[Sca-cooks] Convivencia feast postmortem (LONG!!!)

[Heleen Greenwald]

Thanks for posting the menu. I just looked at it briefly (gotta run soon)
and it looked delicious. Can't wait to peruse it further.
Vivats & well done!
Phillipa
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>; <EKCooksGuild at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 12:23 AM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Convivencia feast postmortem (LONG!!!)


> Well, before I forget it all...
>
> Last weekend I cooked a feast in the shire of Silver Rylle, for an event
> called Convivencia. It was a high authenticity focused event based on the
> 'Convivencia' period in Iberia, when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in
> a sort of Mexican-standoff truce.
>
> I had been requested to do the feast, in three courses-- one Jewish, one
> Christian, and one Moorish. As one of my advisors has pointed out, the
> result was not a period feast in the true meaning of the word, as the
> three cultures would not have been combined in that way in a feast.
>
> The menu and recipes are here:
> http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/SCA/cooking/conviviencia/menu.html
> (Yes, there is a misspelling in the name)
>
> However, it was an opportunity to cook a small feast in a site I loved--
> Dietz Hall, the refectory of the Lancaster Theological Seminary. When I
> was in college at Franklin and Marshall, I had been lodged in the
> dormitories at the Seminary and eaten many meals in Dietz Hall. It has 2
> working fireplaces, heavy oak tables, stone walls, a cruck-beamed ceiling,
> heavy wood panelling and tiles, narrow windows-- in short, a triumph of
> American re-creation Gothic. So I jumped at the chance.
>
> This was my first feast as head cook, and it was outside my local group--
> but near my Mom's house and with lots of supportive people in Silver
> Rylle.
>
> I had a pretty good idea of what would go in the Christian course-- note,
> that was supposed to be the first course, but as the menu reflects, it was
> served second, after all.
>
> My big challenges were the Jewish course, and meat in general.
>
> East Kingdom residents expect a lot of meat in their feasts. Specifically,
> a lot of beef. But there isn't a lot of beef in the Iberian texts I was
> looking at: de Nola, and the Anonymous Andalusian manuscript. There isn't
> even that much pork. What to do, what to do?
>
> Further, there are a vanishingly small number of _documented_ Jewish
> recipes from period. Fortunately, most of them are in the Anonymous
> Andalusian manuscript. Unfortunately, they were all for meat dishes,
> mostly chicken or partridge. That meant, in order to make it at all
> believable, no dairy dishes could be served in that course (with the
> kosher division between meat and dairy), and I had to find some vegetarian
> dishes for that course.
>
> So, I stared at the meat dishes and dug out _A Drizzle of Honey_ for
> veggie dishes. _Drizzle_ is a cookbook based on mentions of food in the
> Inquisition testimonies of suspected 'hidden Jews'. As a result, it is
> mostly mentions of food, not recipes from period; but it does talk
> strongly about what non-Jews considered Jewish food.
>
> I also feel that heavier dishes should be kept for last, with lighter ones
> at the beginning- and I like to see some fish on a feast table.
>
> I decided that rather than having one meat dish in each course, which is
> what I usually like to see, I would have two, and just work around the
> vegetarians.
>
> So, one the 'first' course-- salmon, pork sausage, chopped spinach, was
> decided on, and I had settled on the  Jewish recipes-- chicken with
> stuffing and eggplant stuffed with lamb, a chard dish whose description in
> the Inquisition testimonies was almost a recipe, and chickpeas with
> onions, honey and spices, which seemed pretty self-explanatory-- I started
> on the Moorish course. One beef dish showed up, a vinegary one, and one
> lamb with quince dish-- but the lamb with quinces didn't work out in home
> recipe tests.
>
> I was also trying to hit the oft-mentioned parts of each type of Iberian
> cuisine, with things like orange juice and figs for Christians, Lentils
> and rice for Moors, and chickpeas, chard, eggplant, etc. for Jews. I
> wanted a starch in each course, so the barley ended up in the Christian
> course as rice was going into the Moorish one.
>
> We came up with a meat dish for the Moors-- garlicky chicken. What could
> be bad?
>
> Anyway, I finally came up with a menu that looked ok, but wondered if it
> was too heavy and carb-rich-- I had visions of the feast driving people to
> give up carbs entirely!
>
> So, on January 1, we did a full test of all the recipes for about 15
> people. I paid for most of the supplies though other people in group
> picked up some supplies for me. The test was a success-- everyone loved it
> but was concerned that the portions were too large. Fortunately, I had not
> been testing portions.
>
> So, I began putting together my feast page and feast booklet, arranging
> for feast dishes-- I needed to buy some and borrow some from my home
> shire, but they were out at someone's house... and making up the shopping
> lists and lists of what to do when, and buying supplies...
>
> In the week before the feast, I made the lemon syrup, the hais, the
> comfits, and the Mustard. I had made the sausages about a month before,
> with the assistance of a family from my shire and their sausage stuffer.
>
> Sarah bas Mordechai made the breads (except for the pitas).
>
> We had originally said a limit of 60 for the event but as the verbal
> reservations kept going up, I suggested that I would be glad to cook for
> 80-- espcially as my money numbers were quite tight because the prices of
> meat and eggs had not gone down. A week and a half before the event, the
> autocrat and exchequer agreed to go to 70; a week before the event, we
> went to 80. That was our absolute max.
>
> The wednesday before the event I more-or-less unintentionally ended up
> trading in my Saturn sedan (it was at the end of its lease) for a Saturn
> VUE (SUV). That turned out to be a blessing. (On the other hand, in the
> process I lost my envelope of reciepts and am still trying to re-create
> it.)
> I had also taken the Thursday and Friday before the event off from work.
>
> I had taken a load of stuff to my mom's the weekend before, and Silver
> Rylle's cooking and serving gear, plus the 8 chickens, were coming with
> someone else.
>
> I packed everything from Eisental in the SUV (aka the Car, or Charles C.
> Charles), and headed down to Juliana's in NJ. She has a line on very
> inexpensive meat and produce places that we had used when I was her deputy
> cook, so I was getting most of the supplies there. We did a massive
> shopping, including some greens for salad that I added at the last minute
> because going to 80 had eased up my budget.
>
> >From Juliana's, I went to my mom's, where I was careful to sleep in in
the
> morning. We made a quick run out for more eggs, because I had been
> insufficiently specific about them and my mom had boiled all 15 dozen she
> bought for me! We got a good deal on these from the egg farm.
>
> We also got out the things that needed to be defrosted, including what
> turned out to be a 40 pound SLAB of chicken thighs. There was no way to
> defrost this in the fridge or even under cold water-- we put it in the
> garage instead, hoping that the 40 degree weather would work on it. By 3
> am enough pieces had defrosted so we could make the slab small enough to
> fit in a cooler. We stored the veggies in the garage also
>
> On friday, we peeled the hardboiled eggs and made the stuffed eggs. We
> finished the candied lemon peel I was making from the peels of the 40
> lemons I'd used for the syrup. This was a bit tricky because I hadn't read
> the recipe carefully enough to find out that after boiling, soaking, etc.,
> and spreading them to dry and wetting them in sugar syrup, there were
> still 2 more days of steps to go! So I made a sugar syrup, boiled the
> peels in it for about 10 minutes, pulled them out, boiled the syrup down
> to 250 degrees, cooked the peels in it, pulled them out and dusted them
> with ginger-sugar.
>
> Then as our staff showed up, we got down to real work-- slicing the
> almost-defrosted beef roasts up into cubes and cutting the meat from the
> legs of lamb off the bone. The lamb meat was ground up in the food
> processor, bagged and stored. The sausages, premade and frozen, were
> popped in the same cooler to defrost and keep the lamb and beef cold.
> I had planned to make the lentil dish early friday but had to have someone
> else pick up the gourds, so they had to be put together that night, while
> we also put the chickpeas to soak.
>
>  We put Juergen to work folding and stapling feast booklets, poor man.
>
> I had hoped to get all the herbs washed and chopped up, but that just
> didn't happen. We did cut the ribs out of the chard and par-boil it
> though. We ran the dishwasher and tumbled into bed between 1 and 3
> am.
>
> The next morning we discovered a problem with one of the crockpots we had
> used for the lentils-- it simply hadn't cooked-- they had just gotten to
> hot water stage. So we did some lentil-swapping and put that batch in
> another crockpot, packed everything up, and headed out.
>
> At the site, we discovered that the dayboard cook was in the kitchen,
> using most of the table space and almost all of the stove burners-- we had
> 6 burners and one oven total in the kitchen. We unpacked around her, and
> had someone start the figs and the chickpea dish.
>
> By the time the kitchen was ready for us, we had unpacked and had most of
> our staff there. It was a lovely luxury to hand off recipes to my
> experienced cooking staff and just say "Make this". We did have some
> foul-ups-- I had not made up spice kits for each dish, so there was some
> contention over the spices and a few things got misplaced.
>
> The biggest hassle was picking the cilantro for the jewish dish of
> chicken, and defrosting things. The chicken thighs went into cold water in
> the sink, while we worked on the stuffing-- but I had failed to account
> for how long it would take to saute the thighs. I think we may have been a
> little too persnickety about saute-ing them, too, as they did get cooked
> again afterwards!
>
> My dear friend Iuliana made the mukhallal, then got assigned the eggplants
> which we had been pre-boiling one at a time. We made an abortive attempt
> to perform endoscopic surgery on them in order to get easily stuffable
> enclosures, but that didn't work, so Iuliana fileted them. It was a
> horrible job and I owe her... fileting 18 eggplants is no picnic.
