SC - Re: Ruzzige cake

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Protectorate Feast is now over and I'm exhausted.  I'll post the recipes
seperately after adding more notes.

I was up until 2 a.m. Friday morning getting the marmalade to thicken.  I
went to bed then was up about five hours later to shop and pack.  I arrived
on site an hour late, unloaded, then drove the 17 miles back to Guthrie to
purchase the eggs, flour, spinach and cream.

Back on site, I ran a test loaf of flat bread through one of the ovens.  It
came out rather unusually brown, so I ran a temperature check with an oven
thermometer -- 500 to 550 degrees F on the low setting.  The second oven was
off by 25 degrees and the convection oven was about 10 degrees off.

I started baking pie shells and making the the rice pudding.  I of course
chose a pot with a thin spot and almost immediately scorched the milk for
cooking the rice.  I attempted to salvage it, quickly decided that it was
unsalvagable and switched to water for the rice, depending on the cream to
provide the richness.

True to the way my feasts work, the rice then failed to cook up the way it
had during the test at home and created rice gruel rather than rice pudding.
Being a little (hah!) foggy, I didn't think of adding starch, bowled it up
and set it in the walk-in cooler to gel.  

When I crisped a couple pie shells through inattention, I shut down the
kitchen and went to sleep on a couple matresses tossed in a large closet.

Saturday morning about 6 am, I started again by thinning the mustard.  The
mustard was 4 days old and still very raw.  The mustard had been made with a
fairly sweet white wine and tempered with  honey, so that it was not as raw
as it could have been.  I found out later that one of my friends mixed the
mustard with the left-over orange sauce for the chickens and had a lovely
sweet mustard for the beef.

The taverner and Crown breakfast cook, cleared the stove and ovens, and I
got to work on the manchet.  A test batch to check out the timing on the
convection oven and a batch of cinnamon rolls for my breakfast came first
then I got down to serious baking.  

While waiting on bread, I set the meat out to thaw completely, put the event
steward to work halfing and juicing lemons, and began wondering where my
crew was.  The group doing the Crown lunch got a little underfoot, but we
survived.  

About 2 pm, we put out a call for volunteers and caught Aeddan ap Trahearn
and Johann Gunnbjornsson, two of the better known feast cooks in Northern
Ansteorra, Stefan li Rous, and a good crew looking for a place to help.
Without them, the feast would not have come off as well as it did.  

The roasts, basted in butter and seasoned with salt, pepper and rosemary,
went in the convection oven just after 4 p.m. with an intended service of 6
p.m.  The temperature was reduced and the fan shutdown later to hold the
roasts until service.  The oven got a little cool and just as the service
started the fan was switched on to make sure the meat was warm enough to
serve.

We did not get the Shrewsbery cakes made.  Time, work space, and one bad
oven ran against us.  The jumbals, manchet, marmalade and butter were not on
the table as planned, so we held back the jumbals and sent out the rest as
an appetizer.   

We found out the hall control had broken down and the head server could not
be reached, so Gwennan, Aeddan's wife organized portion control through the
servers.  By doing so, she saved a few lives and let me forget about that
problem to concentrate on getting the food ready.

The sweet potatoes weren't blending smoothly, so they got tossed in the
commercial mixer for a little smoothing while the spinach was drained and
put into the pie shells.  Countessa Vanessa de Verona, who was on the
serving crew got impressed into getting the sauces bowled.  

The grill proved to be colder than we hoped, but we got the fish frying well
by using less oil and butter than the recipe calls for, however it was still
a slow process and we had hungry people to feed.  

The counter space was too small to stage an entire course, so the sweet
potatoes went out first, followed by the chicken, the spinach tarts, and
finally the fish.  My intent had been to serve the fish and chicken at the
same time, but the timing was so far off, it didn't happen as envisioned.

As soon as the stove cleared, the water for the peascods was placed on it,
and preparation started.  The rice pudding was staged to serve.  The roasts
came out of the oven and into the slicer.  The peascods never did properly
cook and did not reach the table.  The garlic sauce did not get made.

For drinks, I served 10 gallons of sweet cider, 10 gallons of fresh
lemonade,  5 gallons of lemonade from RealLemon, and an unknown quantity of
water.  No period recipes, but I needed drinks appropriate to the setting
and I could not use wine and ale.

The leftover jumbals and the remaining roast beef were eaten by elves in the
night.

The final analysis:

Other than two good folk who were crowded out of their seats and did not get
to eat the feast they paid for, everyone was fed including the crashers and
servers.  There money was refunded and they receive my apologies.

The reservations system failed because the person taking them did not
understand you have to have the names of individuals to catch duplicates.
My failure for not double checking.

The head server and the hall steward lost control of the hall.  Again my
fault for using these people, not stressing the importance of control, and
not showing them (again) how I wanted it done.

This was my first use of this kitchen and I misjudged the workspace and
stove capacities.  I also errored organizing my kitchen staff, but I was
rescued by first rate volunteers.  The next time I plan a potential fiasco
like this one, I will check to see if they are going to be at the event and
available.  Why not get the best involved before getting into trouble.

Prepare and refrigerate the mustard a month before the event.

There were five pleased comments about the ingredient list at the gate and
the gate keepers told me the list had more scrutiny than the site map.  This
did not stop people from asking me what was in things as I got into the
madhouse portion of the feast.  I was asked earlier if there were any
mushrooms in the packaged goods, and I was able to inform the lady that
everything had been prepared fresh and the ingredients were as listed.  I
was not able to answer a question about whether the yeast had been prepared
on a potato base (apparently Fleischmann's does this).  I really do not know
who manufactures my yeast or its method of preparation, as I buy it from a
health food store, in bulk and broken out of the original packaging.  One
gentle who asked as I was trying to do prep work got told to look at the
recipe in the feast book, because I couldn't remember the ingredients.

The feast book was a hit, but it makes a lousy feast token for hall control.
And it provided period recipes for people to try on their own.  The one
complaint I had was the booklet did not describe what was being served, so
it could be recognized.  Mea culpa.  I now realize, I've become too familiar
with historical foods and need someone unknowledgeable to proofread.

Everyone knows, you can't feed fish to Ansteorrans, they won't eat it.  I
took a chance on it, because my Baron does like fish and can't eat chicken.
What I thought would be the least popular dish at the feast turned out to be
the one I received the most compliments over.

While I was involved in cleaning the kitchen, I was called out to receive
first, the thanks of the Baron and Baroness and second, to receive an Iris,
the kingdom grant-level award for Arts and Sciences.  Gunthar was kind
enough to speak my praise and to present me with his personal Iris.  It was
a great courtesy and honor.

>From the compliments I received, the feast was very successful.  Despite
problems, setbacks, and irritations, the feasters were fed, etertained, and
untouched by our problems, as it should be.  I was later told the King had
said it was a pleasure to hand out an award and have such an obvious
demonstration of why it was deserved, since in most cases, the award and the
reason for it are long seperated.

Monetarily, I expended $745 and the feast made a profit of $9.70.  The
second lowest profit I have ever made.

I'm tired.  I think I'll stop doing feasts.  Maybe I'll help make the bake
goods for other cooks, if asked.  But, I have this idea...

Bear