SC - FoodTV and the SCA, was - Emeril (long)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Susan Fox-Davis wrote:
> 
> Siegfried Heydrich wrote:
> 
> >     Emeril is on at the moment doing a medieval cooking show. It's awful.
> >
> >     Sieggy - who feels a need for a cuskynole fix . . .
> 
> Ah yes, that was a rerun from last year, it shows up in regular rotation.  You
> have to take Emeril for what he is, flash and dazzle for the masses.  The
> wardrobe and 'atmosphere people' are from Medieval Times, but the food he's
> working on is better than what they serve at M.T. isn't it?  It's other
> people's redactions, but not horrible ones.  Frankly, that show turned out much
> better than I had expected.

Somewhat better... I wonder if they've fixed the uncredited lifting of
an adapted recipe from HG Cariadoc's online Miscellany?

The Maids of Honor Tarts appear to be entirely without a period
foundation for the recipe given. We have reason to believe MOH Tarts
(from whatever town or in whatever style they may be) are old, and
perhaps older than the age of the recipe given, but the recipe as given
looks rather like something from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

On a marginally related note, the FoodTV people had scheduled, for this
past Wednesday, a shoot of a medieval-feast segment of "Food Fantasies",
and they had asked for help from various people around the East Kingdom.
When I spoke to somebody on the staff of the production company, though,
it became clear to me that what they were interested in having us do was
not really what we do. 

The gentleman asked me, essentially, who I was, why I was calling, and
how I heard about the project, and I explained (after translating my
role into modern English as best I could) that I was the coordinating
Education Officer for SCA groups on the East Coast from Delaware to Nova
Scotia, and that my office is required by the SCA for when our
not-for-profit status is reviewed by the IRS. I explained that I'd been
contacted by people he had spoken to in the Albany, NY area, and in
Central NJ. 

He immediately informed me that they were not _paying_ for any SCA
involvement. This threw me a bit, until I realized he had been letting
his mind wander until hearing the words, "IRS". I explained that we
didn't necessarily do what we do for money, but that we still had to
deal with the IRS, and that was why I was coordinating the SCA's
_educational_ services in our region.

He told me a little about the program, its format being that they
solicit "food fantasies", i.e. food-related wishes from viewers writing
in, and made them a reality, with the people writing in (normally a
couple) as invited guests. He explained that "tons of people" wrote in
requesting a medieval feast, and they pretty much chose the first couple
that wrote in, that was also able to make it on the day, and in the
location, they intended to shoot.

The site they chose was a local landmark right in our Province,
Tarrytown Castle, currently housing a large, fine restaurant. It turns
out the restaurant's chef and cooks were preparing the feast, and they
wanted people from the SCA to come and provide atmosphere. They wanted
musicians, singers, jugglers, and fencers ["Fencers in the dining hall
during the feast???" I asked, incredulously... "No, no, nothing like
that! We just want a few shots of the other things you people do, so we
can insert them for a little explanatory passage." Sound of a pencil
scratching through a note saying we should have fencers in the feast
hall...]. They also wanted to allow a lucky _eight_ of us (he referred
to "SCA dignitaries" -- seems this chef would only cook for ten) to sit
and eat the dinner in costume, talk a little about how much they were
enjoying themselves, and a little about our "medieval fantasy". Whatever
that means, a bit about personas, I suppose. Either that or the late
Ricardo Montalban and the late Herve Villachaize would come in... "De
plane, boss, de plane!!!"... "Yes, Tatoo, their Medieval Phannnn-Tasy is
about to come true!"

I mentioned that I had some fairly extensive experience in various
high-end food service operations in New York, in a variety of positions,
and that my particular interest in the SCA was in culinary history.
Would they be interested in discussing a menu for this dinner? I
explained that I had a pretty large collection of medieval recipe
sources, and when the gentleman said that the chef was a Belgian and
spoke almost no English, I said I had some recipes in French, if he'd
like to see them.

Nope. It turns out that the chef was interested in producing something
"a little fancier, more elaborate" than actual period food. "More
elaborate than pies covered in edible gold leaf, pottages decorated with
candied anise seeds, pomegranite kernels or shredded, fried almonds, or,
say, a roast peacock redressed in its skin and feathers," I asked, "More
elaborate than that?"

"Yes, well, among other things we'd like to have the diners use knives
and forks... ."

I began to see that I was getting nowhere, that this man wasn't
interested in hearing that knives and forks were used in at least parts
of Europe during the Middle Ages, and that the chef would be mortally
afraid, on a professional level, of having his name connected with
Cariadoc's Brown Goo (apologies to His Grace; the reference was
illustrative and not a comment on quality) or some imagined version
thereof, portrayed on national television.
  
What they wanted was unpaid extras in free (to them) costumes, adding a
stamp of historical legitimacy to a historically questionable
production. The true shame of it was that I had hoped this might prove
to be a demo shown on national TV, and that if handled with respect for
the goals of both the producers as well as the SCAdians involved, they
might get what they wanted, and we might get a flood of new, interested
people calling our chatelaines. To that end I was prepared to encourage
only our most discreet and dedicated people to become involved, and
somehow manage to forget to notify the people who wanted to show off the
new Klingon sword they bought at GeekCon on national TV, or sing all 300
verses of the racy new filk song they'd written, that this was occurring.
  
For some strange reason, I was unable to find a single person interested
in taking a day off from school or work, travelling to this place, being
ordered around like the dog in a dog food TV commercial, in return for
the possibility of a free, non-period meal, and the chance to be on
television and talk Forsooth Jive. Verily.

All, mind you, on a week's advance notice. I had to notify the contact
(a _researcher_, BTW) that I hadn't been able to find anyone to commit
to being part of the project, but that, as far as I knew, the person in
the Barony of Carillion (his New Jersey contact) was still working on
finding people.

So, at this point I don't know if anybody showed or not, and I expect
that this production company will have decided that _we_ are difficult
to work with. So if you happen to see a segment of "Food Fantasies" on
FoodTV, and there's a guy with a Klingon sword and somebody singing
"Planxty Turnip Shaped Like A Thingy", and you wonder how such a thing
could have happened, now you know.  

Adamantius, off to drown his sorrows in quinces and silver leaf   
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com