[Sca-cooks] Casbah! Feast, was Period Couscous References?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

From: Yamil O Kiwan <res03l8a at gte.net>
>Anahita,
>
>The feast was fabulous. Every dish was well spiced and the food was hot, no
>small chore considering the fire restrictions you had to deal with.
>
>Well done.
>
>Jamal

Greetings, Jamal, it was an honor to meet you. And thank you for your
kind words.

I froze the chicken dish, the White Tharidah of al-Rashid, (about 14
gallons worth in zip-closed plastic bags) to avoid "church picnic
chicken syndrome". The Seven Vegetable Tagine was bagged and just
refrigerated (about 9 gallons). Fabian made 600 meatballs from the
Andalusian recipe i sent him, and froze them, per my request. The
couscous was made on site.

However, the food was re-heated courtesy of the gracious hostess of
the feast, Eliska, and quite a few generous volunteers who manned the
pots of hot water.

Fabian, mastermind of The Saucy Wench (a movable tavern, usually
without food), and Eliska brought up the tables and stoves and
cooking gear, and enlisted people to bring up the rugs and pillows
for the Casbah.

And there were a number of helpers recruited on the spot who prepped
the food (slicing oranges, chopping scallions, and mincing mint and
flat-leaf parsley) and served on the food line, including one woman,
Edith, for whom this was her FIRST EVENT!

--- interjection re fire ---

Here in the West Kingdom, we never have ground fires, because of fire
hazard all summer and fall. For warmth and light at night (and
sometimes for cooking), Westies usually use "portable fire pits"
originally designed by Duke Frederick of Holland, familiarly called
Flieg (der Fliegende Hollander :-), some of which are commercially
made by West Kingdom ex-pat Regulus. If you want to make your own,
pattern and directions are on Master Johann von Drachenfels'
Dragonwing Tents website:
http://midtown.net/dragonwing/col9905.htm

In the West *all* fires must be a minimum of 18" off the ground
throughout the year. Propane stoves are considered safe, as long as
they're on a table. At this particular site, however, the risk of
fire was considered so great that all cooking had to be done on a
small asphalt parking lot. Because this made dining more difficult,
Fabian had the idea to feed the masses :-) Side note: there were only
two small kitchens set up besides the Casbah.

And it was strange to see Bardics going on after dark without fires
to light and warm them. Only battery powered lights were allowed. I
didn't see any glaring lights, though. One camp used big Japanese
spherical paper shades were over their battery lamps and several
other camps had small battery-powered Japanese/California Craftsman
style lanterns with low-level, warm lights.

al-Sayyida Anahita al-Qurtubiyya bint 'abd al-Karim al-hakim al-Fassi