Feeding a Templar Knight

The Templars are known for their piety, their ferocity in battle, their wealth, and even their diet. A diet that, according to some, gave them an extraordinarily long life. So, in a bid to preserve my youth for a while longer, I'll eschew Botox and fillers and instead create a medieval boar with camelina sauce, this time in Tasting History. So I was back and forth deciding what to do for this episode, since some days the

knight

s ate meat and other days they were almost completely vegetarian. In the end, I opted for meat because it allowed me to make a sauce that would use many of the spices they had access to during the Crusades in the Holy Land.

So I'm actually using two sources, both 14th century French sources, written in the last days of the Knights Templar. The first is from 'Le Viandier de Taillevient' and is for "Sanglier: Fresh wild boar. Boiled in wine and water and cooked again; eaten with camelina sauce." Today, the term venison usually refers to deer or elk, but back then it could refer to any hunted game animal, such as rabbit, deer, badger, or wild boar, as this recipe calls for. The interesting thing about this dish is the camelina sauce and there were camelina sauce recipes from France to England and Italy throughout the Middle Ages, and the only thing they all had in common was their color.

They were all reddish brown, which should have been the color of camelin, a wool made from camel hair. It was such a popular sauce that you could even buy it ready-made on the streets of Paris, where our second source, 'Le Menagier de Paris', comes from. It is one of my favorite medieval sources because of the way it is written. Apparently it's an old man writing to his new, very young wife, giving her instructions on how to please him in every sense of the word, including making camelina sauce. “Cameline. Note that in Tournai to make cameline ginger, cinnamon, saffron and half a nutmeg are ground, moistened with wine and then removed from the mortar and then crumbs of toasted white bread soaked in cold water are ground in a mortar.” with wine and strainer.

Then boil everything and finish with brown sugar, and that makes the winter cameli. In summer they do the same thing, but it is not cooked at all." Now there are many variations of this sauce. Many use vinegar, some use sugar or currants, many different spices and then of course they are boiled and not boiled, and as It's winter, I'm going to use boiled meat once you have the wild boar, you can cook it immediately, but I notice that it dries out the meat, so it's better to heat a little olive oil in a frying pan and then fry the meat a little for a few minutes. each side.

Once it's nicely crusted, you can remove it from the pot and add equal parts water and wine. You can use red or white wine for this but I think it really adds more flavor, so that's what I use. Once it's boiling, put the wild boar in and cover the pan for 10 to 15 minutes. You can turn it if you want, but that's not really necessary. Once done, take it out and let it rest. For the camelina sauce you need: a. thick slice of good white bread without crust. This may seem like a strange ingredient for bread with sauce, but in the Middle Ages it was often used to thicken sauces, or egg yolks, sometimes in some recipes, but bread was definitely the most common and works quite well.

A quarter cup or 300 ml of white wine, a quarter cup or 60 ml of red wine, a teaspoon of ginger, two teaspoons of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, a pinch of saffron threads, two tablespoons of brown sugar and a pinch of salt, and you can mix those amounts to your liking. Although cinnamon should be the dominant flavor. So divide the bread into small breadcrumbs and soak it in cold water for a few hours. While it soaks, mix together the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and saffron and add the white wine. Once the bread is soaked, pour the red wine on top and if you want to give the sauce a little flavor, add about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar.

It is very popular in most camelina sauces of the day, but it is not in this recipe, but add it if you want. Then crush the bread and strain it over a frying pan, pass the bread puree through a sieve, then add the mulled wine, place over medium heat and bring to the boil. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes and it will start to thicken. While it thickens, be sure to subscribe to Tasting History and ring the bell to never miss an episode, and follow me on Twitter @TastingHistory1 as we take a look at this supposedly life-giving diet from the Knights Templar.

The Templars, warrior monks charged with protecting pilgrims on their journey to Jerusalem after the First Crusade, as Bernard Declare wrote: "A Knight Templar is truly a

knight

fearless and safe everywhere, because his soul is protected by armor of faith". . Just as his body is protected by steel armor. Therefore, he is double armored and need fear neither demons nor men. With such an introduction, it is not surprising that they became one of the most mythologized groups in medieval Europe, from the idea that they found the Holy Grail, through their supposed worship of the idol Baphomet, to the idea that their diet helped him live twice as long as the average man in the Middle Ages.

Now, the first two don't really need to be debunked, or at least I'm not going to, but the third is what I need. See, the point is that the Templars lived longer than the average bear. Many lived into their late sixties or early seventies, which is double the average life expectancy in the Middle Ages, which was about 35 years, but that also includes a lot of infant mortality. If you stick with that, the average was probably around 50 years old and if you made it to age 20 you would probably make it to age 65, so yeah, it's a little bit longer than average if they live to be 68 or 70, but no. a lot.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that they led a healthy lifestyle, apart from fighting during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries, and were burned alive at the stake as heretics in the 14th century. Both activities were certainly bad for your health, but what were the specific characteristics of this supposedly healthy lifestyle? Luckily they wrote them all down. The Latin Rule, also called the Primitive Rules of the Knights Templar, was a document attributed to the French abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. It was written in 1129 and was based heavily on the Rule of Saint Benedict, which I talked about at length in the video about how a medieval monk could eat, but he was not your average monastic monk.

They fought a lot and traveled a lot more, so they had different lifestyle requirements. They were still monks, but monks with swords. In addition to their white cloak, which symbolized purity in complete chastity, they wore the habit as an ordinary monk would have done, although in Europe, while most monks dressed in wool, "we mercifully decree that, due to the great intensity of the heat that in the East, from Easter to All Saints' Day, out of compassion, and that is in no way a right, a linen shirt will be given to any brother who wants to wear it.

But don't think for a moment. that this type of indulgence will extend to their shoes. “We prohibit pointed shoes and laces, and we forbid all brothers to wear them… because it is common and public knowledge that these abominable things belong to the pagans.” may have been the case in the 13th century, by the 14th century pointed shoes called crakows had become fashionable, and just as modern crocodiles have their enemies, I like to wear them in the kitchen because they are very comfortable. Krakow also had its enemies. In 1394, the monk of Ivasham described "those accursed vices that were half a meter long, so that it was necessary to tie them to the shin with silver chains before they could walk." There are also stories where the point was so long that they climbed and bowed so high that they could no longer use the stairs, so perhaps not the most sensible footwear for a warrior monk.

They now wear white clothes and comfortable shoes, read a Bible passage before eating, and always ate together, especially in pairs, in a kind of "accounting buddy" system. "Because of the scarcity of bowls, the brothers eat two by two, so that one can better study the other, and so that frugality or holy continence is not introduced into the common meal, and so that your friend does not drink too much." You had to make sure that he and you drank exactly the same amount of wine, and many times that wine was watered down. "Because Solomon said... that wine corrupts the wise.

Although after a few glasses of wine I always feel bad." little wiser, or at least more willing to give my unvarnished opinion on things I don't think are the same. What was served to the knights now depended entirely on the day of the week and the time of year when they were to eat meat. three times a week... because it is clear that the habit of eating meat corrupts the body." However corrupt it was, they really appreciated these days of eating meat and as a day of fasting on one of those days would end, they would double the portion of meat the next day.

And on Sunday, all the brothers of the Temple, the chaplains and the clerics, will receive two meat suppers in honor of the holy resurrection of Jesus Christ And the... squires and sergeants will be satisfied with one meal. and they will thank God for that.” You get a meat meal and you will like it! Now, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays they were given two or three meals, almost all of them consisting of vegetables, legumes and bread, and on Friday they were required to eat fasting meat, that is, fish or one of the kinds of meat that the medieval mind considered fish, such as the puffin or the beaver And with the exception of a few days like Christmas, from the Day.

From All Saints' Day in early November until Easter, usually in April, one had to fast almost every day, which meant one meal. But if you were sick, you didn't have to follow these rules and you could eat as much meat as you wanted. There were now many rules about how knights should behave during meals, unlike most monks who had developed a kind of sign language so they didn't have to talk during meals. You must sit at the table, with all humility and submission... Each brother can give a portion of the food served to the other brothers around him, as far as he can stretch his arm, but no further.

Or what today we would simply call good table manners, and they had other good table manners, such as the need to wash one's hands before coming to the table, the need to wash one's table before putting the food on it, and if If you worked outside with your hands, you were not allowed to touch the food at all. However, they also used napkins, but for some reason all the brothers had to fast on bread and water on Good Friday and eat without a napkin. Does anyone know why it could be like this since I couldn't figure it out?

