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[Louis Stull]

Just thought I'd share my experiences this weekend...

Sharon Nevin and I ran the College of St Monica's tenth anniversary feast
on Saturday.  Sharon was the autoc^H^H^H^H^H Steward, and I was the
feasto^H^H^H^H^H^H Head Cook.  :)   We have helped with feasts before, but
this was our first time in the hot seats...

I'll concentrate on the food side of things - as I didn't see that much of
the actual feast!  We decided to have an Autumnal theme, as (a) Melbourne
is full of fabulous fresh autumn fruit at this time of year, and (b)
seasonal produce is cheaper :)  We were feeding 72 people, and didn't have
a vast budget to work with.

I'll run through the menu as it came out, with my reactions and
observations.
(note - I don't have my notes with me, so this is from memory :)

First, we opened with Duck in a Piquant Sauce.  This recipe was from
Bartolomeo Scappi, redacted in the book "Great Cooks and their Recipes".
We basically cooked 9 ducks in a mixture of red wine, vinegar, ham, herbs
and spices.  The original called for wild ducks, but our budget didn't
quite stretch that far - we used 1.5kg ducklings instead.

Happily the hall we were in had a vast pot which held 8 of the ducks quite
well, and even had a steamer/lifter attachment so the ducks couldn't stick
to the bottom (as they did when I tested the recipe!) The ducks on the
bottom of the pot disintegrated somewhat, but they generally held together.
Also, the sauce wasn't as thick as intended - it is very tricky to thicken
that quantity of sauce!  But the taste of the dish was wonderful :)

We followed that with Broccoli and Fennel.  I can't remember the original
source of this, but the redaction was from "The Original Mediterranean
Cuisine".  I actually followed the original rather than the redaction - the
redaction involved steaming the veges, which made for a fairly bland
result.  The original had them boiled in stock, which was much tastier.  I
used vegetarian chicken stock, which meant that the dish was still
vegetarian safe.  18 bulbs of Fennel, and 5kg of broccoli, are certainly
entertaining to boil!

The next dish was fresh Pasta with Cheese.  I had some foolish volunteers
who offered to make pasta, so they spent several hours during the day
mixing dough and drying strips of pasta on clothes-horses.  The sauce was
made up of three cheeses - mainly swiss, with some blue and some parmesan,
melted together with cream.  We produced one smallish platter of pasta per
table, so there wasn't a lot, but everyone hopefully got some...

The first course finished with Pears in Compost, from "1000 eggs".  This
was prepared in the morning and chilled in 9 bowls until it was served.  We
almost had a disaster with this one, but it turned out well in the end... 

The pears we bought were very ripe and soft, and cooked rather quickly, so
they were done before the sauce was thick.  I strained the liquid from the
rest, and left it on the stove to simmer while I did some other tasks...
Unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown and the sauce was
unwatched for quite a while...  I noticed an interesting caramel smell
eventually, and thought "Argh!  The sauce is burning!"  However, when I
checked the sauce, it was an interesting caramel colour and smell, but it
actually tasted rather nice.  We served the pears in the newly-discovered
caramel sauce, and they went down very well!

(Apologies to anyone at the feast who thought the caramel sauce was
deliberate!  Now you know better :)

The second course opened with Lamb with Quinces.  I again can't remember
the source, but the redaction was from "The Original Mediterranean Cuisine"
(with some modifications - I halved the vinegar used, as my test version
was *very* tart...)

This was cooked entirely in the morning before the feast.  It was basically
a one-pot stew, containing Mutton, Pancetta, Quinces, bread, quince paste,
herbs and spices (including a lot of saffron).  It cooked for an hour in
the morning, then was left for about 6 hours while the rest of the feast
was made, and then re-heated before serving.  By this time the quinces had
almost totally dissolved into the sauce!  However, the mutton was very
nicely done by then.  I used mutton not lamb, as this was an autumn dish -
I doubt that spring lamb would have been appropriate, and mutton is
tastier.

