[Sca-cooks] Working for Adamantius....

[Philippa Alderton]

Johan, Most Dear My Lord,

Well, survived 12th Night, although I feel rather as
though I had been beaten with a club....

I arrived with suitably smooshed pears, got out of my
modern clothing, and the first thing Adamantius did,
was hand me his 10 inch Dick. He next put me to
beating his meat for him, and I had managed to
accomplish that satisfactorily, when I discovered that
he'd had poor Stefan playing with his sausage all
night.... Lemme tell you, the man has no quit in
him.... Wish you were there....

But I suppose you want to hear about the feast...

Actually, folks, I'm using this opportunity to tease
Adamantius a bit, yeah, I know I'm posting to the List
;-)

I really wasn't kidding, though, about how the day
started- when I got there, first thing Adamantius had
me do was cut the venison into approximately (VERY
approximately ;-) 3 oz bits, and his next request was
for me to pound them flat with a large tenderizing
hammer ( What's the proper name for that type of
hammer? ) I was laughing at the situation a bit,
because Johan had once posted me something about
wanting to see me coming through the door with a
hammer in my hand, and I'd posted him back that
Smith's ain't right- how many gentlemen would want to
see their ladies coming through the door with a hammer
in their hand?

I figure Adamantius ain't right either, or else is
very trusting, because first he handed me a sharp
knife, then a large hammer to pound the 3 oz pieces of
venison into cutlets....

BTW, A, you asked me why I was using my forefinger to
guide the hammer, and I kinda blew you off. The reason
is that the hammer was very light, and required quite
a few poundings for each cutlet. By doing it that way,
it's my personal mental cue to use my elbow and
associated muscles to hammer so I could get the
necessary power into each blow- if I'd held it
differently and used my wrist,, it would have given
out long before I was done with the 200+ cutlets.
Hammering from the wrist is a useful technique when
you need to make a series of quick, light blows, but
you need the extra power and endurance when you're
doing something heavier. Anything you want to add,
Johan? (Johan and I are both smiths, folks, so we tend
to have a lot of knowledge of rather odd techniques in
common ;-).

Next job was boiling and dismantling a bunch of
lobsters- I got Stefan involved in this, both to teach
him about a foodstuff with which he was not familiar
(not too many Maine lobsters in Texas) and because I
really did need the extra hands to dismantle that
many, that is, if it needed to be done sometime in
this lifetime ;-)

Over all, the feast was excellent, and Adamantius did
his usual excellent job. Not only does he do a great
job of crisis management, but he keeps the kitchen
environment very pleasant. He also is very
understanding of the need for people to take breaks-
if I hadn't taken the breaks I did as I did, I'd have
had to quit well before we were done because all that
standing on a hard floor was killing my lower back.
Another very useful lady was thrown out of the kitchen
so her allergies didn't kick in- he's very aware of
that sort of thing. And he did it all in a kitchen ,
the facilities of which were.... underwhelming, but
I'll let him tell you about that.

Particular comments on the feast? I particularly liked
the camelline sauce with the garlic, which went on the
non-deadly chicken, and the venison- purple pepper
sauce combination, although there were many other
excellent things as well. There were, of course,
problems, but I'll let him describe them- they were
minor enough, that I can honestly say,

Hoobah!!!!

and

Vivat!!!!!

Excellent job, most dear my friend ;-)

Phlip








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