[Sca-cooks] Speaking of Lent -- Ice Axe Report

[a5foil]

Yesterday I (and my wonderful kitchen crew -- Dutchie, Geoffrey, Kate,
Thomas, Kyna and Becky) prepared the feast at Ice Axe for the College of
Yarnvid (Richmond, VA). This is a small event, in a small hall, so there
were only 64 on-board places. Because I knew there would be one vegetarian
keeping Lent, and also inspired by the discussions of Lenten food here on
the list, I planned a semi-Lent menu. Obviously the cheese, chicken and pork
are not suitable for Lent, but the fish soup is, and the breads and sides
are vegan.

We started with the usual bread and cheese tray. The next dish is now known
as "Aelfwynn's Famous Fish Soup" since I frequently get asked to cook it,
even when I'm not head cook. It's not a documentably period dish, but a
speculation on Viking soup, with carrots, onions, barley and cod in fish
broth. Instead of butter for browning the vegetables, I used olive oil. The
next course featured Baked Chicken, with two Lenten sides: Carrots in Broth
(Rapes in Potage from Forme of Cury, done with Pasturnakes and Skyrwittes)
and Lenten Foyles from Ordinance of Pottage. This is greens and onions
cooked in almond milk and seasoned with sugar as well as salt. I used
collards, spinach and parsley. After that was Pork with Cider Gravy, my own
recipe for pork braised in cider, served in a bread-thickened sauce made
with the cooking liquid, served with Fried Onions done in olive oil and
seasoned with sugar and salt, and homemade Barley Bread. Finally, an Oat and
Apple Pudding served with honey, also my own recipe. And since the
vegetarian would otherwise have no protein, she received a special dish,
created by Thomas, of Favas with Spelt.

I did most of the shopping on Thursday, and prepped the carrots that evening
while Thomas boned and cut the pork. I finished the shopping Friday morning
and spent the rest of the day doing the precook -- cooked the carrots and
pork and chickens and chopped the onions. (And thank you again, Geoffrey,
for chopping 24 pounds of onions!) My crew and I arrived on site around
10:00. The kitchen at the site is very small -- if there are four cooks they
have to do the kitchen dance -- but it does have a 6-burner gas stove and an
oven big enough to hold 2 sheet pans side by side. Y'all may not believe
this, but everything was cooked by 2:00 pm. The kitchen crew actually got a
break -- though some of them sneaked back into the kitchen after I'd chased
them out. We started reheating the food about 4:00 and started serving at
6:15. We only had one minor panic, when the pot I had selected to reheat the
carrots turned out to be too small and we had to scramble to find a bigger
one.

The clean-up crew was wonderful -- you should all have such luck! -- and all
the pots and serving dishes got washed and packed up efficiently. They even
cleaned the sinks and stove and swept the floor. It was kind of like having
house elves. All I had to do was point and grunt. Of course, by that time
that's about all I was capable of doing. But I am better now.

Cynara