[Sca-cooks] A little something...WILD!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Laura C. Minnick:

>OK folks- does anyone have the Official Copy of teh Convection Oven story?
>
>Gorgeous darlin, the story is true. I can't remember teh whole thing but
>that there was a piece of foil stuck int eh fan, and Master A had a split
>second to jump in and pull it out or it would be VERY BAD to be nearby. And
>he did it. IIRC he lost some hair on that one.

No, I lost parts of my eyebrows and eyelashes once lighting a broiler
at the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship site in Huntington, New
York, but not in the convection oven.

The Convection Oven Story, from the Oven-Mouth view, so to speak, is
as follows:

I was at an event held by the AEthelmearc group whose name escapes
me, but which includes Binghamton, New York (is it Sterlyng Vale?),
the event at which both Countess Brekke Franksdottir and Mistress
Thorkatla Herjolfsdottir were inducted into the Order of the Pelican
more or less simultaneously. I mention this only so people who know
these people or who were there might have some frame of reference. I
_think_ this was in the first reign of Timothy and Gabrielle in the
East, and at the time, there either was no principality of
AEthelmearc, or it was a principality of the East. It was definitely
considered an event in the East Kingdom, though.

Master Dyffan ap Iago was in charge of the kitchen; he was a Laurel
and I was not, so this would have been something like 1996, probably
right around the time this list started. As I recall I was wearing my
Mark I white chef's cote (and that'll teach me to wear a bridal gown
to the wedding of another) because I intended to spend most or all of
the day in the kitchen.

Anyway, as I recall Master Dyffan had put quite a lot of puff pastry
shells in the convection oven and left the kitchen for a few minutes.
(One theory on baking puff pastry involves putting the stuff in at
really high heat to maximize the "puff" aspect of the pastry, then
finishing at lower heat to firm up the pastry, almost dry it out,
without burning.) Dyffan had something covered with a square of foil
to keep it from burning, I guess, and I noticed the the oven had
begun to whine in tones of mechanical distress; the kind of noise
that immediately precedes either the tripping of a circuit breaker or
the burning-out of a large electric motor. With visions of huge
repair bills dancing in my head, I investigated the sound and found
the square of foil lodged in the fan blades of the convection oven,
which of course was dead center in the back wall of the oven, just
slightly out of reach for most people's arms.

Now, for those who haven't seen the kind of coat I tend to wear when
cooking, it was a design that incorporated as many design features of
a modern white chef's coat as was humanly possible within a garment
of otherwise period design. It looked like the white coats worn by
most of the workmen in the Tacuinum Sanitatis illustrations, but had
a lot of doubled and quilted fabric on the chest and front of the
skirt of the coat, a thick, high collar to protect the neck, and
extra-long, double-thick cuffs which could either be worn rolled down
to protect the hands and wrist from burns, or rolled up out of the
way. In short, a white chef's coat that _looked_ like a late
fourteenth-century workman's cote. (My current one is a 10-panel
Greenland Gown, and I don't like it as much as the old one.)

So, there I am, complete with time slowing down, listening to people
hemming and hawing in unnaturally deep voices about how there was
something stuck in the fan, and it was all very Sam Peckinpah (sp?),
as you can imagine. Anyway, realizing that there are some times when
you just have to shut up and do it, and the fact that there are some
jobs for which the hands are the best tools, and also knowing I was
wearing exceptionally protective clothing (being built like your
average gorilla doesn't hurt, either), I wrapped side towels around
my hands, removed just enough pans and racks from the oven to gain
entrance, and more or less leaped into the oven head first, knowing I
had maybe a second and a half to do the thing before I caught fire.
Which I proceeded to do with minimal fuss.

Now, the tableau. I come out of the oven, which is now running more
or less normally, and I notice there're about fifteen other cooks
standing there with chins on chest, watching me climb out of the
oven, and Dyffan has returned in the interim, and is asking _someone_
to tell him just what the bloody blue blazes is going on, because the
last time he saw such a sight was the last act of Hansel and Gretel,
and people are muttering about how everybody from Ostgardr is utterly
insane, and there are references to Indiana Jones, etc. I calmly
begin putting the racks and pastry back in the oven.

"What?" I ask everybody, looking around, as if nothing had happened,
which it hadn't, since I was able to prevent it...

... and _THEN_ Master Richard the Poor of Ely, who has decided,
apropos of nothing, to enter the kitchen with a chorus line in tow,
singing the "Serious Profession" song that accompanies the opening
credits to the BBC sitcom, "Chef!", makes his entrance.

Needless to say, an interesting day. I now feel like one of those old
soldiers who relives the Battle of Sevastopol, and the Stand of the
Thin Red Line, etc., with the aid of a salt-shaker, a napkin and a
couple of peas.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER