SC - Post-Feast thoughts - Lessons learned

[Rebecca Tants]

Hi Folks - 

This past weekend I cooked a feast for 125 (15 tables of 8).  I
did a Roman feast, with the exception of one item and a sideboard
also using Roman items.

Everyone tells me it was great!  The side board was substantial and
a big hit (people aren't used to REAL food on the sideboard) and
the feast itself (3 courses in the Roman style of first a veggie/egg
course, then a meat course, then a sweets course)  went fairly
well.  We arranged servers in advance, charged them half price and
fed them a feast before the main feast.

Things I learned:
1) the head cook needs more then 4 hours sleep the night before.
This was just dumb on my part - I had been running around the
two days prior doing shopping and had had to change my dessert
at the last minute because none of the one's that worked well 
could be made in quantity - that kept me up until 3am the night
before.  (Yes, that sounds last minute, but I travel for a living
and spent every minute at home for the 3 weekends prior trying to
solve the dessert problem...I didn't procrastinate, but I didn't
expect to have THAT many problems...)  Anyway, my feet hurt when I 
got there and I was exhausted at the start of the day.  Bad.....

2) that servers feast needs to be scheduled really close to the
main feast if you intend to share dishes.  The autocrat didn't
do that and there were some glitches to getting the server feast
out.

3) warming tray will be the barony's next purchase - two of the items
went out colder then I wanted because there just wasn't any way to
keep them warm....

4) The side board can be great IF you budget it into the day fee.  
50 cents to a dollar will do it (per person), and that allowed me
to put out bread, fruit, an herbed cheese spread, olive paste, a
seasoned melon dish (kind of a vinaigrette) and both vegetarian and
non vegetarian hearty soup to fill everyone up until dinner.  It
wasn't too bad cost wise and made a lot of people very happy.  Next
time, I intend to put a line about it in the event announcement.

5) arranged servers is a very nice effect.  I also had my head server
announce the courses and their content while the servers came in, along
with a bit of history.  That went over really well.

6) I love winter events in the northeast.  If anything, my produce and
meat almost got TOO cold sitting in the truck overnight :-)  who needs
massive refrigerators.

7) Check the prices on bulk boneless skinless chicken breasts - they
aren't as bad these days.  I have a pet peeve about the "one chicken 
for an 8 person table" thing.  One chicken feeds no more then 4 people,
at least not well.  At 2 chickens per table, it turned out that I could
buy a box (40 lbs) of boneless skinless chicken breasts for less money,
bake them in less time, have portion control over the servings and have
lower fat overall.  It has gotten a LOT of positive comments so far.

8) Anyone know if Basmati rice is period?  I served it and it also
got raves (and I made it completely plain....)

I was forced to use one of the lesser Apicius translations because I
could not get my hands on the Flower/Rosenwhatever one.  I did a lot
of comparing and contrasting though, between the two books I did have
and made a few modifications based upon what I saw there.

The only completely non-period item (we'll skip lemonade for the moment)
was the Almond Cookies.  They were AWESOME, but came from a nice Italian
cookbook I have and can't be dated to prior then the turn of the century.
They were, however, inexpensive, yummy and a good solution as I got
frantic.  (Recipe for those is 11oz almonds, 1c plus 3T sugar, 1/2 t
vanilla, 4 egg whites, pinch of salt.  Beat egg whites and salt to stiff
peaks, process almonds and sugar together.  Fold almonds/sugar and vanilla
into the egg whites, bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes on greased cookie
sheet.  YUMYUMYUMYUMYUM)

The "Dormice" were something of a subtlety - we made vaguely mouse-shaped
meatballs from beef, poked two cloves into them for eyes, two almonds for
ears, baked in the oven, and then "gang raped" them with knives to make
holes
to insert pieces of black licorice shoestrings in for tails.  (That process
got a LOT of jokes....)  Needless to say, you can't exactly buy dormice at
the grocery store these days.....this was the best we could do and were a
real hit.  (One group (Myrkfaelin for anyone local) took to roasting them
over the candles and otherwise torturing them.  Then again, Myrkfaelin will
clove ANYTHING, so they thought these were particularly cool....)

Anyway, I'll post the remaining recipes, etc, next weekend, but here's the
menu:

Throughout Dinner
Bread
Butter
Honey
Lemonade

Gustum
Salad with Cheese Sauce
Olives
Vegetables in a Vinegar Marinade
Mushrooms Salad

Mensa Prima
Chicken with Sauces  (Green Sauce [Parsley] and Prune Sauce, on the side)
Pork Stew with Apples
"Dormice"
Rice

Mensa Secunda
Oranges
Grapes
Dates
Almond Cookies



The sideboard for this day will consist of:
Bread
Butter
Honey
Cheese Rounds with Herbs
Hard-boiled Eggs with Garlic Sauce
Olive Paste
Apples
Seasoned Melon
Barley Soup
Lemonade

References:
"A Taste of Ancient Rome", Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, 1992 (aToAR)
"APICIUS, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome", Joseph Dommers Vehling, 1936
(ACaDiIR)

- --  
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Rebecca E. Tants	retants at us.oracle.com	Phone:	716-389-1154
Oracle Consulting Services			Pager: 800-PAGE-MCI
Data Warehouse Architecture			Pin#:  1932362
 
 


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