SC - Protectorate Feast 5 (no recipes)

[Stefan li Rous]

Bear gave his review of how his feast went. Since I was there, I will now
give you my viewpoint. Remember much of this is personal taste and comes
from an inexperienced cook.
 
> I was up until 2 a.m. Friday morning getting the marmalade to thicken.  

Well, whatever you did, it worked well. That marmalade was wonderful and
I liberally spread it on the wonderful bread you made. I'm not sure if this
was an effect you intended or not, but my lady wife really liked the inside
of the manchets. "Sort of gooey" was her happy comment. Not like uncooked
dough, I might add.
 
> 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.  

The rice pudding was good. I think I would have cooked the rice a little
longer to soften the grains more. But I've had very little rice pudding
to compare this to. I probably could have eaten more except I wanted to
leave room for the rest of the meal as it had barely started.
 
> 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.

What Bear doesn't mention here is that another person and I were in the
kitchen at this time. So I imagine we probably contributed to this inattention.
Even though I'd watched him put the dough in the pie pans and put them
in the
oven, I forgot they were there.
 
> 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 mustard may have been a little 'raw' but mainly I think it was too
mild. I ended up mixing one of the other sauces with it. I think it was
the apple-wine sauce.
 
> 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. 

I doubt I helped very much. At one point I started trying to skin the
whitings. I'm afraid I was shredding the fish more than cleanly skinning
them. Since I figured the dish Bear was trying to make would work much
better with fish fillet chunks instead of shreds, I turned it over to
someone else. While she had never done it before, either, her results
were much better. I think a big difference in doing this task may be
in how frozen the fish are. If they were totally frozen or mostly thawed
out it was pretty difficult to do. Somewhere in between was better.

Bear's fish dish ended up being wonderful! Perhaps if more fish dishes
could be done this well perhaps even Ansteorrans could be persuaded to
eat more fish at SCA feasts. I will probably try this dish at home. It
was lightly breaded/fried with a wonderful sauce on top. The fish was
quite tender and juicy.

I did think the apple-wine sauce was a little thick and the orange sauce
for the chicken a little thin. It kept running off my chicken.
 
> 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.   

I had wondered about that. When the jumbles did arrive later, my table
finally decided which ones were jumbles and which ones were Shrewsbery cakes.
I didn't think they tasted that different. Now I know why. :-)
 
> 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.    

I don't like sweet potatoes and I detest boiled spinach. However, I actually
ate some of Bear's sweet potatoes and had two portions of his spinach pie.
My mother would be quite surprised.
 
> 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.  

Again, it was the best dish of the evening. Well worth the effort put into
it.
 
> 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.

I wondered about that. However, since the feast token book was there, folks
were able to follow along and see that more was supposed to be coming.

> 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.

I realized after the meal that we hadn't seen the peascods. I just figured
our table must have gotten skipped.

The rice pudding was good. I might even try making this myself sometime. Maybe
for a family holiday get together since if I make if for here at home, I'm
going to be the only one eating it.
 
> 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.

When I asked Bear just before the event when I learned he planned on having
*fresh* lemonade if he could make some with a sugar substitute he did. This
was generous and thoughtful. Particularly considering how late the request
had been made. It had been years since I had had lemonade made with fresh
fruit rather than powder out of a can. I think next time I would have added
a bit more sweetener, but it was fine if a little bitter. He was deep in
the middle of kitchen chaos when I realized it needed more sweetener, so
I didn't try to approach the kitchen more than once on that.
 
> The leftover jumbals and the remaining roast beef were eaten by elves in the
> night.

I had been hoping they would show up in the Tavern breakfast. Now I see why
they didn't.
 
> The reservations system failed because the person taking them did not
> understand you have to have the names of individuals to catch duplicates.

Yes, When Bryn Gwlad asks for reservations for feast and table sitting they
now ask for names. This also minimizes households from grabbing multiple
tables and only using part of them.
 
> The head server and the hall steward lost control of the hall.  

Yes, they did. Mainly in not being clear to the populace when things
were going to happen. My wife and I had set up two places but I was
never sure if we were doing it at the right time or not. I think we
weren't supposed to, but there were numerous other places already set
up. So we went ahead and set ours up and later invited some others over.
I totally dislike the cattle herd stampede for tables but other than
reserving table spots at the gate, I've not got a good solution.
 
> 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.

You seemed to have more than enough volunteers. I spent some of my
time on the sidelines just waiting to see if there was a place I could
help yet stay out of the way in the meantime. Please don't totally
fill out your team with your regular volunteers or perhaps leave some
room for newbie volunteers to come in and spell your experienced
volunteers. It lets some of us new folks learn some things and perhaps
gives your folks a break or two.
 
> 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.  

The site map was ... rather poor. If this is a regular site, perhaps a better,
more accurate map could be commissoned/created and then used as the basis
for future event maps.
 
> 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.

Always a good idea with any article/info sheet. I didn't have any
trouble with
the booklet, but maybe for the same reason as you. I did have some questions
about why you changed some of the measures given in the original recipes but
I'll ask that in another message.

I pestered Bear with a number of questions Friday night while I was in the
kitchen with him. Had I waited until I had read his feast book, I would
have seen that most of the answers were in there.
 
> 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.

Yes. See my above comments on the fish dish.
 
> 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.

It was well deserved.
 
> 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...

I certainly can understand the feeling. However, I certainly hope that
you don't stop cooking feasts, at least not for long.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****