SC - trial feasts

[rebecca tants]

> Lord Ras said on Tuesday, May 13:
> The feast that I'm doing in June at Will's Revenge is 4 courses, each
> consisting of 4 dishes (16 dishes total + a truly amazing subtlety) and, as
> usual, all the recipes are newly redacted, I was wondering what format the
> mini-feast should take? Should I do the testing in the same
> order/combonations as the actual feast or do a buffet-type thing where guests
> could taste and pick at will?
> 
> >>>>>>
> Given more time, which you don't have, I would say cook one course at each
> of four meetings. Save killing yourself for the actual feast. :-)
> 
> If you've done the dishes before consider leaving them out of the trial
> feast. If there are different ideas in the subtlety perhaps you could
> try them without doing the whole subtlety.

Hmmm... in the past I have always tried to cook the courses in a row once
for a smaller serving set, but to get some timings and so that we could 
taste the foods of any given course together.  (I planned a friends wedding
dinner, and had we not done this in advance, we would have served two dishes
in one course that ABSOLUTELY clashed in the worst possible way.  It was
very unexpected....)

If you wanted to do it as 4 seperate evenings of one course each, that
would be much better then dropping items you know how to do.  (That
compatibility issue).  Personally, though, I test cook also to find out
things like the number of pots and pans and burners I need, space issues
on countertops and timing issues on cooking.  (Another story:  one of my 
early feasts looked incredible on paper, but the autocrat didn't get me
in to look at the kitchen until the day before the event.  The kitchen
had a normal, house-sized stove.  I had 3 of my major foods requiring
on the top of the stove cooking.   Needless to say, I did a bit of
juggling and creative cooking.  (I cooked on item in the oven in pan of
water, and had a person assigned to make sure that the other two industrial
size pots didn't fall off the stove (which just wasn't big enough to hold
them).)  

So, while I realize it's a lot of work, invite 3 to 7 friends over and
cook one serving plate worth of each with your best estimates on timing 
and get them to taste the courses together.  Your feasters will be glad
you did!

Ruadh

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    Becki Tants, aka Roo, Lady Caitlen Ruadh, Delftwood, AEthelmearc, East
    becki at servtech.com                http://www.servtech.com/public/becki 
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