SC - Help!!

[david friedman]

About a month ago, Matheus de Troyes wrote:
>Help!
>	I will be assistant cook at my first event in October.  The 
>event is expected to draw 250 to 300 people, and I was told last 
>night that I will be able to use ONLY the steam tables in the 
>kitchen area - the entire feast will have to be 
>un-cooked/pre-cooked/cooked over propane burners/cooked over 
>charcoal grill!   No refrigeration is available.  Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
>...
>	Additionally, we will have only two cooks (myself and the 
>head cook), one individual to arrange dishes & coordinate the 
>servers, and whatever volunteers we can scrounge up.  The Saturday 
>night feast is limited to approximately $7 per person, including 
>non-food items and rentals.  The other meals will either be sold as 
>fundraisers or absorbed by the event cost. The shire currently owns 
>no cooking equipment.  The site is (absolutely) dry.
>
>	So....
>
>	The current problem is to set menus, under the restrictions 
>above, that are as period as possible.  ...  I encourage all 
>criticism of the menu.

Good luck. I suggest you start now on lining up extra volunteers and 
and large pots you can borrow; if there are going to be a lot of A&S 
types at this event, some of them may own large pots or other cooking 
equipment they can bring for you. Ask around. If you're borrowing a 
lot of stuff, bring some tape and a waterproof pen for marking what 
is whose, so you don't have to figure this out after you are 
exhausted. For general advice on planning a feast, see our article in 
the Miscellany.

One possibility worth considering is meat/cheese/egg pies premade and 
served cold. You can make piecrusts in advance and freeze them, thus 
spreading out the work over time, as long as someone has freezer 
space: make them, put them in the pie pans, put each in a zip-lock 
bag, sucking all the air out, stack and freeze. Make the pies on 
Friday and bring with you in coolers. You can experiment over the 
summer to see which pies taste good served cold.

A few specific comments on the menu:

You are planning to serve a couple of soups premade, frozen, and 
thawed. It takes a long time to thaw large blocks of ice, and I've 
never tried doing so over a propane burner; I suggest that some time 
between now and then you get hold of a propane burner, calculate what 
volume of soup you are going to need, freeze that volume of water 
into ice, and then time how long it takes to melt it on the propane 
burner. Build that time into your feast plan.

You asked about salads. There are some period recipes for "salats" 
which are largely mixed greens with a dressing of vinegar, oil, and 
salt. I don't have one at my fingertips, but someone on the list 
probably does.

Sauce for chicken: there is a recipe for "Jance" in the Miscellany 
which might be a possibility.

Period beverages are hard with an absolutely dry site. In addition to 
sekanjabin, we have served the Islamic lemon syrup drink; like 
sekanjabin, you make the syrup in advance and dilute as needed on 
site.

Wafers: some of my friends make wafers and bring them to Pennsic. 
They store fine, but you have to keep them sealed or they go limp. 
Experiment in advance.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook