[Sca-cooks] Sort-of Feast report

[Terri Morgan]

I'm not going to post a 'real' feast report because truthfully, all my food
was plain (as befits a tavern) but I wanted to post a few realisations and
thank yous to y'all.

William de Grandfort - I used your pork recipe. Now, I've got to admit to a
weirdness, I've never cooked pork in my life outside of 'shake and bake'
pork chops and re-heating a ham. Knowing that I was a mere beginner in a
kitchen of gourmands, I brought the pork, dried fruit & honey and an array
of spices to the event... watched my 'undercooks' (one Kitchen Diva, two
minions, a protogee and one 'galley slave' (she insisted)) went to town on
it and the combination of 'fresh' dried fruit and 'how old is this' raisins
from the baronial storage unit. I believe a little wine and some stove-top
loving was performed to re-hydrate the really dried out stuff prior to
stuffing the pork.
   Your prediction was absolutely on the money. Raves abounded. There were
no leftovers. None.

Everybody who gave me pork shank baking help - it disappeared from the
sideboard faster than a male streaker in an all-girl school. Poof! Gone. The
rapier fighters, who had nibbled from a plate brought out to the Marshals,
immediately called a break from their tourney in order to come inside and
get some of their own. It was good that I didn't learn this until the ride
home.

Hardboiled eggs soaked in beef brine for three days will not last two hours
at a table. Even if you had made enough to renew the supply for 8 hours. 

Mistakes: I totally underestimated the amount of time needed by boneless
pork loin to defrost. It was served 2 hours later than I had planned (but in
a format that involved rotating entrees and food all day, this was not a
problem. But be warned if you hadn't thought about it before.)

Cynara - the bean soup came out totally wrong. Partially because the recipe
for the large amount doesn't match the one for the smaller servings (or so I
was told) and partially because we just hosed it anyway... I now have all
the 'half batch' leftovers and the ingredient leftovers and will be making
it 'right' in order to serve it as a hot soup at Ymir in our pavilion. 

Canned fava beans = the Holy Grail. At least in my supermarket-saturated
area. I had to get someone to buy them in another city.

Forgetting to get the pile of stainless steel bowls from the storage unit
was not too bad - we had plenty of large containers we could 'punt' with,
however in the course of making-do, I learned that some dishes really do
taste better if prepared and served in non-metallic containers. Our barony
doesn't have any... it had never come up before.

The barony does not own frying pans. Or woks. Another "shopping list" item.

I'd call 'getting so many good cooks as helpers that I didn't cook a darn
thing' a mistake except that I loved it. Watching them was the best reward a
person could have for all the prep work. It was _magic_. Not a single recipe
escaped tweaking.

Okay, so. Not much of a feast report, but there it is. The only leftovers we
brought home were things not set out on the sideboard (it was shut down two
hours early) and a bare boxful of 'dinner' items in small containers, so I
guess it all came out well - everyone who was in the kitchen had a good time
and I had to turn away other volunteers because there literally was nothing
for me to set them to do - not even make-work. God Bless a good set of
cook-friends!


Hrothny