SC - My first feast is over. Here's what happened (part three ):

[Gedney, Jeffrey]

> A couple of other useful rules:
> 
> Know where there is a grocery store near the site; and have someone with a
> car who has agreed to be available to do last-minute shopping at the
> cook's
> request.
Yes, I did have a volunteer ready to be a runner to the store (the nearest
store had a 1/2 hour round trip, plus the shopping and checkout. "Last
minute" shopping is only effective if it is next door, or done comparatively
early in the day. It is not an option with 5 minutes leeway), and just did
not have time to use her, as I realized my vinegar error at the very last
minute before serving the salad.

> If at all possible, do the entire feast in miniature (8 people, say), with
> whatever assistant cooks you are going to have on the day, far enough in
> advance of the day so that you can use the information gained to correct
> for any problems you discover in this way.
You know, I always meant to do this, but I had trouble getting everybody
together before the event, and I had some serious time constraints placed on
me by mundane commitments.

> I notice a difference between your approach and ours (this isn't a
> criticism, just that you are starting in a different place): we do a whole
> lot of experimental medieval cooking and only occasionally do feasts. The
> result is that we are rarely trying to work out new recipes for any given
> feast; what we have to worry about is budgets, scaling up recipes
> (especially allowing enough time), and the like. You, in addition to doing
> that, are having to work up a whole lot of new recipes, with the result
> that (I get the impression) you had to scramble when a recipe you had
> decided on didn't work out the way you originally wanted to do it. I am
> impressed with the job you have done; I wish I could have been at the
> feast; and I am glad it worked out well.
> 
Thanks for your kind words.
I did most of these recipes in miniature as test cooking, but not all, as
certain recipes were substituted at the last minute, because of budgetary or
availability constraints. (The venison for the third course tasted pretty
good, but I could not get more than 10 pounds form the local hunters, before
the feast, and the exotic meats butcher in town wanted $9.59 a pound.) The
hattes tested out greasy when I used raw ground pork and veal for them, --I
did not grind boiled meats for them because I had could not get unground
veal from the market, unless I bought in quantity, which I was not ready to
do at that time. I decided to try to precook the preground meats at the
feast, to remove some of the grease, and the result was that I could not
make the hattes like I wanted to, and has to try to bake them off enough to
serve them. They then overcooked in the oven, with the result that they were
not what I planned to serve. Oh, Well.

I made the mistake of thinking that using cooked preground meats would be
similar enough to use in the recipes calling for ground after boiling meats.
In retrospect, I had no reason to make that assumption, and it was my
biggest mistake of the evening.
I know better now!

BTW, I tried to go off the recipes in the manuscript, because it was more in
the way I thought that the cook would have worked in period, and because I
was used to working off hotel-style "master" recipes (which are written the
same way, except for language), due to the fact that several of the modern
cookbooks I have are written in just that way.  I was comfortable with the
degree of "instinctual" cooking that such recipes call for, so I did not
need to do the extensive multiplying that would be required. 
In retrospect, that multiplication and planning would have helped me contain
my costs, as I wound up overbuying several ingredients. I will be more
careful, and try to be more exact in the future.


Brandu

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