SC - Rosee or Morree

[Stefan li Rous]

Lsdy Diana said:
>     There's certainly much merit in that point, but I have really been 
> thinking more in terms of dishes that are difficult to do in large quantity, 
> either due to the expense (or scarcity, as in fresh rose petals) of the 
> ingredients or the difficulty or time requirements of the preparation. Of 
> course, I can't think of examples off the top of my head when I need them! 
> ;-) But I know I have looked at a number of recipes and thought that, though 
> they sounded great, they would be impractical to cook in large quantity for 
> one or another of the above reasons--at least in our site's kitchen and our 
> event's circumstances.............. There are some dishes, for instance, that 
> call for herbs I can't buy, especially fresh. I could grow enough to do a 
> large bowl of a given recipe, but not enough for the whole hall to eat a 
> normal portion of. That's more the kind of circumstance I had in mind.

So, do some of these dishes for a smaller quantity. I like Admantius' comments
on a 'taster' menu. Another possibility would be for a pot luck. For instance,
locally our Yule Revel is usually a pot luck and we occasionally have various
revels that are. These are good ways for new cooks to show off what they can
do without having to cook for tens or hundreds of people. 

While I generally dislike the pot luck method of serving, not only because
there is no evidence of it having been used in period, it often results in
a very bad distribution. Often the first third gets lots of food from a 
large variety of dishes, the second third gets some food from a smaller
variety of dishes and the last third gets the scrapes of the good looking
stuff and the stuff that wasn't as good.

There have been some good suggestions on how to serve a pot luck in such
a way that there are no long lines and while everyone won't get to taste
every dish, the distribution is more fair. These have been put in this
new file in the FEAST section:
pot-luck-fsts-msg (14K)  1/10/00    Handling 'pot luck' feasts in the
SCA.       
  (Ok, I just checked. It's not on the web, yet. I will try to put it there
ASAP).

Lady Diane, you may still want to consider someone doling out taster posrtions
of these small dishes though, to insure that everyone gets a taste.    

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****