Precooking? (was Re: SC - questions/kinda long, sorry)

[grizly at mindspring.com]

<<<<I also don't do any precooking before a feast. When my feasters taste the dish and I taste the dish, we are both experiencing food prepared using recipes that no one has tasted for 500 plus years. For an instance in time both I and the diners can step back and experience a small portion of the Dream.

I would not recommend this approach to every one though. Instinctive cooking is a gift that not everyone has. There are many folks who work long and hard trying to become good cooks. Others seem to just do it with little or no concern.

Take close look at whether the instinct is there and then decide which 
approach is best for you. 
Ras >>>>

Ras and Cariadoc,

You both make great points.  The skill/talent/feel (?) for instinctual cooker yhas been discussed here, and not to the same level in every person.  Some fabulous cooks test recipes to determine what they will be, and some wonderful cooks don't.  Likewise the mediocre ones.

What Cariadoc said in response to my 'economy' statement seemed right on spot.  I do cook some dishes for dinner at home to find they are wonderful for a feast.  The medieval cook had better be DARNED SURE hisndish was excellent for the visiting Duke . . .whether it be his instinctive talent or pretesting it fifty times.  I suspect I do a little more 'prior cooking' than originally stated, but not much.  

Ras' description of his experience of a new dish is in the same vain as mine.  I use as unprocessed an ingredient as possible and use simple 'technology, as much as possible given time and volume constraint, and relish the adventure and challenge of guiding a staff of cooks and assistants to disvoery in the kitchen of a new dish we had not yet experienced (or rediscover one done before on occasion).  It is all a wonderful adventure explorng the cuisines and foods of the times so many centuries ago.

niccolo difrancesco