I understand that Good Friday is about suffering, so I can see the bread and water, but not the napkin? It just seems strange. All? If you were at one of these meals you might notice something strange, and it might be one of the brothers sitting on the floor in front of everyone while he was eating, and that meant that he had been naughty because he was sitting on the floor while you were eating. It was penance for a minor sin, but "if the fault is very serious, let him go away from the company of the brothers, so that he does not eat or drink at the table with them, but completely alone." Assuming that you had not sinned and had eaten with your brothers, everyone got up and went to the church to give thanks and you took the half-eaten bread to give to the poor.

You saved all the loaves whole and saved them for the next day, because the poor only wanted you to know the leftovers, not new bread for them, I think. Now, all this food that the knights ate was usually obtained and prepared by the servants. In fact, there was very little a knight could do to get food. You couldn't accept anything from a family member, that was forbidden, and if someone gave you something to eat, especially meat, as a thank you for fulfilling your knightly duties, you had to give it to the person with the most genius.

Job title: Commander of supplies. I want that job title. And if you were tempted to go hunting, that was a no-no. You can pick some fresh vegetables from the field or go fishing, but don't hunt. Especially not with a hawk or hawk, you couldn't even be with someone who was hunting with a hawk or hawk. They are also not allowed to "...enter the forest with a long bow or crossbow to hunt animals or accompany whoever wishes, except for the love of saving it from infidel pagans." Same pagans with pointy shoes, I guess. Although there was an exception to the no hunting rule, and this exception would surely have only applied to the Knights Templar and not other monks, due to the places the knights frequently traveled to.

He comes to surround and seek everything he can devour, his hands against every man and every man's hand against him. It's not just about the lions, foreign travel had to be addressed in general, and when theKnights not in the monastery had to try to follow the rules, especially regarding meat and wine, as strictly as possible, but not for religious reasons. . "so that they may receive a good report from strangers and not sully the dictates of the order by deed or word." So it was like going to dinner at a friend's house and your mother telling you to be on your best behavior so as not to embarrass us, although my mother never added the addendum 'the house you're going to...'. you'.

The shelter must not be without light at night, lest dark enemies lead them into evil…” And they don't say exactly what evil that is, but I guess women were on the list. The gentlemen were very strange with women, they were not allowed to talk to them at all. “Since the company of women is dangerous…” And it specifically says that you are not supposed to kiss any woman under any circumstances, including your “mother, sister, aunt or anyone else.” Big problems, but they also had big problems with a lot of things. Here you have the most fearsome warriors of medieval Europe and they were treated like children. "No brother may bathe, shed blood, take medicine, enter the city or ride a horse without permission; no brother may shorten the leather of his stirrup... or his sword belt... without permission.

No brother may throw his spear without permission, nor will he be able to repair his sword without permission... no brother receives letters from his relative or anyone else, but if he has permission from the commander, the letters can be read to him. lifestyle made you live a few years longer than the average person, but was it really worth it? I'll leave it to you as I review this Pork with Camelina Sauce So if your sauce is reduced by about half, add. salt and sugar and simmer for another five minutes, or until it reaches the desired consistency.

This will never be as thick as ketchup, but will be as thick as barbecue sauce. Then cut the wild boar into slices and drizzle with the sauce. and here we have wild boar with camelina sauce, and according to 'Le Viandier de Taillevient' it is best served with roasted chestnuts, so I take some of those too and I'm going to eat this with some wine that I had left. If you were a Knight Templar in the Holy Land, you might drink something called the Elixir of Jerusalem, which is palm wine mixed with aloe and hemp, and which may have served as a kind of medicine to promote. healing, but I don't have that. palm wine, that's why I drink grape wine.

The head of a carpenter. It's just copper, so it's like a carpenter's cup. Get a lot of sauce because that's the flavor I'm interested in. Hmm! I could definitely see this as a modern sauce. It looks like a fancy barbecue sauce. It's much spicier and not as sweet, so it seems a little fancier, but it is: it has the texture of barbecue sauce. It has pretty much the same flavor profile, especially if you add a little bit of that vinegar to it. It gives it that certain flavor. It's really very good. The wild boar is also excellent, I think the crust on the outside is a bit necessary because now it is not dry at all.

It's great because it's not greasy, like this meat has no fat. It's all muscle, but if you do it right it doesn't dry out and it looks really great. I need to get more wild boar, I like venison. So I definitely recommend doing this. You can really make the sauce with any type of meat you want, and if you make it raw, it is very delicious with fish, especially with a little bit of that vinegar to give it some kind of astringency, very delicious. Again, make sure you're subscribed to Tasting History, like this video and we'll see you next time on Tasting History.