[Sca-cooks] Feast Post-Mortem (Long)

[Patrick Levesque]

Greetings all!

This is the post-mortem on the Feast served this week-end at Meat, Mead and
Moldavians II in Dragon Dormant, EK.

The hall we rented is an old school converted in a community center. The
kitchen had so much counter space it was unbelievable and 3 conventional
ovens. The chalk board was still in the kitchen, which can in hand as I
could plan my entire day ahead and leave clear instructions and timeframe on
the board. This made it easier to assign tasks to the numerous volunteers
who dropped by, and to plan the burner space and time necessary for each
dish.
This kitchen was located on the second floor, which had a few inconveniences
in terms of service. However, there was a room on the main floor adjacent to
the feast hall large enough to carry in large portions and prepare smaller
portions for the tables. Diners were seated in tables of 8 persons.
There was also a secondary kitchen on the main floor, with a single oven,
which I used to fry bread in various substances (duck fat, butter, oil).

As you will see, the feast went very well, with the exception of the
deep-fried veggies, and of the peach sauce. Fortunately, these were only
side dishes and plenty of food was available nonetheless.

If I were to do it again, however, I'd try to add one or two dished to bake
in the oven. Most of the dishes I served involved oven burners, which made
planning somewhat difficult.

I had a lot of help from our Shire members, especially from my Lady and my
Man-at-arm (I'm not sure he knew what he was getting into when he accepted
the belt! :-)))

Lady Hawise prepared the dayboard.

The main sources I used:


³O lume intr-o carte de bucate: Manuscris din epoca brancoveneasca²
17th century Romanian manuscript

³Food and Drinks in Ancient India², par Om Prakash.
Dating from 1961, it is a PhD thesis on Indian food up until 1200.

The cheesecake recipe from His Grace Cariadoc¹s website.


The feast:

Asparagus in butter sauce
Snails
Perch poached in wine
'Moldavian' Meatballs
Salad of chicory
Deer in a spicy sauce
Rice boiled in milk
Deep-fried vegetables
Cheesecake
Pear sauce
Peach sauce


1st service. It was rather well-received. Folks who would never consider
eating snails went through sizeable portions, it seems...

Sauce of butter, to be eaten with asparagus, fried mutton ribs and other
things. Take 50 dram of fresh butter, melt in a pan, then add a fourth part
of nutmeg and a little ground clove, with white sugar (16 dram), 3 egg yolks
beaten with 12 dram of lemon juice. And serve warm with the meal.


Snails. Prepare the snails well, as customarily done, as said above, roll in
flour and fry with oil. Then, after you've fried them, lay on a plate and
add over leafs of parsley fried and 2 cloves of garlic, the latter first
boiled, then fried with parsley, and mixed with orange or lemon juice


Changes to the recipe: I¹ve fried the snails in butter instead of oil, since
I¹m not serving it as a Lenten dish. The garlic was fried with the snails,
but the parsley added afterwards with the orange juice.

-------

2nd service. I wanted to serve fish, with an alternative for people who
don't like fish. The meatballs, I must say, vanished pretty quickly. There
was a bit more of the fish left; it was nonetheless well-appreciated.


Perch. Preparing the fish, cut in morsels and put in the pot. Then add
chopped onions and water to cover by a finger or two, pepper, cinnamon, salt
and saffron, a little wine or verjuice, or lemon juice, and boil. Then, when
it is about cooked, add a handful of chopped herbs.

Change to the recipe: The perch I ordered from the fish store wasn't looking
so good; I got instead 'perchaude' (don't know the English word, sorry...
It's a fish native to North America, in taste and texture similar to perch).
At a slightly lower cost for my troubles as well.

Moldavian Meatballs : inspired from various authors and manuscripts,
including the Romanian cookbook, the Libellus de Arte Coquinaria and
Platina¹s treatise, they are made from veal, breadcrumbs, eggs, salt,
pepper, currants, fine herbs. They are then boiled in a sauce of red wine
and beef stock. 

------

Third service: a little something to keep the diners busy between the two
heaviest services. I made the dressing early in the afternoon, so the feast
servers could assemble the dish, thus leaving me more time with the fourth
service. 

Salad of root chicory, boil with water and salt, add over currants, vinegar,
oil, capers, sugar.

This is where I was most liberal in the adaptation of the recipe. Instead of
boiling roots of chicory I used fresh chicory leaves; not because I liked it
better that way or because I could not find enough root of chicory to begin
with, but also because at this point during the feast I was running out of
burners anyway for the boiling. The dressing is the same.

------

Fourth service: This was the period Indian service. Although we had scaled
down the feast from 120 to 100, I had pre-ordered my meat and thus had a bit
too much. The deer, along with the meatballs, brought me the best comments
from the diners. I made a spice mix available on the side for diners with a
more adventurous and/or experienced palate.

Deer in a spicy sauce (from 'Food and Drinks in Ancient India')
Šfor dressing twenty palas of flesh, half a kuduba of oil, one pala of salt,
two dharanas of pungent spices and half a prastha of curds are required.

The pungent spices include onions, garlic, ginger, cardamom, cumin,
coriander, black pepper, cloves, cinammon, bay leaves, cilantro. The meat is
marinated in yogurt and spices, and cooked in oil. The yogurt to oil ration
is about 4 to 3 (actually, 29 to 22). I probably used a little less oil than
that. I¹ve also cut down on salt, but made it available to the diners so
that everybody could season to their convenience.


Krsara. A dish prepared with sesamum and rice cooked in milk.

I roasted the sesamum seeds had them sprinkled over the rice just before it
was served to the diners.


The text also offers reference for plantain (kadali), sweet potatoe (surana)
and many kind of gourds. I served these deep-fried. I'm not used to
deep-frying, the end result, though edible, wasn't perfect, so that was
probably the weakest sidedish in the whole feast.

------------- 

Fifth Service. Dessert! I used Dibgy's recipe, as adapted by His Grace, but
with a couple modifications: more sugar, less spices. I had prepared these
in advance, and made too much of them, so we offered the extra cakes as
leftovers when diners left. Wasn't any left by the end of the evening.

Peaches. Boil peaches in water until they begin to loose their skin. Then
remove from the fire and put in cold water. Once they are cool, remove the
skins, and place to drain of water. Then boil sugar or honey and add in the
fruits, and boil for a while on a strong fire. Then let cool, then boil as
necessary, until the sugar or honey thickens.

Changes: I peeled the peaches instead, and cut them in smaller morsels in
case diners wanted to add them to their cakes, or serve them on a slice of
bread. The same recipe was used for pears.

Alas, I burned the peaches while rewarming them (or rather, I forgot I was
rewarming them. Oops...)

I served the pears cold :-)

-------------

I'm afraid I don't have exact redactions; I tend to cook intuitively rather
than follow a recipe. I did follow the instructions when pre-established
(for example, the butter sauce for the asparagus). Otherwise the other
dishes are all fairly easy to recreate.

Don't hesitate to contact me with feedback or questions!

YIS

Petru cel paros Voda