SC - When planning a feast ....

[Philippa Alderton]

Get reliable help.

Make sure they know what their responsibilities are, and that they're
capable of fulfilling them.

Choose a time period and area, and study the recipes from that milieu in
order to make a feast which is both tasty, and a well balanced meal.

Plan on having something good at room temp as well as at heat or coolth for
your first course- if feast is delayed, whether by court or kitchen
glitches, the feasters need to have something tasty to eat when they first
get there.

Don't use the same ingredient(s) in every dish- not only is it poor cooking
practice, but you just might have hit someone's allergy, making most of the
feast inedible for them.

Try to avoid making too many elaborate, labor intensive dishes. Jasmine's
feast was one of the best I've ever had, but there was a lot of labor
intensive stuff going on. If you're having pasties, for example, don't bake
your own bread, butcher a cow into kebabs, hand make the pasta, pluck the
chickens, make the almond milk, and 14 other things all at the same time on
site.

Pre-prep as much as you can before the feast.

Plan on at least one major screw-up, and try to either have a utility person
on hand to deal with it, whatever it is, or make sure your crew knows what
they're doing well enough that you can go deal with it without causing the
entire operatin t come to a screeching halt, for lack of your attention.

Eat and rest as needed- it's going to be a long day or three.


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