[Sca-cooks] EK Coronation feast analysis (LONG)

[Sue Clemenger]

Brigid, where did you find the edible gold dust? There's a lady in my 
barony who's searching (without much success, so far) for edible gold 
*leaf* for an A&S project....
--maire, who thinks your feast sounds wonderful.....

Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
<snipped>
> Here, in no particular order, are my thoughts about the feast at EK 
> Coronation.
> 
> I decided early on that I wanted to do a feast appropriate to Their 
> Highnesses' personas -- German and French.  I didn't want the feast to drag 
> on too long or too late, so I decided on starters, two hearty courses, and a 
> dessert buffet.
> 
> After going through many cookbooks, and deciding on a tentative menu, I sat 
> down with my co-cook, Berelinde.  She advised me on logistics, and which 
> dishes should be pre-cooked, and we drew up a schedule.
> 
> As is my custom, most of the dishes were tested in advance.  In this way, I 
> discover which items are less tasty or more difficult to prepare than 
> anticipated.
> 
> I decided not to provide the traditional bread and butter with the starters.  I 
> thought that pretzels would make a pleasant change.  I found no evidence 
> that medieval pretzels were sprinkled with coarse salt, so I tried a batch of 
> osft pretzels without salt.  They had all the taste appeal of styrofoam, and I 
> disposed of them appropriately.  Gladness reigned amongst the local squirrel 
> population.  I decided to use one of the few recipes I could find for period 
> pretzels.  This was from Rumpolt, and it resembled English recipes for 
> jumbals -- sweet, and anise-flavored.  Since I had to give them some kind of 
> shape, I opted for the letter 'G', which was the initial of both Their 
> Highnesses' names.  I had decided to make a giant pretzel for High Table, 
> which then became two intertwined 'G's with crowns on top.  On the advice of 
> my autocrat (a calligrapher), the 'G's were mirror images of each other.  I 
> gilded the crowns with food-safe gold dust.