SC - Feast Stories from 11th Night Investiture (LONG)

[James F. Johnson]

Bonne of Traquair wrote:

> Not having your recipe in front of me I'm not sure of this suggestion. 

The recipe indicated setting cut up chicken on toasted bread and pouring
the sauce over it. The sauce is predominately red wine, sugar, currants,
spices, and butter. Essentially, warm Ypocras with currants and butter.
There was no notes about saturating the bread with sauce, and given the
proportions I made, there seemed too little sauce for that. I actually
made extra sauce and would have run out about halfway through. But I
like the idea....:)

BTW, all the recipes came from Pleyn Delit, with moderate tinkering from
me:

The brie tarts were made into deep 9" pies instead. I also increased the
proportion of brie to eggs, as I found a really good price on brie and I
was influenced by Cariadoc's Miscellany (Tart de Bry from Forme of Cury)
with it's higher proportion of brie to egg.

I baked the onions for the onion soup, then sliced them. I also added
tarragon to the soup because I came to mind when I was tasting it.

The goat didn't come from Pleyn Delit, but from a little list discussion
and ideas form the Florilegium. The use of apples was a suggestion by
way of 'Lainie to combat any gaminess Donovan might have had. The garlic
pepper sauce I chose from Pleyn Delit as a good match to the garlic and
rosemary rub I was using on Donovan, and in general, I was leaning
toward pungent spices as another defence to gaminess. He also soaked in
salt water for the day before. Donovan was a big goat, about a year and
eight months, not a wether (gonads intact), and dressed out around 60lbs
on the bone. There was debate/opinion made in both directions whether
his size/age/hormones would make him gamy or not. Apparently not, of if
he was, the salt soak, apples, and pungent spices countered it.

The frumenty was pretty much unchanged, except I cooked it in the hotel
pans in the oven. 

For the losyns, I opted for commercial dried lasagna noodles and had
planned on cutting them into the appropriate shape after cooking. As it
turned out, we just layered the long strips into a 2" hotel pan (some
strips were broken), pre-cut the shape, baked, and recut them as we
served them. I'm really looking forward to making fresh pasta the next
time I do this, but for a smaller group.

I really had no recipe for the chicken meat itself, just sprinkled with
salt and pepper and then baked until done. Then served on toast "sops"
with the sauce poured over. While this was a recipe supposedly to use
left over scraps of chicken, I cooked a whole fryer for the high table,
to have a carvable piece of meat.

The turnips we sliced, then baked until nearly done, topped with cheese,
and finished cooking just before serving. We used Swiss cheese, and they
tended to cook all together, into 'turnip lasagne". We had layered them
in two layers to conserve pans and space. I'm rather curious how they
would turn out dredged in a grated hard cheese like Romano or Parmesan. 

The salat had some variation, mostly adapted to the readily available
greenleaf and spinach greens, and what fresh herbs were available. One
lady actually took some home as left overs...:)

I don't think I tinkered with the rys or gingerbrede beyond improvising
in the cooking methods, and running out of breadcrumbs for the
gingerbread, making it more like honey marzipan (or is it supposed to be
soft and maleable?). I have a whole large sheet left that I plan on
warming back up and adding more crumbs, to see if I can make it
breadier.

One thing that really worked well for me was the notebook. A half inch
three ring binder, originally part of my normal research notebook I
carry everywhere, but it got it's own binder about three weeks before
the feast. In it were all my increase calculations, a list of
ingredients with totals for the combined recipes, hand written versions
of the recipes for the larger portions, all written on ordinary notebook
paper. After I made the master shopping list, I made a spreadsheet in
Excel, with a column for the ingredients (including alternate
ingredients, like different kinds of cheese), a column for the amount I
needed, a blank column for later extending the total cost, then three
pairs of columns each topped  with a store name (two spaces per
ingredient for different brands, amounts, etc). This made for a page and
a third, with the remaining two thirds all with blank spaces for things
I forgot, or interesting things I hadn't considered. I had two sets of
these, for six stores (Two major retail, two discount stores, Costco,
and the wholesale outlet from United Grocers.) I recorded the price for
each store for each ingredient, and even when I was actually shopping, I
would refer to the chart to double check who had the best by _for the
amount I needed_. I broke the master list down into separate store
lists, the one I actually shopped from. I also printed up copies of the
recipes in feast proportions for the kitchen and my notebook. About four
copies so they could be shared. All went in the book.

I also calculated my ingredients about three times. The last time, just
before I started buying, I discovered I had grossly overcalculated how
much brie I needed for the recipe, about three to four times to much.
That, and finding a great price (US$7.99/kg) on brie allowed me to
increase the proportion of brie while cutting the cost from US$96 to
US$32.

Seumas
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