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

[Amanda Blackwolf]

ya know, just looking at that menu makes me wish I lived over that
direction!

Amanda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Katherine Rowberd (Kirrily Robert)" <katherine at infotrope.net>
To: <authentic_ealdormere at yahoogroups.com>; <authentic_sca at yahoogroups.com>;
<sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2003 10:54 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] the joys and horrors of feast prep


> 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"
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