[Sca-cooks] Feast Report - A Day in the Courts of Burgundy - LONG!

[Generys ferch Ednuyed]

OK, as promised, here is my feast report.  This was a feast held at a small
local event this past weekend, at Optimist Farm in Apex, NC (I only mention
where because the kitchen for this site, is, hmm, interesting - 1 4 burner
stove w/ 1 oven, but lots of counter space. I fed 56 people plus high table,
servers, and cooks, and sent LOTS of leftovers home.

Normally I would give better references for the recipes, but I just don't
remember them...<sigh> more curses on the head of that thief. (I will be
less bitter in a few weeks, really!)

First Course:

Assorted "Nibbly" Food - This was just kind of filler - we had planned some
other recipes, but none of them QUITE worked out, so we filled in with a few
"peri-oid" appetizers - Figs wrapped in bacon with brie and prunes filled
with rosemary and goat cheese.

Strawberry Tartes - has a period recipe, but I'll have to dig for it.
Basically it was chopped strawberries, moistened with a little wine (I used
Yellowtail Shiraz that had been open for a while, and had just started to
turn - this made the tarts nice and well, tart) and dusted with cinnamon and
ginger, then baked in a plain shortening crust in mini-muffin tins. There
was another version, too, that one of my assistants did that involved
rosewater - not sure what was in it, but she made them like little fruit
ravioli.

While people were eating these, the servers brought out the first subtlety -
the Fruit Trees < http://www.tereckoffice.com/Generys/tree.jpg>
The "fruits" on these trees were actually meatballs, made according to the
Hedgehogs recipe in Taillevent, and battered with egg batter and rebaked,
then threaded onto the bamboo that made up the tree.  We had started with
more than 2 per person, but the trees kept dropping them and some fell
apart, so we ended up with about 1 1/4 per person... and apparently those
extras were fought over..lol.  Grapes and ginger make VERY good sausage - I
could have eaten a BUNCH of them... oh wait, I did...lol.

The next course was Cive de Veal from Taillevent, served in little swan
shaped bread bowls on a bed of lightly sauted spinach with olive oil and
garlic.  <really bad pic of bread bowl -
http://www.tereckoffice.com/Generys/swans.jpg > The second meat for this
course was also a subtlety, again from Taillevent, but with a few
adaptations - the Golden Chicken.  For this, we skinned the chicken in one
piece, including the drumsticks, except we left the wings attached to the
skin. The chicken meat was ground and mixed with bread crumbs, raisins,
salt, pepper, cumin, and some eggs, and stuffed back into the skin, around a
hard-boiled egg, and baked, then battered with a yellow egg batter and
recrisped, and finally brushed with edible gold powder (I wasn't able to get
real gold, so it was actually cake-decorating stuff). This was served on a
bed of vegetarian Ris Engoule (which I didn't add enough liquid to, so it
was a touch crunch, but not bad). I don't have a picture of this, thanks to
my husband (he was in charge of pics, but didn't really get a chance to get
one of this before it got cut) but I'm planning on making it again for a
competition, so it'll be up later).

Next was an entremet, which was originally planned to be just frumenty and
venison, but got expanded - I found lamb on sale when I was shopping, and
since I couldn't get much venison, I grabbed some, and then to be fair to
the vegetarians, I picked up some mushrooms as well. The venison was roasted
with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, the lamb was simply roasted with salt and
served with cameline mustard sauce, the frumenty was, well, frumenty (barley
sort) and the mushrooms were sautéed with green onions.  This was all served
in a pastry castle - here's the pic:
http://www.tereckoffice.com/Generys/castles.jpg

The next course was Roast Pork served with the ginger sauce we've been
discussing, as well as a walnut/dill/parsley sauce that was based on a green
sauce but took a turn... somewhere... tasty though.  Also in this course
were fire-roasted (real fire) carrots and onions with rosemary, a cinnamon
bruet of chicken, and the infamous turnips (this is what everyone I've
talked to said was the only bad thing about the feast - I forgot to soak the
turnips, and so they were... well... let's just not go there).

For dessert there was Taillis, which is kind of an almond-milk based bread
pudding with grapes and raisins - also from Taillevent.

All in all it went very well, though I need to work on my timing - the two
chickens were actually served in the opposite order of what I intended, just
because I underestimated how long that many chicken thighs would take to
boil.

Oh, and this is us in the kitchen - I'm in the tan t-tunic, and my deputies
are Lady Elizabeth, in the green, and Beatrice Villani, in blue.
www.tereckoffice.com/Generys/kitchen.jpg




Generys

P.S. These are all temporary (next few days) links, I'm making a web site of
this later.