[Sca-cooks] Iron Chef Response

[nickiandme at att.net]

Calontir did its own twist.  We used Iron Chef teams rather than an individual cook with assistants. 
 
1) Have  you participated in one before? as cook or host?
   sponsor/organizer of three of them.
 
2) What did you like about it?
   Getting the different cooks out and partcipating in public and not behind closed
   doors.  And seeing period cooking methods being used in front of people. One team even brought their medieval domed oven. That was fantastic - getting to taste the bread and the pies baken in the oven.  Roasted meat.  Great Pies, etc.  Wonderful stuff.
 
3) Dislike?
   The costs for some of the teams. 
 
4) Should participants be responsible for dating/researching the
recipes? 
   We gave extra points for being able to point to period recipes for either cooking method or recipe used.  We (the Calontir Cookery Guild) wanted to encourage period cookery.  After all we are the SCA and we are supposed to be about studying and recreating aspects of the middle ages. We should strive for it in the cooking methods we use, the ingredients and ingredient combinations as are available in the extant medieval cookbooks available to us.
 
 5) Should participants be allowed to bring in their own items? 
    Ours all brought their own foods except for the surprise ingredient. 
 
6) Was the cook off for an entire meal or just one remove/dish? 
   The teams were encouraged to come up with as many dishes as they felt they could in the three hour period allowed.
 
7) What foods would you suggest? 
   We did saffron for the first competition, Goose for the second and fresh Sage for the third.
 
8) Who should be judges? Other cooks? Honored guests? Fighters?
   We raffled off several of the judges positions to help pay for the ingredients/prizes. We also asked several well respected persons in kingdom to serve as judges.  And we took volunteers.

9) Would  you want to hold it were people could watch and do the whole
pageantry of the TV show? 
   Definetly near where the fighting is going on.  It feels much more inclusive and part of the event rather than a separate thing going on apart from the event.  More like a family kitchen with people stopping by that you grab offering them to taste this or that, or answer questions about what this or that is.
 
10) Would individual people or groups be better?  Would  you count
assistants as a group?
    All our Iron Chefs were team events.  Calontir is very family/team/army oriented.  So, our rules were set up for teams.  No less than three persons, no more than six to a team.  This allowed for division of labor, and for some great creative collaboration to go on.  We also had teams putting on a spread of anywhere from 7 to 15 dishes using the surprise ingredient.  

11) Should people bring their own assistants or should they be assigned?
Teams allow for more people to participate.  The more participation - the more fun. I, as head of the guild at the time, was not into promoting individual glory, but instead I wanted to build awareness that playing with food and fire was fun and ultimately bring more members into the guild where they all had a chance to participate in the activities and not just a select chose few.  

I am using this same concept with the Seige cooking competition which will be crossed a bit with the Iron Chef team concept that the guild worked up three years ago.  The rules were a collaborative effort on the part of the guild members at the time.  They are still posted at: http://www.kateryndedevelyn.org/cguildh.htm