[Sca-cooks] first feast / Absolutely incredible weekend - long!

[Generys ferch Ednuyed]

OK, so I promised a run-down of how my very first feast went, so here goes.
First I want to thank all of you who sent "don't panic" emails, it helped a
*lot*.

So at any rate, I took Friday off to precook stuff - we made rolls, lots of
them (I'm not sure they're period, but the portion control is *way* easier
than with loaves of bread) as well as Crisp Barley/Rye Bread (from Mistress
Hauviette's "Feast at Carrick Fergus" - I used this for several of my
recipes.) We also pre-grilled the ribs - according to the recipe, for Stwed
Beef, they should have been roasted, but this is a kitchen with 1 oven, so I
decided to grill them, started the Cormarye marinating, made Samit Spread
(recipe from the Florilegium, somewhere....), and cut veggies.  Lots of
veggies...

Saturday was the main cooking of course, though my lord made me take time
out of the kitchen to go to morning court (I thought *he* was getting an
award - or at least that was what I was *told* by several people...).  You
could have knocked me over with a feather when I was given a Boreas...(the
Baronial A&S award....)

So at any rate, here's the menu, with how things came out.

First course:  Samit Spread (yummy, if you like garlic anyway...), Crisp
Barley/Rye bread (underestimated amount needed, had to stretch with Pita
Bread...)  Compost (made with mead from our kingdom brewer - needed to play
with the spicing a bit, but weren't bad for nibbling on)  and a variation of
Brotchan Foltchep.  I had planned to make the version that I had gotten from
the Florilegium, however, two weekends ago I was playing with the White
Poree of Leeks from Platina, and discovered ginger and leeks are sublime
together - so what I ended up with was a soup of oats and leeks cooked in
milk, cream, and vegetable broth seasoned with salt, pepper and ginger.

My biggest problem was that I hadn't got the timing quite right for things
to get done - so the second and third courses got smushed together into a
"wave" of food that just kept coming out... there are worse things...

So in the 2nd/3rd course, there were:  Cinnamon-corned beef - I described
this in an earlier post, Salmon/cheese pies (from Mistress Hauviette again -
these were saffron-flavored and I *really* wanted to try them, but they all
got eaten...), fried mushroom-and-cheese pastries (need more spices and less
dough, but still liked by those people who like mushrooms, fried garbanzo
beans with cumin and nutmeg, frumenty (never attempt to do frumenty for >100
plus in one pot - even with a designated stirrer stirring constantly, it
*will* scorch... that was my one major screwup that I didn't realize I did
until it was already partially out...) Stwed Beef Ribs, homemade rolls, and
Cormarye.

And the coolest part was the subtltie at the end - the one I wouldn't tell
Olwen about earlier.  What I did was I made a *large* - about 4 ft long, by
1 ft tall by 1 1/2 feet wide paper mache "roast pig", hollow.  Inside the
hollow was a bag of wine (out of a box... not the greatest, but it
worked...)  and then the whole thing was covered in a layer of nice, sticky
Gingerbrede.  It even had an apple in its mouth, and blueberry eyes, and
peppercorns for nostrils - and due to the wine inside, it *bled*.  People's
jaws dropped - including the King's.  It was fun.  (And yes, Olwen, pictures
were taken, I just don't have them yet.)

So all in all, it went fairly well - the only major dramas were the burnt
frumenty, and the melting of my brand new Thermopen instant-read thermometer
(I was very annoyed at that - and I'm not sure whether to blame me or my
staff... so I'm giving my really wonderful staff the benefit of the doubt.)

At any rate, I'm still floating, because everyone said it was wonderful,
so...(I don't actually know, as I didn't get any of it - I never eat what
I'm cooking, because I get sick of looking at it...)  Next stop - trying to
think of what to do for the baking contest at Crown Tourney...

Sorry for rambling so long...

Generys