[Sca-cooks] Cooking Feasts without a Kitchen

[Michael Gunter]

>   I was asked many weeks ago to cook Coronation Feast again here in Caid.
>Doing this is not a problem, except I was told that I will not have any 
>kitchen
>facilities.  I will have a dayshade or 2, electricity and a water source 
>but no sink. Also, i live about 1 1/2 hours away from the site so cooking 
>at my home and
>bringing it there will be difficult. Oh and no refrigeration either.

It's not really that bad. I've had to do big feasts on a lot less.
Like, no water, no electricity and just whatever shade we could put up.

>   I will look into buying/renting a big pit BBQ roaster for meats but any 
>other things
>will have to be simple.

Kiri gave some excellent advice. Also, get the roaster, you can do a lot on 
one.
Precook and freeze, as Kiri said. This takes a lot of hassle off you on site 
and
provides "ice" to keep things cool. If you have access to a food sealer this 
is
even better since a lot of it will be "boil-in-bag" stuff.
Stews, rice, couscous, marinated veggies, baked goods such as breads or
pies, sauces, etc...can all be made ahead of time and reheated or assembled
on site.

Bring ingredients for a salat and assemble on site. Either b-i-b or reheat 
stews
and rice and such. Make a stew and top with a prebaked puff pastry (if you 
aren't
going totally period).

Use the large barbecue grills or 55-gallon drums cut in half with grating 
over it
to roast meats (boil some chickens ahead of time, bag with a glaze or 
mariniade
and then finish up on the fire so you have grilled but not underdone 
chicken.
Roast mushrooms or other vegetables over coals. Get some cajun cookers and
boil large stockpots of water for the boil in bags (this also provides 
dishwashing
liquid). If you can't do the boil in bag thing you will still have a lot 
less mess
by reheating instead of cooking everything from scratch on site.

Another thing you could do would be to grill sausages on the grills as well.
Sausages, small steaks with period spices, chickens, shish-ka-bobs, roasted
vegetables, salats, custards (made off-site), cheese tarts, meat pies,
marinated vegetables, slaws, greens, stews over rice or cous-cous, etc....

Large barbecue grills, cajun cookers and large ice chests are your 
lifesavers.
Use the boiled water to wash pots or if you can't wash the stuff on site 
then
bring a lot of extra-large lawn bags to put everything up for washing later.

>   -Muiriath
>   (just recovering from Caid Crown)

I hope this helps give you some ideas.

Yers,

Gunthar