Shore Dinner

See Food. Sea Food. See Food.

This painting and the header image are both Clara Peeters paintings – both painted between 1635 and 1640 in Holland

Shore Dinner, 17th century Dutch style – Lobster, crab, shrimp, butter and cheese, eggs and salt, bread and rusk.

Some sort of dipping sauce in the saucer.

Beer, in the bowl (I’m assuming this – but it goes with this meal.)

Life is good, even still life.

This is an American lobster – lobsters in the paintings are European lobsters

This is a European lobster on the rocks

This is Rock Lobster, the type of lobster you might expect to find in Plymouth, what with that Rock and all…

Crabbe or Lopster boiled.

Take a crabbe or a lopster, and stop him in þe vente with on hire clees, and seth him in water, and no salt; or elles stoppe him in þe same maner, and cast him in an oven, and bake him, and serue him forth colde. And his sauce is vinegre.

(Take a crab or lobster and stop him in the vent with her own claws, and seeth him in water, and no salt; or else stop him in the same manner, and cast him in an oven, and bake him, and serve him forth cold. And his sauce is vinegar).

Basically – keep the creature from hurting you and get him in some hot water pronto OR  – and unless you have a woodfired oven, preferably outdoors –  toss him into a hot oven until done.)

Warning – the lobster will have a few moments of being able to wander for the oven version – don’t try this in an electric or gas fixture, even a small chicken lobster could harm your appliance with those claws.

– Austin, Thomas. Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Harleian MS. 279 & Harl. MS. 4016, with extracts from Ashmole MS. 1429, Laud MS. 553, & Douce MS 55. London: for The Early English Text Society by N. Trübner & Co., 1888.

this recipe (and many more!) from the webpage All Goode Cookery Recipes

• Vinegar is a good sauce – vinegar mixed with fresh ground pepper is also good.
• Mustard is also good on sea food and keeps things balanced in a 17th century sort of way.

Today’s post is fueled by a Sea Salt Carmel Latte at Kisakdee Coffee Company

I took this from flickr – the sea salt makes the foam a little wrinkly, but GOOD

I’m at the table just inside the window on the chair side – hearing the country (ish) band playing next door and watching the Harleys on parade – and at parade rest as the riders go in to the bar next door with the band…