[Sca-cooks] dealing with mundane cooks

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

Tell "Bobby" something like this...

Look, the basics of cooking a good meal are the same in the SCA as they 
are in a professional kitchen.  You have to clearly identify your 
purpose, whether it's hors d'oeuvres for 80 or a Tudor feast for 180.  
Then you have to plan your menu, keeping in mind customer expectations, 
timing, location, resources, staff, and budget.   A cook who did not 
consider all of these elements would be irresponsible.    Someone who 
cooks SCA feasts is usually working with much more limited resources 
than a professional cook would have.  We have tight budgets, volunteer 
staff (of varying skill levels), and often less-than-wonderful kitchen 
facilities.  You balance your goals and your standards against your 
resources, and you make decisions.  Sometimes that means buying pre-made 
items, or cooking certain items ahead of time.  A good cook -- 
professional or not -- has to be flexible.

I can't believe that "Bobby" has never served something that was cooked 
elsewhere.  Does bake his own bread?  Make the pie *and* the ice cream 
that goes on top of it?  Grind his own mustard?  Professional cooks take 
shortcuts when they need to.  They might take different kinds of 
shortcuts than SCA cooks, because they're working in different 
circumstances, but they take them.

I went to a feast once that was cooked by a professional chef.  He said 
that one of the menu items had been purchased ready-made.  Because of 
mundane time pressures, he had been unable to make it himself.  He 
considered this acceptable, because the food was hand-made at the store 
where he got it, and the quality was up to his standards.

-- 
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
Robin Carroll-Mann *** rcmann4 at earthlink.net