In 1984 I was still fairly new to the SCA. I had a gypsy persona and still have the name, Cristoval. I researched gypsy recipes which included such delicacies as hedgehogs baked in clay.

I was unemployed, and wanted to make something showy but inexpensive for a Stormhold (SCA Melbourne) pot luck feast. So I made up some rissoles, just as I would for home dinner, and decorated them with currants for eyes and slivered almonds for hedgehog spines.

They were very popular at the feast, and I did them again soon after at a Dark Skies feast. They quickly spread around Lochac, and are still done at many feasts. They are a cheap meat dish, and newcomers to the SCA always remember them.

My original recipe used half regular mince and half sausage mince, both available cheaply in bags at the nearby Victoria Markets. It used one egg per kilo of meat, with a teaspoon of curry powder used as a spice rather than a curry effect. I used to include paprika (not really period) because I liked it, a good dash of Worcestershire sauce (supposedly a bit like Roman garum, but really because I like it), a couple of chicken stock cubes and a couple of squirts of tomato sauce (shudder) to hold it together. Exactly as I would do on my cooking day in the group house.

These days, sausage mince comes in supermarket plastic tubes, and mince is smoother anyway, so I usually just get regular mince.

I’m not super consistent with my recipe, but here’s what I did for the photo:

500g beef mince
1 large onion minced (food processor for feast catering)
1 tsp minced garlic (Aldi jar)
1 chicken stock cube crumbled
dash of worcestershire sauce
salt, pepper, mustard to taste
1 tsp ginger
1 egg
currants for eyes
almond slivers for spikes
cook at 180 deg C till they start to brown
makes 5 good-sized hedgehogs or 6 smaller ones

Dark Skies Shire loved the hedgehogs more than any other group, and every feast had to have them, as well as gingerbread men which I also made at my first feast there. They did catch me out at a later feast by making gingerbread hedgehogs and mince men. At another feast, when they were especially poor, they made lentil hedgehogs, about which the less said the better…