SC - Protectorate Feast 5 (no recipes)

[Decker, Terry D.]

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.

Manchet is a short rise bread, which gives the crumb a more massive texture
than a bread made with two rises.

With this particular recipe, a simple dough of flour, water, yeast and salt
is made allowed 30 minutes to rise, shaped and baked.  The dough doesn't
have a lot of time to trap carbon dioxide, so the strands of gluten are
still close together in the final product giving it the heavier texture.

I did score the loaves to get better expansion in the oven.

 
 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.

I favor removing the skin on whiting because it tends to retain the oils
which cause the excessively fish taste.  In Oklahoma, this normally means
trying to get the skin off of frozen fish.  If the fish is totally frozen, a
block plane might be the best tool, because you wind up shaving off the skin
(I haven't tried a block plane, but having thought of it, I will).  If the
fish is completely thawed, the filet will often break apart as you remove
the skin.  I've found that the best time to remove the skin is when the
filet is partially thawed.  If you catch it just right, you can cut through
the flesh to the skin at one end of the filet to form a tab, then holding
that tab against the side of the knife blade with your thumb strip the skin
off with a single pull.

> 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.

The orange sauces I've done all seem a little thin.  They may have been done
this way deliberately or they may have been thickened.  There is nothing in
the recipes about it.

I wondered about the apple wine sauce.  I turned it over to one of my
helpers and it came out about the consistency of apple sauce.  A little wine
to thin it might have improved it.  I did try finely chopped apples in test,
but the apple sauce type mincing produced a better tasting result.

> 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.

My wife does not like sweet potatoes and found these to be superior to most
modern recipes.  I tested out the spinach tart on a number of people,
including some spinach haters.  One of the latter, a Baron who has been
stuck at head table more than once, said that he found the dish palatable
enough he could graciously accept a small portion at the head table and not
have to choke it down.

>
> 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.

Since I detest powdered lemonade, I chose to expend a little extra effort
and make it fresh.  I cut back on the sugar to make it mildly astringent and
not cloying.  Since I made three batches for 100 people, there must be some
people who agree with my tastes in lemonade.  

I considered Stefan's request for lemonade with an artifical sweetner to be
very reasonable, as I had asked on the ingredient list for diabetics and
hypoglycemics to contact me at the site, so that I could assure them as to
quantities of ingredients in the recipes and determine for whom I would need
special drink provisions.  Stefan was the only person to contact me on that
matter, and I saw to it a pitcher of Nutrasweet sweetened lemonade was made
available to him.

This merely teachs me to make sure additional packets of sweetner are made
available to those who require them.


> 
> 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.
>  
> -- 
> Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra


I'm thinking on this problem.  I'm going to discuss a cook's invitational
feast with the local baronage.  If I can get support, I'm going to contact
several top feast cooks for their input.  The first run at this will be with
experienced cooks, so we can work out the problems with the format.  Then
I'll take a look at putting experienced and inexperienced cooks and
volunteers together.  

Bear