[Sca-cooks] NOTT feast report (VERY long) (was fish)

Tue Apr 29 07:21:17 PDT 2008

You got me Stefan - I never posted a report from my feast on April 12th, so
here it is:
---
Original plan: 104 seats at $7/head.

Work began months ago with the cheese (Eibhlin was a huge help in this), but
I'm starting with the week before.
2 weeks before when I was shoppin for the test feast, I saw sea bass at my
regular grocery store.  I asked how much, expecting not to buy, but was told
it was $10/lb.  I of course bought some.  After chatting with the seafood
manager for a bit, he said that they had a lot in the freezer that was
supposed to go on sale but didn't, so when I said I needed 15 lbs frozen
whole filets, he was eager to work with me.  I got it the next day after
talking with my "freezer neighbor" for space.  He gave it to me for
$8.99/lb.  I was estatic.

Lemons were pre-purchased and "mangled" at home by one of my helpers:  I
needed Lemon rind, juice and the husks in separate dishes.  We reserved some
of the juice for cooking and the rest was turned into Lemon Syrup for the
feast.

Wednesday & Thursday I made Mozzarella.  In the end this was my most
unsuccessful cheese.  It never seemed to get the proper stretch.  The taste
was good but the texture wasn't the best.

Grocery shopping happened and went pretty well.  The barony decided to cut
the feast back from 104 to 88 (tables of 8 if you are wondering about the
numbers) because of low reservations and the threat of downpours .  So I
bought for 11 tables.  Restarant Depo is your friend and if you can show
Non-Profit status, you can get a card.  You have to be aware that just like
Costco, bigger is not necessarily cheaper, but sometimes it is. (If you go,
bring/wear a coat.  The store is one big refrigerator.  I was in a short
sleeve shirt and couldn't wait to get done.)

Grocery store 1, grocery Store 2, home for door repair, site to dump, begin
pasta making.

Olwen the Odd arrived and Simone de Barjaval came out to play.  I can't
thank these 2 enough for all the work they did.

I didn't get as much time to cook on Friday as I would have liked.  We made
the dough for the 2 pastas and got 99% of the Layered Pasta dessert
(Cinnamon Toast Crunch) done. The noodle dough had to wait for Saturday to
be rolled out.  (Note on the CTC - I had made it at the test feast 2 ways:
One with rolled dough with elderflowers and one with filo dough with
cinnamon.  The elderflower one was well liked, but the flavors were too
reminencant of the elderflower torte in the 2nd course, so it was decided
that cinnamon was better.  I didn't like the texture of the filo, so I made
up another small batch to try the hand dough, which has rosewater in it.
The difference was AMAZING.  Hence the hand made pasta)

20 lbs of meat was cubed & 22 onions diced Friday night by campers that were
bored, so much of the chopping work was done.

Saturday started at 7am.  I had a bread pickup at 7:30 at the store.  Got
there at 7:45 and it wasn't in the oven yet.  Not a good start.  The loaves
I needed were Parbaked (read frozen on delivery and just warmed in the
store), so it only took a few minutes.  They weren't really completely
thawed if you ask me… good thing they had all day to warm up.

Got to site, finished up the Cinnamon Toast Crunch and got it baking.  Got
started on the shell bread cookies.  They stuck like crazy (eggs, sugar,
lemon rind). After 4 dead pans I switched from the convection ovens to the
standard oven.  I also sprayed the pans with Pam and then floured them.  Much
better results.  I was baking the silly things most of the morning though.
The carrots were roasted next in the convection oven.  I had to keep
rotating them to get them all done.  I was using a mixture of orange, maroon
& yellow (baby) carrots.  I lost a lot of the yellow babys to oven burn due
to the size and no skin to protect the little things.

I hand wrote out a schedule for the day.  Not my best work.  Need more work
on this aspect of feasts.

My numbers for service kept changing hourly.  56 one hour, 88 next hour, 96
right before court.  I made it work but it wasn't much fun.

I had my kitchenaid pasta machine there and was hoping for 3 others.  We got
2 more around 1 pm which did slow up pasta making quite a bit.  But I was
glad when they got there.

I bought a spiral ham for the crew and kept it out all afternoon for
noshing.  VERY good idea.

Comments hear:

*Portion control was good.  People wanted more as the dish came out, but
were glad that there wasn't more so that they wouldn't fill up before end of
feast.

*No major issues with the food being inedible (aside from the chickens,
which was quickly repaired)

All recipes are available in booklet form here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcqsvv37_17hbvx79c4&invite=cttn5br

Hot Spots:

*1st Crendenza/ Insalata:  *Lemon Syrup water/ Elderflower water/ Olives/
Golden soup         **

                Only high table got the Elderflower water.  I ran out of
money due to the reduced head count.

