SC - Passage East III - Part 4

[Ann & Les Shelton]

This is where the wheels came off slightly... Because of the compressed
amount of time available and the competition for oven space, I didn't
use whole chickens.  The stove had a grill attachment {about 3 x 2}, so
the plan was to use boneless chicken breasts and grill them, then
slather the sauce on after they were cooked {I also had someone deathly
allergic to nuts who I wanted to make sure wouldn't be endangered by her
chicken coming into contact with the sauce}.  The chicken breasts would
be on a platter and the pasta in a bowl with all the cheese and spices
on it.

However, I made a mistake.  I bought boneless, SKINLESS, chicken
breasts.  They started drying out and crumbling up on the grill. 
Luckily, one of the other cooks has a huge assortment of cookware {he
has a true portable kitchen that fits in a trailer, sink and all,
although he didn't bring it for this event}.  Bruno got out his "Wok
>From Hell" (TM), a commercial size wok, set up a gas burner, and we
sliced the chicken into smaller pieces and cooked them in the wok.  The
good news was that they cooked well without further damage; the bad news
was that they now looked like "Kibbles and Bits" {a brand of dog food
for those of you outside the US}.  Definitely unappetizing to look at.

So, we improvised. The pasta was already cooked, but it hadn't had the
final parmesean and herbs added.  We mixed the sauce with the chicken
pieces; they tasted fine now.  We quickly made an additional batch of
the chicken sauce.  We laid out the bite size chicken chunks on the
plates of pasta, poured the additional sauce on, then threw on some
additional slivered almonds.  The final result was a sweet-sour chicken
and pasta dish.  This was probably the most palate-challenging dish in
the entire feast, but it disappeared as quickly as everything else.
We wound up with an unused container of parmesean, but it will keep for
a while.

What was supposed to happen ...


IV.	GALINE CUM SO SAPORE
	{Chickens with Their Sauce}

CN 55

When you have roasted them well, take five peeled almonds and grind them
up with fine sugar - if you do not have sugar, use honey - and temper
that with lemon juice to make it slightly thick; put this over the
chickens, or else put the sauce in small bowls and the chickens on
plates; serve warm.

Per Table			17 Tables

8 boneless chicken breasts	136 breasts
1/4 cup almonds			4 cups almonds
2+ tbs sugar			2-1/2 cups sugar
2 tbs lemon juice		2-1/4 cups lemon juice

Roast or grill chicken with minimal spices.  Grind almonds together with
sugar, mix with enough lemon juice to form a slightly thick sauce.  Heat
for several minutes in a sauce pan to warm, brush or pour over chicken.


	VERMICELLI
	{Pasta}

CN 17

Cook them in good fat broth for an hour, then set them out with grated
Parmesean cheese and mild spices; first make them yellow with saffron.  

P VII 52

... You will call these bits vermicelli {worms}... When they have been
cooked for an hour in rich broth and put in a dish, season with ground
cheese and spices ... They may be somewhat colored with saffron...

Per Table			17 Tables

1 lb Vermicelli			17 lbs Vermicelli
1/2 cup Parmesean		8-1/2 cups cheese
Broth to cover {~ 2 qts}	Broth to cover {several gallons?}

Spices

parsley				1 bunch
thyme				3 tbs
savory				3 tbs
saffron				several threads

Cook pasta, sprinkle with cheese and herbs.

COMMENTS:  The recipe calls for fat broth; I used vegetable broth. A
fattier broth would probably have imparted more taste.   My saffron got
misplaced in the kitchen, so it did not get added.  This would have been
too much pasta if it hadn't been pressed into service to salvage the
chicken.  It would have been slightly different to the modern palate,
because neither recipe specifies adding butter or oil when serving, so I
wasn't going to.  It would have been plain pasta with parmesean and
herbs on top. Anyway, it worked out better that the pasta was as bland
as possible, because it certainly wasn't after the chicken sauce was
added.

John