SC - accommodating at feasts

[LrdRas@aol.com]

At 02:59 PM 5/11/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Luveday asked:  
>	> In July, my husband and I are giving a class dealing with being a
>Kitchen Steward for the first time.   What I would like to know from you
>good folks is what information/ tips/ hints/ etc., would you have liked to
>known before doing your first feast?


I think this is more a "hind sight is 20/20" than stuff I wish I knew.  I
think I already knew it, but ignored it believing *I* knew better and could
pull it off. I mean, *I* was a schooled professional with chef training and
years of food service management, right? What made this different from any
of the hundreds of other events I had catered for the same number of people?


First is the Kitchen staff.  The people you will have in your SCA kitchen
are NOT professional cooks. They don't move at the same speed, and most
won't understand what it is they are supposed to be doing other than "cut
this, stir that".  So triple the amount of time you expect each dish to
take in its making. Thats from the time you start peeling and slicing to
the time it goes out to the tables.

Schedule BACKWARDS. Start with the latest time that you can send your last
course out to the tables, and back track thru cooking time, prep time, etc
for each dish. If you are using the same oven to make the chicken as you
are to make the hot fruit compote, the chicken has to come out BEFORE the
compote goes in. 

Learn something about Quantity Food Service Sanitation. I am convinced that
the vast majority of post-event woozies are not simple exhaustion, but mild
cases of food poisoning from the feast preparation. Even Restaurants fail
in this, and it takes generally 18 to 36 hours for the symptoms to show up.
The last thing you want people to remember about your feast is that it made
them sick. 

Plan your menu to your kitchen equipment. DONT try to make your equipment
work to fit your menu. The last thing you want to do is cook off the roast
meat at 10 AM because you still need to do the bread pudding and you have
only one oven working. Steam tables are the Devil's child to the amature
cook. Everything has parameters on how it should be used, and the head cook
should know for each piece what those parameters are. Going beyond them can
make your feast less than what you hoped for. 

Check the working condition of your equipment when you rent the kitchen,
then again two/three days before the event, AND FIRST THING WHEN YOU ARRIVE
THE DAY OF THE EVENT! Especially if you are using a kitchen that is in use
during the interim, like school or church kitchens. Remember, things do break.

Last, don't just ask for people to sign up to help in the kitchen.
Personally go up and ASK those people you want in the kitchen to be there,
then be gracious to those who show up without being asked. It is the only
way to know what the abilities of each member is, and where they are weak.

Then ASSIGN each person a main task, a secondary one, and an understudy
one. This avoids the last minute "OhMyGod, we forgot to make the King's
Pie" just as it is supposed to go out. And it means that everything that is
supposed to go out as one course actually does go out together. The
understudy position is in case somebody doesn't make it to the event, you
still have their jobs covered. 

But a couple cases of beer for the kitchen crew as a thank you. They will
recieve precious little else from the day, except the comraderie of the
kitchen, and the tradition dining room "to the cooks".


And no, not all of these are from MY first feast. Some are from second and
third, others are from watching what others did "wrong". And anything that
goes wrong this time (and it will), work in other people's kitchens with
the purposeful intent of learning how *they* overcome the problem. 

Franz
Calontir.

PS, can you send me your instructor's notes when you are done with the
class? I would like to work up a similar class here in this kingdom. 



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