SC - Seeking comments/More info

[Becki Tants]

Hi folks -

As per the event announcement I posted yesterday, I am running a modified 
Iron Chef Medieval this April.  Here's the information I'm sending to 
interested parties.  I'd appreciate any comments you may have, and more 
teams are even better.  (We have 2-3 committed so far, with more people 
starting to express interest every day....)

Ru

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The concept is a modified iron chef, where the dishes created are served 
for feast.  It will be modified in that each team will be told the 
ingredient in advance and need to come up with menu and ingredients list in 
advance.  They will have the choice of shopping themselves (with a budget 
set by me) or letting us do the shopping for them.  I'll also be using this 
to try and balance the feast and coordinate kitchen resources.

The more teams we get, the less each will have to do - the intent is to 
produce a 2-3 course feast, with basics (bread, butter, perhaps rice) 
provided by our folks.  If we get 6 teams, we can do an excellent 3 course 
feast with each team only having to make a couple of dishes.  If we get 2 
teams, they're likely to be working much harder.  If we get 10 teams, no 
one will have to do more then one dish.

If teams want to do some or even all the work in advance, that's ok.  All 
teams will be asked to at least have a representative present in the 
morning for the schtick announcement of the ingredient.  (A friend is 
teasing me about making me something really loud to wear and a marzipan or 
sugarpaste pepper to bite into.)   The kitchen is HUGE and has many 
separate workstations.  They serve lunch for 4100 students every day from 
here, so we should have all the equipment we need.  (I can provide pictures 
and a sketchy inventory.)  There will also be room in the main hall to 
create workspaces, and I'd like to see at least a couple of people doing 
prep work or dessert stuff out there who can answer questions.

I am considering (and am certainly open to comments) the idea of having a 
different theme ingredient for each course.  Regardless, the theme 
ingredient is likely to be either a fruit (apple, plum) or something like 
ginger - something that is common to most cuisines in period, versatile in 
how it can be prepared, and to which few people are allergic.  (I'm 
actively soliciting suggestions!)

The product of all this will be served for the feast that night.  There 
will be 3 levels of judges.  The "Iron Chef" type judges who think 
everything is wonderful and include people like a jock (Knight?) and a 
psychic - these will be mostly for show and laughs.  Then the people will 
be allowed to vote for their favorites as well, and we would also like the 
cooking laurels to do the same.

I'm not requiring documentation for this, since my goal is to make this an 
easy way for someone who is terrified of doing an entire feast to try doing 
just a piece, and laugh a little on the way, but I certainly think that 
people who do should be rewarded at least by the laurels.

Current timetable is that I would like teams to let me know by 7 Deadlies 
(Feb 10th) if they are participating, with a menu/ingredients list due by 
Ice Dragon (March 24th).  If we have a lot of teams, I may ask different 
one's to tell me their specialties and assign types of dishes that 
way....  Once the team list is finalized, I'll announce the ingredients to 
each team captain.

A team can be however many people you want - in the real iron chef 
competitions, each chef has a bunch of helpers running around, and I see no 
reason to change that.

There is no rule that says that a team has to stick to the budget I provide 
- - just that anything above and beyond it is out of their own pocket.  (Or, 
as I said, we can do the shopping here - I'll base budget's off what it 
would cost me and as long as we're still clear of the $7/head total it 
shouldn't be a big deal.)

Thoughts?

Caitlin Ruadh

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Rebecca (Becki) Tants          		Phone:	  (607) 254-8898
Data Warehouse Architect		Fax:	  (607) 255-6982
Cornell University			E-mail:  rt46 at cornell.edu
120 Maple Ave., Ithaca NY 14850