[Sca-cooks] Romanian Cookbook: Sauces, beef, and snails

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach John Kemker:
>>Turkey en brochette?
>>
>>Adamantius


>Vlad would be so proud.
>
>"Turk a la Tepes?"

A year or so ago, at the event for which we made the batch of Rumpolt 
rabbit sausage, we roasted chickens and served them with the Rumpolt 
beet relish, and it was such a lovely... sanguine color... and did I 
mention the event was Vlad The Impaler's Market Day?

Anyway, we bought enough standard, industrially-dressed, supermarket 
roasters to do the job, minus one. I also obtained a real, whole, 
more-or-less anatomically-correct chicken, the kind that looks back 
at you, from one of the local Chinese markets. We roasted them all, 
and prepped the head-and-feet-on chicken for serving by placing it on 
a clean wooden block six inches square, into which had been socketed 
a 15-inch, sharpened wooden dowel.

At service time, we mysteriously ran out of chickens. What happened 
to the Viceroy's chicken??? I know I got enough... someone was going 
to pay for this one, let me tell you... Much loud, theatrical 
screaming back and forth between servers and kitchen crew. We made 
sure all the tables other than High Table had carved into their birds 
without incident, and I came out and grovelled my little heart out, 
apologizing for the bad planning, and explaining that there was no 
chicken for High Table, but that the kitchen crew had apprehended a 
criminal out behind the hall, and had dispensed justice, and, well, 
maybe Your Excellencies would care to take a look at him...

We brought out that peace-breaking, no-account, impaled chicken, on 
his little stake, and proceeded to attempt to serve it to Their 
Excellencies. Until the Vicereine nearly fainted, that is, and we 
ended up bringing Dario the Gypsy Chicken (so named for a 
highly-placed person in our Kingdom who had managed to tick off 
everyone in our entire group, without exception) back to the kitchen 
and giving High Table the roaster we'd reserved for just such an 
eventuality.

Dario tasted better than a Purdue roaster...

If someone has a place to host such a thing, I believe I have a 
digital photo of Ian and Katherine, Viceroy and Vicereine of 
Ostgardr, and Dario, The Gypsy Chicken...

Adamantius