[Sca-cooks] Just A Feast report (part 2/2: kitchen detail)

[Kirrily Robert]

OK, the second part of this report, just for the sca-cooks crowd who I
know will want all the details (and photos).

First, an overall comment... I over-catered this feast somewhat.  We had
too much food.  Now in part that was because attendance was down maybe
15% due to a snowstorm.  And it might also have been because we had a
lot of newcomers who aren't used to pacing themselves and filled up on
bread and stuff too early (I definitely noticed more leftovers coming in
from the newcomer-heavy tables).  But I think I can probably still
reduce my "gut instinct" catering amounts by about 10%.

And now, on with the dish-by-dish breakdown.  I'll do this in
chronological order of service, which is as good an order as any.


Bread

Ordered from a local bakery.  Wanted them to do an approximation of
manchet and cheat loaves, and the guy I spoke to originally seemed to
understand what I wanted.  But in the final 2 weeks, when I called back
to arrange the final details, that guy wasn't available and the other
guy just kept stuffing around.  Didn't return my calls, raised the
prices, and in the end the bread wasn't quite what I wanted.  Not *bad*,
but not perfect either.  Sigh.  We had about 1/4 of the bread left over
at the end, which suggests I should reduce the amount I buy next time.

Mortis of chicken

Straightforward recipe... boil chicken, chuck it in the food processor
with some almonds and rosewater, blend to mush, serve.  We served it in
little pate ramekin things.  It went over OK, but I had one person who
wandered into the kitchen later and asked "what the hell was that?
Someone told me it was hummus, but it wasn't!"  She didn't dislike it,
it was just that she'd got rather a shock when she'd tasted it.  We had
too much of this dish, but we knew that would happen because we gave the
precook person 2 whole chickens when we really only needed 1 or 1.5 ...
it was one of those "just to be on the safe side" situations, and we
were safer than necessary.  So we ended up with 8 ramekins of the stuff,
when we only needed 5.

Liver pate

Took the recipe from "liver puddings" from the florilegium.  I liked it
a lot, but I'm glad I didn't make a whole lot of it because I don't
think it would have been eaten.  In general I think the spreads (this
one and the mortis) were a little under-eaten because there were more
interesting appetizers and people didn't want to fill up on bread.

Pickled mushrooms

Used the recipe from Fettiplace that was posted here a while back.  The
problem with pickles is that you can't tell in advance how they will
turn out.  I didn't like these very much, I found that the nutmeg was
rather strong and the wine tasted a bit funny.  But everyone else liked
them much more than I did, and I don't think a single shroom came back
to the kitche, so *shrug*.

Pickled figs

I used a modern recipe for pickled dried figs, and just omitted the
allspice (I put in some mace instead).  Basically it was a sweet pickle
with white wine vinegar and sugar and cinnamon and cloves and mace.
Very tasty.  Everyone loved them, no leftovers.

Sallet of asparagus

Blanched asparagus with an oil and vinegar dressing.  Used balsamic
vinegar; not sure if that's period or not.  Anyone know?  We served this
and the figs on one platter together.

Peascods in lent

Little fruit-filled fried ravioli sort of things.  We used a modern
pasta recipe intended for fried ravioli, which had basically the same
ingredients as the period recipe... it just gave us the quantities.  The
filling was dates, raisins, spices, and some OJ to moisten it all.  We
fried them in canola oil.  These were *very* well received.  We made
plenty and just kept sending them out.  They fried quickly, so this
worked fine for a feast of under 50 people.  Had to serve them on a bed
of lettuce leaves with some fruit garnish, though, so they didn't look
like "a mound of little greasy things" (in the words of the guy doing
the frying).

Carbonado of beef

The butcher gave us more meat than we originally needed, but I thought
"what the hell, it'll be popular" ... and it was.  Only problem was, I
think we filled everyone up with big steaks!  We had a bank of electric
frying pans going for this dish, with two people turning the steaks and
basting them with butter and stuff.  There were a few leftovers, but not
many.  We had originally wanted to make this dish with venison, but it
was more expensive and tougher, so we switched to beef instead.

Boiled chicken

The original recipe specified sorrel and barberries, but we couldn't get
either so we substituted collard greens and cranberries (see earlier
discussion on sca-cooks about this).  We didn't have much stove space,
so we boiled the chicken early and stuck it in 3 large crockpots on
"low" until it was almost time to serve, then added the greens.  Having
it in the crockpots so long meant the chicken was literally falling off
the bones.  On the one hand, yum!  On the other hand, ick, all those
little bones.  We'd got chicken quarters for 69c/lb and cut them up into
single-portion pieces, so there were lots of funny little bones in the
stew by the time it went out.  The flavour came out great, though, and
it's a very colourful dish too.  Got some compliments on that one.

