Filo/phyllo-- was [Re: SC - duck and bread]

[Elaine Koogler]

The first year that our household did a tavern we sold meat pies (chicken)
in the tavern and field bread and cheese on the fighting field.  We did
indeed sell out of both.  And we did a demo once where we wanted to give
folks just a little "sample" of medieval food so I made chicken and beef
pies, but I made them tart size, so that they fit in the palm of the hand.
The total cost per worked out to about $1 each and *everyone* just raved
about them.  They were relatively easy to fix (I did cheat and use frozen
pie tarts for the shells and prepared pie crust rolled out thinly for the
tops, but it still worked out well and folk even raved about the crust and
couldn't believe it was pre-prepared.)

All of the things that I would serve as field food, such as the hand tarts,
can be fixed ahead of time and taken to the site frozen. Enough of them
packed into a cooler might even keep for a week before they thawed, but I'd
be inclined to use dry ice to insure that.  The pies are good cold, so you
just thaw them the night before (on sight I would normally do this in the
on site fridge) and serve them chilled.  The problem is that this doesn't
seem practical to do for even 1000/people a day for a week long event.  And
while they contain enough spices in them to be able to thaw them on site
without a fridge and not have handling safety issues, it still seems
logistically difficult.

I really like the idea of the little "mini-trenchers" with meat served on
them (what date *did* the Earl of Sandwich create that first hand held
treat anyway?) but I don't know how much it would come across as OOP if you
used a roll .  At a sit down meal I probably would want to serve food on
bread trenchers (not only period but gets rid of some of your clean up
problem) but someone mentioned that another vendor already does "bread
bowls" and that it got tiring and, of course bread trenchers will increase
your serving cost about 25cents per serving over paper plates, (the
cheapest I can make a bread trencher is about 25 cents each.  the cheapest
I can buy paper plates is less than a penny each,) but I think that it
would be worth it if you were going to do this kind of venture.   (and of
course they *are* more ecologically sound.)

there's a wide path between what I'd love to see done and what might be
practical :-)

I remain, in service to Meridies,
Lady Celia des L'archier
- ----- Original Message -----
From: <BaronessaIlaria at aol.com>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Monday, August 28, 2000 3:49 PM
Subject: Re: SC - Pennsic Bag Lunches


> In a message dated 08/28/2000 3:45:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> michael.gunter at fnc.fujitsu.com writes:
>
> > But I wonder about a wandering food vendor along the sidelines.......
>
> A few years back we did a "fair" type event complete with several Palios
and
> othe activities, during which we had roaming vendors of cheese rolls and
> cheese/pepperoni rolls. They were insanely popular, sold like mad, and
raked
> in a tidy little sum for the vendors.  As a sidelight of the food stand,
this
> could be reasonably easy to do and go over well among the spectators of
the
> Field Battle.
>
> Ilaria
>
===========================================================================
=
>
> To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
> Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
>
>
===========================================================================
=