[Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long)

[Barbara Benson]

Greetings,

Here follows an account of the weekend of the event for the Barony of
Bryn Madoc, Meridies called Danelaw 2005.

For many months Lord Aoghann had been researching and planning his
Viking themed menu for the event. Having come to work in my German
kitchen in February he had earned a tremendous amount of Lackey points
which I felt indebted to repay by working in his kitchen (as an honor
not an obligation). On and off throughout his planning period he
occasionally (either directly or through the Cooks List) updated me on
how things were going. So going into the feast I had a general idea of
what was going to be going on. At one point he had requested the Excel
spreadsheets that I use for my feast planning and I had sent them to
him.

A couple of days before the feast he emailed and requested that I
bring some cooking/serving ware that he had seen me use for my feast.
He mentioned that he had some custard that he would like to prepare
Friday night. So, I packed up about 2/3 of my normal feast prep box
and the requested serving ware for the weekend. Planning to spend the
vast majority of the event working happily under his direction.

Upon arrival at the event (around 7:00 pm) I was approached while I
stood in line for troll. The gracious Baroness of Bryn Madoc explained
to myself that Aoghann had injured himself and would not be there that
evening, and possibly unable to attend the next day. And how did I
feel about preparing feast? I said that it sounded like something that
needed to be done and that I would serve in whatever capacity was
needed.

Lord Aoghann had done all of the shopping and sent everything to the
site with others. I had a sheaf of recipes and lo and behold several
very familiar looking spread sheets. He had modified that which I had
sent him to fulfill his own needs (as I expected) but I understood the
system.

I set about organizing the kitchen in my normal manner, taking
inventory of all ingredients and making sure everything that I needed
(based on his ingredient lists) was on site. There was a moment of
panic when I was unable to locate the pork - but it was unearthed.
Once everything was stowed and organized I looked to his schedule for
the evening to determine what absolutely had to happen that evening.

The first casualties of the situation were the planned subtleties. I
believe that there were supposed to be Viking Longships made out of
inedible coffin dough - but the details were scarce. There was a
recipe for a flour paste, and on the schedule it said make ships and
make sails. And that was about it.  With my unfamiliarity of the menu,
and the staff being many people I had never worked with before I
decided that I would not worry about them. If Aoghann was able to make
it to the event on the next day, he would need something to do sitting
down and that could be it.

I was up pretty late, but everything that needed to be done was done.
We prepared the Boar Stew and Custards until completely done. And made
the marinade to prep the Pork Roasts and get them sitting for the
evening. Carrots and Mushrooms were cleaned and chopped.

One of the biggest challenges for the evening was making sure that I
did not use too much of any of the ingredients. There were multiple
items that called for honey, but it seemed to me that there just
wasn't enough in the pantry. So I had to sit down and do some math
(not my strong suit) to determine how much total I needed and what I
needed to use that evening. However I figured it, things just kept
coming up short. We had enough to do the things we needed to do for
the evening, but that would put us in not so good shape for the
morning. I talked the Breakfast Cook out of some of his honey and that
made me feel better.

The next morning I was still under the mistaken hopefulness that
Aoghann was going to be able to make it, but alas it was not to be. I
had a good chat with him on the phone and he blessed the jettisoning
of the subtleties. He also told me that he had arranged for a grill
miester (for a grilled chicken dish) which was a relief to me. Shortly
thereafter I had a lovely lady approach me looking for Aoghann. I
informed her that he was unable to be there and she said that she was
send with a message from the aforementioned grill miester who was ill
at home and unable to make it. So she was his replacement. I welcomed
her to the kitchen and said it was the feast of the replacements.

The primary difference between the rest of the day and my normal feast
modus opperandi was that I really had no grasp on the dishes and what
needed to be done to accomplish them. Usually I have the entire day
mapped out in my head, with each step of each dish second nature to
me. With this feast, when someone would approach me to either
volunteer or ask for an additional task I had to beg their patience
and consult many, many papers. I had to figure out what needed to be
done next before I could tell them what to do.

But everyone had patience with me and I did my best to be cheerful and
upbeat. I believe that one of the most important elements that makes
for a good feast kitchen is laughter. Because if you are not having
fun, then you are just chopping 40 lbs of onions - and no-one likes
that. Another challenge was having no idea what the desired outcome of
each dish was. Assistants would do some steps and then ask me to taste
something, or look at something to see if it was the right consistency
- and I would say "I have no idea if it is right, but it is good. And
that is good enough for me."

At one point I had a good gentle that I knew was experienced and a
novice walk in at the same time. There were 4 dressings/sauces that
needed to be prepared so I handed all 4 to her with a helper and said
make these. A couple of these sauces required honey and I knew that we
were low on honey so I told her which ones to substitute sugar water
for honey in. I had already made the same substitutions for portions
of the honey in other dishes, to make it stretch. She came back to me
to say that she could not find the Apple Cider vinegar (which 3 of the
4 recipes required).