White-pot

A rice custardy thing from The English Housewife.  We (the cooks) like
it a lot, but we got lots of leftovers.  I think this might be in part
because the containers we served it in had lids, and they went out with
the lids on, so people couldn't really "see" the dish and it didn't
register on their radars.  Note to self: next time, instruct servers to
remove lids.

Quelquechose with peas, and with oysters

Made two versions of this scrambled-egg type dish.  Our baroness is
deadly allergic to oysters so we didn't serve that one to high table at
all.  Had a funny incident which we now refer to as "oyster surprise"
... I had been telling everyone for weeks NOBODY TOUCH THE OYSTERS
EXCEPT ME!  I didn't want the Baroness dying on us.  The dish was to be
mixed in a bright red (for "danger") bowl, and there were all these
other precautions so that not the merest smidgen of oyster would get
anywhere else.  Anyway, I left the oysters out of the mix til almost the
last minute, to reduce the risk.  So I'm almost due to fry it up, and I
go looking for the oysters.  Where are they?  Are they in the fridge...
no.... in a cooler? ... no... so in the end we had about 3 people
running around trying to find these two little half-pint containers of
oysters, looking under tables where we'd stored stuff, in my backpack,
everywhere... we were just at the point of declaring the dish to be
"oyster surprise... Surprise, there's no oysters!" when someone found
we'd left the oysters in the car.  Sigh.  Anyway, we got some leftovers
back but not a ludicrous amount, if I recall correctly.  And one person
came into the kitchen at "half time" and took away a tupperware full of
leftovers, including quite a bit of quelquechose, so that was good :)

Sallet of cucumbers and radishes

When I'd gone to the greengrocers, they had smallish cucumbers and
really nice radishes in bunches.  I put in my order based on that.  But
when I went to pick it up, the cucumbers were bigger and they'd given me
bags of radishes not bunches.  Well, this meant we had at least 50% more
cucumber sallet than originally intended.  But what the hell, I figured,
and sent it out.  So of course we had heaps of leftovers.  I took home a
big tubful that's approximately equal to that 50% extra.  Good thing
I *really* like cucumber salad... though I might change my mind about
that by the end of the week :)

Sodde eggs

Picked up the recipe off the florilegium.  We liked it a lot.  However,
I think I made the sauce and poured it on a little too far in advance,
as it kinda congealed.  It wasn't bad, and I don't think anyone minded,
but I would have preferred that it hadn't.

Sallet for fish days

This was basically home-made rollmops.  We used pickled herring fillets,
sweet onions, and parsley sprigs, and dressed it with a balsamic
vinaigrette.  Seems we didn't have many herring fans there, as we had
quite a few leftovers.  I think those leftovers could have been
diminished if the servers had distributed them to the tables that had
eaten all their herring already.  I have noticed that people who like
herring, *really* like herring, and will eat other peoples' servings if
given the chance.  Anyway, about 1/4 to 1/3 of what we'd sent out came
back to us, and the resident herring fiend in the kitchen was unable to
eat them all.  I was shocked.

Layered sallet

I really really liked this one, and it's gone over really well in test
dinners and other taste tests.  It's olives, capers, currants, figs,
raisins, sage, spinach, oil, vinegar, sugar, and perhaps some other
things I've forgotten... all the ingredients are chopped up and mixed
together into a dark blackish mess, and then layered in a salad with
various other stuff.  Our salad was fairly cut down from the original
version, with just lettuce leaves then slices of orange and lemon then
this mixture then some more orange and lemon for garnish.  Anyway, I
think some people tasted it but overall people didn't eat as much as we
had thought they would.  One of the servers suggested this might be
because it was a bit too "mysterious"... a black mess, that you can't
really see what's in it.  I guess that's fair enough.  I did get some
good reviews of it, though... apparently one guy at high table had
looked at it kinda funny, and someone said "go on, taste it" and then
once he'd tasted it he grabbed the plate and wouldn't let the servers
take it away til he finished it.  Anyway, had some leftovers but not a
ludicrous amount, and one of our cooks loved the stuff so she was more
than happy to take it home!

Olaves of veal

One of the best dishes of the feast.  We served them on long skewers,
about 8 olaves to a skewer, on an oval platter with sauce poured over.
Disappeared in a flash.  The cinnamon and currant sauce turned out the
best we've ever done.  Not much more to be said.

Apple moye

We served this with the olaves of veal because they just seemed to go
together well.  It was well-received.  Not much else to say about it,
really.