The result was again good - and very filling.  If I made it again, I would
have left the quinces in quarters rather than chopping them into slices, so
there would have been recognizable quince pieces by the end - but otherwise
I was very happy with this dish, and it was wonderful to just re-heat it
and serve it.

The next dish was Mushrooms with Onions and Herbs, again from "Original
Mediterranean Cuisine" - basically mushrooms, onions, coriander, and
parsley, fried in batches and then fried up together.  Nice and simple,
easy to re-heat before serving, vegetarian safe, and very tasty.

This was followed with Chestnut Fritters.  This recipe, titled "Rissoles
for a fish day", I spotted in "Le Menagier de Paris".  It is very simple -
chestnuts, cheese, egg, and spices, mixed together and fried.  I made my
own version of these a few weeks ago, and they were very tasty.

However, my copy of "Early French Cooking" arrived last weekend, and
contained a redaction of this recipe, with fish included, and wrapped in
pastry before frying.  I decided to go with my version in the end - as fish
are not universally popular, and the pastry seemed like a lot more work.
Does anyone know for sure whether these would have been wrapped in pastry
in period?  Scully assumes that anything titled "Rissoles" would by default
have been in pastry - but the original doesn't mention that fact :)

Anyway, my fritters sans pastry were good, and filling.  I fried them in
batches and served them as they were hot to each table.  They possibly
needed something more - I want to try them again some time with apples in
the mixture, as I think that might make them sweeter and lighter.  The only
really tricky part was peeling the chestnuts - a very slow and fiddly job.

The final dish for the evening was a special of our college, and may not be
popular with all - it was Chocolate and Pear Tart.  The recipe comes from a
manuscript dated 1615, that a past member of our college found in the
archives in Milan while researching her PhD.  It is technically OOP, but
only just - and it seemed appropriate for the tenth anniversary feast.
Incidentally the tarts are *very* tasty.

After that we closed with Hippocras and roasted chestnuts, but most people
were too full to go near them.

The only other dish I had planned was a plate of quince sweets
("Condoignac") for high table. The recipe was from "Le Menagier de Paris",
as redacted in "Early French Cooking". I tried making a batch of these but
had some problems with the redaction.  For one thing, quinces must be a lot
smaller in Canada than here!  The recipe called for 6 to 8 quinces, cored
and peeled, to be boiled in 1 1/2 cups of white wine.  I cored and peeled 7
quinces before I thought about this - and then realised that it would take
more like 3 or 4 cups of wine to even start to cook them!

The other problem I met was that such a large quantity of quinces took
forever to cook - I simmered them most of Friday afternoon and evening, and
again during the day on Sunday, and they still were a bit squishy - they
were meant to be sliced and sugared, but the stuff didn't really want to
stay in individual slices, and the sugared sweets went sticky very fast.

In the end I made one plate of sweets for high table, and the rest of the
mixture was taken home to be further dried.  (Apart from the many scraps
that were eaten buy the kitchen staff)  The sweets were a little mushy, but
tasted wonderful.  However, I'm not sure that they were worth the effort.

Overall, I think the feast was very successful.  All the perishable food
was bought from the local Queen Victoria Market, and was fresh and
inexpensive.  We consumed 20 liters of wine, 9 ducks, 7 kilos of Mutton, 2
kilos of ham, 2.5 kilos of cheese, 4.5 kilos of broccoli, 18 heads of
fennel, 4.5 kilos of mushrooms, 5 kilos of onions, 4 kilos of chestnuts, 20
kilos of pears, 5 kilos of apples, 26 quinces, 2 liters of vinegar, 5kg of
sugar, about 2 grams of saffron, and many other herbs and spices.

- -Korny
- --
Kornelis Sietsma   http://zikzak.net/~korny  icq: 2039172
  e-mail: korny at zikzak.net  or  korny at a2.com.au
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