I had logged the vinegar in the evening before, and it was there at
4:15 am when I left the kitchen so I told here where it was on the
shelf. No dice. We looked and looked and there was no Apple Cider
Vinegar to be found anywhere. And it was one of those really big
containers (larger than a gallon of milk jug) of AC Vinegar. So we
ended up sending someone to the store for the Vinegar, because it was
something I just could not fake.

By this point it was getting to the time to fire up the grill, and I
sat down with my grill girl. Aoghann had the chicken scheduled to be
cooked and then held in the oven for an extended period. I had been
having some difficulties with the ovens, one of them refused to go
below 400 degrees and the other would not go below 450. Because of
this I had been cooking the pork in large pans tightly covered with
foil in the convection oven. I would have preferred to turn the blower
off on the convection oven, but it would not hold temperature without
the blower. The grill was large enough to cook all of the chicken at
the same time, so I pushed the chicken back to 4:30 (with feast being
at 6:00).

I believe that Aoghann had gotten a good deal on chicken seeing that
he had bought a great deal more than he really needed. Considering
that we had 90 people signed up for feast, and enough chicken for well
over 150 I decided to cook only a portion of the chicken and prep the
rest to be sent home and frozen for future use. At 4:15 the grill was
fired up and the chicken to be cooked was put on at 4:30. About 10
minutes later I was called out to the grill. When they had closed the
grill all of the paint and rust from the inside top of the grill had
decided to delaminate and fall upon the chicken. There was a charcoal
grill on site, and we had charcoal, but I did not think we could get
coals going in time to get it done.

The chicken was to be grilled and basted with a sweet marinade. The
pork had already completed cooking and was resting inside a cooler
(which is another story entirely) so I had the pans that the pork had
cooked in cleaned well and pulled out the chicken that had been put
away. We had enough chicken to cook a ton more, but it would have been
packed into the pans and taken forever to cook. So, I put just enough
chicken to serve the tables into the pans and divided the marinade
between the three. Covered tightly in the foil they went into the
convection oven with the timer set for an hour.

All of the dishes were finishing up nicely, so now came the time to
evaluate the available feast serving dishes and decide how to serve
things. I was working with a first time Hall Steward (who I had been
speaking with off and on throughout the day regarding recruitment of
servers) so she had no vision of how she wanted things to go. We had
agreed on the set up of the hall earlier and with a feast count knew
that we would have 14 tables of 6 plus high table. I went through the
menu and determined what foods would be served on/in what plate/bowl
and where there would be tight turn arounds on certain plates that
would need to be reused. We worked on setting up a drink station and a
serving station.

By this point the help in the kitchen was thinning out and I had
everyone who was not working on last minute dishes cleaning and
removing extraneous prep items. Because of the size of this kitchen I
like to have as many of the counters cleaned off as possible for
plating. The service of the feast went fine and a wonderful clean-up
crew came in to finish out the night.

There was a moment of panic and then laughter when it was discovered
that the good gentle who had trailed the grill to the event had snuck
in during the feast and quietly trailed away the grill, FULL OF RAW
CHICKEN. But he was called on his cell phone an appraised of the
situation. Luckily he found it amusing also.

I learned a great deal from this adventure. One dish that really
surprised me was the salmon cakes. Everyone loved them and I would
have never thought that canned salmon would go over so well. Almost
every course had a different style of cold salad in it, and that was
greatly appreciated by the diners. It had been a warm day, and much of
the other food was very heavy. I received many comments that it made
people able to eat more. That when they felt way to full they could
take a moment and eat something refreshing and then be ready for more.
This was particularly true of the apple salad.

The boar stew was universally applauded and again, not something I
would have thought to serve. I am going to have to get Aoghann's
source for this. And the barley and radish pilaf really surprised me
in both how good it tasted and how well it was received.

During the feast preparation there were several items that I will not
do without again. Bryn Madoc has managed to acquire a commercial grade
Robo Coupe, with all of the attachments. It did something I have up
until now been unable to accomplish - attract some die-hard fighters
into the kitchen. A big, shiny, highly destructive machine is
apparently irresistible. Another gadget that I will be acquiring is
the automatic potato peeler that the Breakfast Cook brought. I have
found it online:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/wonderfulbuysca/starrotpotpe.html
and I covet it. We did both apples and pears on the thing and it made
things fun for the peelers. It does leave odd ridges on the fruits,
but I was actually complemented on the lovely decorative effect on the
poached pears. Hah!

A thing that I had brought with me and that was in constant use was my
Wand Blender. We used it on the Custards and the Cheese Spread and I
believe one other thing. I would highly recommend that everyone who
has a kitchen kit make sure they include one of them.

I am confident there is more I could discuss (like the fiasco around
the pork and the cooler) but this has become very long. Having
attained some distance from the event I can say that I had fun. It was
not what I had planned on doing that weekend, but I believe I did the
best I could and hopefully did the lovely feast that Lord Aoghann put
all of his time and effort into justice. Will I seek out a repeat of
the situation, Oh NO! But do I have a higher level of confidence in
what I can achieve, well Yes.

Glad Tidings,
Serena da Riva