SC - Worst feast ever...

[Philippa Alderton]

Recently, I suffered what had to be the worst feast I have ever suffered
through. Those of you who know which feast I'm talking about, please don't
specify- I'm sure the Feastocrat (sic), who has a reputation for serving
good feasts, is embarrassed enough, and I'm looking at it as a learning
experience, trying to figure out how to make it edible.. Many things went
wrong, including apparently troubles in the kitchen, and the servers playing
politics with the beverages, but there were many other errors as well.

The feast was intended to be Chinese- there was no apparent attempt to make
it particularly period. Looking at the menu and the ingredients, I knew it
was going to be bland, with an edge towards sweet, so in preparation for
this, I brought my own condiments, including good (Golden Mountain brand)
soy sauce, black vinegar, cider vinegar, hoisin sauce, hot Chinese mustard,
wasabi (yes, I know it's Japanese) and extra spicy Mrs. Dash. I might just
as well have brought ketchup, yellow mustard, and Miracle Whip, because
nothing made that food edible ;-(

The first error was choosing the dishes. In Chinese cooking, the cooks tend
to balance the flavors- hot, sour, salt, and sweet. This was not only
primarily sweet, but there was far too little of the intended spices used.

                            Feast Ingredients

On the table as we arrived:

*Marbled Tea Eggs
     Eggs, soy sauce, Star anise, tea, 5-spice powder
*Egg Flower Soup
     Eggs, chicken stock, water chestnuts, salt

The marbled tea eggs were dead pale. Obviously, they hadn't been soaked in
the marinade enough- they might as well have been served as hard-boiled
eggs.

The egg-flour soup tasted to me like commercial chicken broth w/canned
sliced water chestnuts added- if there were any eggs in it, I couldn't find
them, unless they'd been whipped into an emulsion. This was, at best, luke
warm.

My suggestion would have been to serve the soup later, and hot, with perhaps
something like Chinese pickles to go with the eggs, if they wanted something
to be there on the table.

First Remove (sic)

*Steamed pork buns
     Biscuit mix, vegetable oil, sugar, ginger, ground pork, hoisin
     sauce
*Potsticker Dumplings
     Wonton wrappers, chinese cabbage, ground beef, vegetable
     shortening, black pepper, salt, sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil,
     vegetable oil, rice wine vinegar, chicken stock.

What arrived was uncooked biscuit mix with a teaspoon of ground something in
it. My suggestion would have been to use a homemade, real Chinese mix, and
to add spices to both the "filling" and the wrapper. Steaming them until
they were cooked would have helped immensely.

The potstickers were ground something as well, placed in an oil-soaked but
uncooked wonton wrapper. The total amount of food here was about three
bites- if it had been edible....

About an hour's wait, for anything else.............

*Steamed Rice
     Rice, salt, water
*Steamed Sesame Spinach
     Spinach, Sesame seeds, sesame oil

The steamed rice was well done- not burned (hard to do) but there wasn't
enough of it, particularly for an intended Chinese meal.

The steamed spinach appeared to have been frozen spinach, boiled to death,
with toasted sesame oil and untoasted sesame seeds in it- the sesame oil was
far too strong for the spinach as it should have been, and someone had
apparently added some sugar or other sweetener. Even the vinegars didn't
help.....


*Braised pork with 5 fragrant spices
     Pork shoulder roast, soy sauce, red wine, red wine vinegar,
     honey, garlic, Szechuan peppercorns, 5-spice powder
*Ginger Chicken w/ Noodles and Vegetables
     Straw mushrooms, wheat noodles, chicken, bamboo shoots, chicken
     stock, green onions, bok choy cabbage, bean
     sprouts, vegetable oil, black bean sauce, ginger, white wine

Shortly after the spinach and rice, the braised pork and the stir fry
arrived. The pork was served in a dried-out slab, almost tasteless, and
indistinguishable from some badly over-cooked fish steaks I had once-
halibut, I think. Again, nothing I had helped- Stubby got most of ours.
Minimal spicing.

The stir fry was stir boiled, I think- I've had better canned chop suey. No
rice, of course, to go with it. The error here was probably trying to make
too big a batch at once and over cooking it. Very bland.

The noodles were served seperately, and almost edible, but at that point I
had entirely lost my appetite. I think they were boxed fettuchine.....

*Sweetened fruits
     Mandarin oranges in light syrup, pears, apples, honey

These were the hit of the feast- someone remembered to bring a can
opener....

All in all, a truly miserable meal. I went out afterwards to the car, and
got some of our lunch munchies (beef sausage spring roll, egg salad
sandwiches, veggies with my favorite home-made dip) and ate, and envied the
folks who took advantage of the garb discount at Ponderosa.....

I think that if you're going to make a meal such as this necessary to learn
the cooking techniques of that culture, and have people trained in using
them doing the cooking. Most of this feast was just simply, badly cooked. As
an example, 4 people working on woks could have made the stir boil come out
as a stir fry, if they'd worked at it right, and had everyone served in
about 15 minutes. Same with the steamed buns and the potstickers. Chinese
cookery for a large group is very labor intensive, as Adamantius said when
we were discussing this , and my experience has told me that you keep the
pans hot, pre-prep all the foods, and move fast.

Comments from others when I mentioned how bad it was, included telling me
war stories from early SCA feasts, where 205 out of 230 people eating had
gotten food poisoning, and badly burned whatevers- the nicest thing I heard
from anyone was that this feast was pretty bland.

Any other comments?




Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous