1 cup white bread crumbs

2 eggs

Dash mace

Salt, pepper

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

1 tablespoon chopped shallots

1/3 cup whipping cream

1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

Spread dough into 4 (4x7-inch) rectangles. Mix veal, pork, chicken, bread crumbs, eggs, mace, salt and pepper to taste, parsley, shallots and whipping cream. Divide among rectangles. Shape pastry into loaf, moisten edges and seal. Place pastries seam side down on baking sheet. Brush tops with beaten egg yolk to glaze. Bake at 450 degrees 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Cover with foil if crust is browning too fast. Serve with mustard if desired. Makes 4 servings.

KONSTANTIN’S PIROSHKI

1 package dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

3/4 cup warm milk

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 to 2 cups flour

Beef Filling

Dissolve yeast in warm water in medium bowl. Stir in warm milk, sugar, salt and enough flour to make dough easy to handle. Turn dough into lightly floured board. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl, turn over once so greased side of dough is up. Cover with towel. Let rise in warm place until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Roll out dough on floured board to 1/16th-inch thickness. Cut into 10 (5-inch) circles. Place 1/4 cup filling on each circle. Bring ends of dough together and seal edges; shape piroshki so that they’re plump in center and tapered on both ends. Place seam side down on greased baking sheet. Cover lightly with wax paper. Let rise until puffy, 40 to 50 minutes.

Bake at 375 degrees, 18 to 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve hot with dollop of sour cream and/or mustard. Makes 10.

Beef Filling

1 tablespoon butter or margarine

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

3/4 pound lean ground beef

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

1 teaspoon dill weed

1 hard-cooked egg, finely chopped

Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Saute onion and garlic until tender, about 5 minutes. Add beef, cook until browned, stirring constantly. Stir in salt, white pepper, dill weed and egg. Makes about 3 cups.