>
> Juliana was assigned the garlicky chikcen and only when it should have
> been done (cooking in an electric roaster) did we realize that the ONE
> instant-read thermometer on site was missing. We did find it and
> discovered that we needed to rearrange the 8 chickens and cook them
> another hour-- I hadn't been specific enough about using 2 roasters and
> the dish was probably better because we put them all in together anyway.
>
> Due to crossed wires, we accidentally boiled the almond milk, and made
> almond cheese. Someone was sent out for more almonds.
>
> We also ran short of cilantro, which I was under the impression I had
> bought bushels of. We finally ran a fugitive bunch to earth under the
> salad stuff, finished the stuffing, and put the stuffed chickens in the
> oven.
>
> People were in the scullery washing and picking through a case of
> spinach with infinite patience. We got that finished and parboiled, and
> started pre-plating the mustard, quince paste, vinegar, oil, salt, etc--
> everything that could be plated and put aside. My brother wandered in and
> was detailed to make a salad with the herbs, the lettuce, the mustard
> greens and some additional spinach.
>
> Someone started rice in the two rice cookers and barley in two crockpots
> (one for the barley grits with water, for vegetarians).
>
> The eggplant, Iuliana realized, was going to have to be done in large
> roasting pans on top of the stove, not in pots as I had thought-- they
> wouldn't hold together if stacked that way for boiling. That slowed down
> our stovetop activities as it used 4 of the 6 burners. Luckily the
> chickpeas were done.
>
> At about 5, we checked the oven and found that it was running very cool--
> we didn't have time to stick the salmon in! Also the sausage wasn't fully
> defrosted-- we dumped it into a spare roaster, added hot water, and turned
> it on. As the sausage defrosted, we began frying and cutting it up.
> (Christopher was our fry cook, with the chicken and the sausages, and made
> up the second batch of almond milk, and sweated the bacon for the
> spinach.)
>
> Executive decision time-- we would swap courses one and two, since
> everything for course two was done.
>
> The table of 12 servers -- mostly kids-- had gotten serving instruction.
> There was a coordinator for the servers, and another, Hedwigis, for the
> handwashing-- we did handwashing before the start of the feast and between
> every course. They looked very natty in their towels (mom and I had made
> towels from cheap cotton, 3 yards by 2 feet and 2 yard by 2 feet for the
> shorter kids). Handwashing was offered at the tables, by the servers,
> using orangeflower scented water.
>
> We plated everything for the starters except the eggs (in the fridge, they
> got overlooked) and set Juliana to coordinating the service. Brighid came
> in and handled the salmon, while my mom made the lemon drink up for the
> first course, then walked around making sure all the cooks got some!
>
> We pulled the chicken from the oven and added the salmon,
> then plated the first course and sent it out. The cooked sausages were
> placed in another roaster on low to keep warm. I pulled out the bacon and
> started chopping, while starting the vegetarian version of the spinach on
> the stove. Thus I learned my first lesson about my new knife: Henkels are
> very sharp. Right as I cut my finger, my friend Robin, the chirugeon
> walked into the kitchen, and dragged me out for first aid. My staff
> continued.
>
> Now bandaged, I overheard someone ask about the stuffed eggs! Oops! Two
> people were detailed to plate and send out the eggs. I threw together the
> chopped spinach, Iuliana and Christopher finished the sausages, we plated
> the barley (which had gotten crusty around the sides of its crockpot) and
> sent it all out.
>
> At that point, Iuliana's back went out on her. I pulled up a stool to the
> stove and put together the chard dish, handed the salad to Juliana who is
> a wiz with oil and vinegar and told her to plate it with oil and vinegar
> dressing. Brighid made up the Pomegranate drink for the last course, and
> we started plating the last course, madly. It all went out, hot.
>
> We then put a cloth over a spare table and arranged the Marzipan, Hais,
> Candied Coriander, Quince Paste and Lemon peel in periodesque dishes I had
> brought from home.
>
> Then I wandered out into the hall and got their attention. I told them I
> was the feast cook-- i had to stop while they cheered-- and that I didn't
> have any wafer thin mints (the reports coming back to the kitchen were
> that they were thoroughly stuffed) but I did have some dessert if they
> could find a corner for it, here it was.
>
> Time from start of service to end: about 6:05 to 7:20. All of it came out
> warm, my spies claim. Hurray. Everyone ate like pigs. Hurray. They liked
> it! Hurray!
>
> We did have hassles-- like picking over the herbs on the day, and
> disorganization that meant we all stopped everything to hunt for whatever
> someone needed--but it went pretty well.
>
>
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
> "I am in a corner without being back[ed?] there and often come out
> fighting." -- James Thurber, 1960 interview with Life
>
>
>
>
>
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