[Sca-cooks] the joys and horrors of feast prep

[Katherine Rowberd (Kirrily Robert)]

So, as many will be aware, I'm organising a small feast to run locally
in a couple of weeks.  It's called "Just A Feast" and the event website
is at http://infotrope.net/sca/justafeast/ ... the theme is that it's,
uh, just a feast.  Like, you show up, and we put food on the table for 5
hours, and you eat til you're stuffed, and perhaps do a little dancing
and stuff, and that's about it.  Just a feast.

Anyway, I thought I would post a little about the interesting experience
I've been having putting together the menu for the event.

For the last couple of years, I've been researching Elizabethan food
quite a bit.  I've transcribed a few texts from the period, and I've
been inflicting experimental dishes on various people both at events and
in my own home.  My long-suffering lover has eaten many such
experiments, and at least claims to enjoy them :)  Anyway, as I've been
going along, I've made a note of those which I think sound tasty, and
when I found I had a long enough list I decided to hold a feast.

My definition of "tasty" of course is based on my modern tastes.  I like
my food fresh, colourful, well-presented, with a mixture of textures and
flavours.  I like plenty of fresh vegies too, and while I'll eat many
kinds of meat that aren't common in the modern world, I am not too keen
on organ meat or anything *too* weird.  This has, of course, coloured
what dishes I chose for my feast.

The feast menu (subject to change, but pretty firm now) is up at
http://infotrope.net/sca/justafeast/menu.html ... as you will see there
are usually 2 meat dishes per course, plus at least one proteiny
non-meat dish, plus a couple of other vegie dishes and one sweet dish.
This is a bit light on meat for an Elizabethan meal, but any more meat
would be too "heavy" for most modern diners I think.  The carnivores
have seemed fairly satisfied at the test dinners, and the vegetarians
are pretty happy too, so that's a win I think.  Avoiding having the
traditional SCA "green salad" probably keeps both camps pretty happy ;)
You will also notice there's not much starch.  That's because
Elizabethans seem to have mostly eaten bread as their main starch.  So
except for one sweet rice pudding there are no rice/pasta dishes as you
might find at events focussing on other periods.

The meats I'm using are chicken, veal, beef, oysters, herrings, chicken
livers, and lamb.  An Elizabethan would probably think that was a little
odd...  lamb not mutton, for one thing, and it's a bit short on the sort
of meats the modern world would think are unusual, like rabbit and a
number of different birds.  The beef dish was originally meant to be
venison, but it turns out to be both expensive and rather tough for this
particular treatment, and the numbers are a little lower than expected
so the budget is a smidgen tighter, so I thought I would go with beef
which I know works well.  The meat dishes are a combination of
baked/roasted dishes (the olaves of veal), boiled dishes (chicken with
barberries, pie meat), fried (quelquechose with oysters), pickled
(herring salad), and boiled-and-mashed-to-a-pulp (mortis of chicken and
liver pudding, both of which are pate-like).

The vegie dishes are a bit of an effort on my part to prove that period
vegetables mean more than armored turnips and green salad.  I've made a
point of having plenty of filling proteiny vegie dishes (bean-cakes,
sodde eggs, herb tart), boiled vegetable dishes (onions on sops, spinach
sallet), and things with a bit of "crunch" to them (cucumber sallet,
asparagus sallet, layered sallet).  The layered sallet in particular is
an interesting one... it's a cut down version of a "compounded" sallet
from Markham's "The English Housewife"; his version has about 6 layers,
mine is limited to 3.  The most interesting layer is a combination of
dried fruits, nuts, olives, capers, chopped sage, and other stuff...
very unusual but *very* tasty.  If you tell someone what's in it they
will look at you funny... but if they taste it they usually love it.
All the sweet dishes are basically vegie, too, so in total about 3/4 of
the feast is veg-friendly.  I haven't actually had any vegetarians
notify me in advance, but if any show up on the day I'm sure I can keep
them happy.

The service of the feast is quite non-period in style.  For this event
my intent has been to use period dishes and occasional period stylistic
touches, but not to try too hard for authenticity right through.  So I
structured the feast in a way that I felt would appeal to the modern
tastes of my diners.  The order of courses is basically
light-heavy-light-heavy-dessert, where "light" courses are nibbly finger
food and "heavy" courses are more sit-down filling type dishes.  This
means that we start with appetizers as people arrive, then serve the
first "main" course, then we have a kind of a break in the middle with
more finger food and some dancing and performances, then another "main"
course, then a dessert course ("banquet", in Elizabethan parlance)
served buffet-style with more dancing.

The service of the food will be quite formal, with the servers
processing into the hall, formal hand-washing, announcement of the
dishes, etc.  Our servers will be wearing linen cloths draped like in
the picture on the event homepage (http://infotrope.net/sca/justafeast/)
and we're just hoping that nobody gets all worked up over the "white
baldricks" that they're wearing ;)  Since Ealdormere doesn't exactly
have many masters of arms, we should be safe ;)

Anyway I've written enough for now.  I am intending to post the recipes
and other information about the feast after the event, so that the
website for the event shifts from being a "flyer" site and into being a
"what we did" site.  Comments/questions/etc welcome, and of course if
you want to come to the event you should book now as time is running out
:)

Yours, in a state of flusteredness,

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"