Pie meat

This dish is basically minced lamb with fruit and OJ and spices, served
in a coffin.  It went over pretty well, but I think it was rather rich
and people didn't eat a lot of it.  I got one of the less experienced
kitchen staff to cook it as it was quite a simple recipe, and she put
the orange zest garnish into the dish instead of leaving it aside as a
garnish.  So it turned out much more orangey than originally intended.
It wasn't bad, but it wasn't quite how it was originally meant to be.
But nobody knew except me.

Herb tart

Probably the big failure of the feast, if anything was.  It was a
perfectly good herb tart, but it seems that nobody was in the mood for
it when it went out.  Also, we served it cold, and I think people
expected it to be hot, and when they put it in their mouths they were
like "eep, it's cold, I wasn't expecting that!"  We saw lots of
half-eaten slices in the voiders at the end of this course.  Sigh.

Spinach sallet

The greengrocer gave us bags not bunches, so I think we had about 35%
more spinach than we originally planned.  The dish turned out perfectly
well, but the amount we sent out, coupled with the diners' fullness by
this stage, meant we got quite a bit back again.

Onions upon sops

Again, the dish was fine, but the diners were full.  I think everyone
tasted it and most liked it, but by this stage they just didn't have
room for much more.  We didn't feel bad throwing a pile of it out,
though... onions are cheap.

Trifle

This is whipped cream with rosewater, ginger, and sugar.  We whipped
about 750mL to make a largish bowlful of trifle, and served it with
store-bought "pizzelle" wafers.  It disappeared so quickly I was
astonished.  One minute it was there, the next minute it had gone.  If
we do this again, we'll make a bucketful.

Fruit platter

Well received, no comments really apart from "presentation is
everything"... one of our kitchen staff was also the hall decorator, and
she really has a flair for making stuff look great.

Bisket bread

Those who'd had it before, knew what it was ang made sure they got some.
Those who hadn't had it before probably thought it looked boring.  Had
some leftovers, which one of the diners took home with her.  I would
have made less, but one batch isn't really very much to make and goes a
very long way and keeps well, so I figured what the hell.

Marzipan

We just made little marzipan balls, about 1/2" across.  We had plain
marzipan and spiced.  They didn't all get eaten, but most did.

Date leach

aka "sugared dog turd".  Looks much better sliced.  Tastes wonderful
coupled with a slice of strawberry.  It was all eaten, especially after
people discovered the strawberry trick.

Prune tarts

These were an experiment.  I made tiny little prune tarts in a
mini-muffin tray.  The prune filling was basically a jam I'd made
earlier, flavoured with rosemary and cinnamon and rosewater.  When I put
it into the shells and put them in the oven to bake a bit more, they
kind of went all bubbly and exploded a bit.  I was pretty unhappy with
them.  But when I got them on a tray with rosemary branches all around
in a kind of garnish/wreath, and they were out there on the banquet
table by candlelight, they looked just fine.  And they all got eaten up,
so they can't have been too bad.

Non-alcoholic hippocras

It took longer to warm than expected, so it went out a little late,
after the rest of the dessert dishes.  So we had lots left over.  But
those who had it say they really liked it and want the recipe.


More general comments

The kitchen operated pretty smoothly.  We had 1 domestic-style stove,
but it was a good one: gas, large, etc.  There were two fridges, one of
which had glass doors, which was nice.  Table and bench space was at a
premium, but it wasn't *too* bad.  The movement around the sink was a
little crowded and chaotic, which was a bit of a pain.

The overall schedule was effective.  Things happened in the timescale
they were meant to happen in.  My estimates of how long things would
take were mostly correct, give or take a few minutes.

We had some minor staffing emergencies on the day, including a minor car
accident on icy roads which led to two pre-cook staff being very
delayed, but we worked around it OK.

I had the "Folder of Doom" (renamed "Folder of Destiny" by the kitchen
hands) with all the information in it in great detail: recipes,
schedules, inventories, serving notes, allergy information, ingredients
lists, etc.  This worked out really well.  I was happy with it.


So, yeah, my overall notes and reminders to myself are:

1. reduce estimates by 10%, especially on non-meat dishes

2. never let a vendor sell you more than you wanted... if the cucumbers
are bigger, or they give you bags instead of bunches, send some back.

3. delegate a specific person to be in charge of the inventory of the
canton cooking gear... it's a pain to do when you're tired and worn out
from cooking all day

4. bring more disposable bags and containers for leftovers, so people
can take stuff home without having to worry about returning tupperware
etc.


Oh, and for those who want photos... here are some from one of the test
dinners: http://infotrope.net/album/?dir=/camera/2003-02-15
I'll post some from the event itself in a day or two, when I've got them
all in one place.

Yours,

Katherine

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"