Olives were a large jar of "mixed" olives with garlic added onsite.  Soup
turned out good even with a clumping issue by the breadcrumbs.  Spicing
didn't scale up correctly and more Cardamom was added.  We *almost* forgot
the vinegar, but it got in just before the soup went out.

*1st kitchen: *Stuffed Fish*/ *Orzo, the Italian way*/ *Dry dish of broccoli
with orange dressing

                I purchased 4 full filets of Chilean Sea Bass.  This was
thawed in the fridge over 24 hrs and then portioned - 3/4lb per table.  High
table received individual "packets" of fish made from the narrow ends of the
fillets.  This was the hardest course by the timing.  The fish was done and
the sides were not.  So the fish went out and then we finished the sides.  The
broccoli got rave reviews.  None of the fish came back to the kitchen.

*At this point I got called into the hall for a mini-court.  I was told
there was going to be one, just not that it was going to be *me* being
called in.  I received a Silver Nautalus (A&S award) for the feast/cheese or
some version thereof.

*2nd Kitchen:  *Salad of roasted carrots*/ *(Beef) Pie in a Pot*/ *Elderflower
& ricotta cheese pie*/ *Bread

                This course was done before feast really got started.  The
beef had been simmering all afternoon, the sides were all room temp.  I
liked having a "pause course" in the middle.  Gives the kitchen time to
catch its' breath.  We needed it.  The carrots were intentually  room temp.
Not sure that point got across.  We had less beef per table that I would
have liked, but I served 12 tables on an amount for 11 tables.  Need to buy
extra pie crusts next time if pre-baking.  I lost 2 to "bubble pops" and had
to pitch hit.  Good thing I had extra flour.  The bread was for soaking up
the juices.  This was the "donated" bread from Atlantia bread company.  For
some reason the pies didn't scale up right.  I had to make more filling to
fill my crusts.  It was odd.  Nothing came back to the kitchen.

*3rd kitchen: *Roast Chicken w/lemon sauce &pomegranate sauce*/ *Noodles
served w butter & herbs*/ *Green salad

                This was my least successful course.  I had issues with cold
spots in the convection ovens and 3 of the chickens came back undercooked.  The
pomegranate sauce was left on the stove too long and began to  boil- with
the high sugar content it slipped from syrup to soft ball stage.  I'm glad I
wasn't washing dishes.  The lemon sauce is based in almond milk.  As with
one of my test batches, I had problems with it not thickening.  It had
reduced WAY down and was still thin, so I ground up another 3/4lb of almonds
and pushed the hell out of it for almond milk, making sure to get bits of
almonds in it.  That worked.  I think I reprocessed the same "milk" and
almonds 3 times in the blender & standard sieve.  The noodles I forgot to
have water boiling and wasn't prepared with the correct equipment for cook &
strain with the noodles.  The noodles went out much after the chicken, even
the ones that came back for more cooking.  The salad I had dressed & plated
by 3pm.  WAY too early.  I should have at least put it in the cooler instead
of holding at room temp.  I was too worried about the cheese.**

*2nd Crendenza*: Hand made Cheeses (Parmesan, Fontine, marscapone,
Zeigerkase, mozzerella), Ciabatta bread, Fruit garnish, Toothpicks in plates
with rose water

                The Parm was good, the fontine was ok, the zeiger was yummy,
the mozz didn't work quite right, the marscapone scared people but was very
good.  Plating was very successful.

*Finale:  *Italian Lemon shell bread*/ *Pizzelle Cookies*/ *Layered Butter
Pasta

                Much raves here.  Very little came back.  Pom sauce was
poured on everything and deemed to be "Porn" Sauce.

All in all very successful.  My portions were spot on.  I do wonder what it
would have been like if I would have bought for 96 instead of 88.  Oh
yea...the kitchen crew would have gotten a full portion of food...  Thre is
a rant in there about talking to the head cook about allergies before you
start eating, but that is for another day.

Vitha
Lady Hrosvitha von Celle
Head Cook, Night on the Town 2008
Lochmere, Atlantia

On 4/29/08, Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> <<< *I just finished a feast for $7/head: Starter, 3 meats, cheese
> course &
> dessert - underbudget. (Including the sea bass) >>>
>
> Did I miss a feast report and menu? If not, I'd like to see it. How
> well did the fish go over? I was wondering if that was the only meat
> you had, but upon re-reading it saw that you had three (other?)
> meats. Fish often seems to get mixed reviews in the SCA, although it
> can be done successfully, even feasts with no other meats.
> feasts-fish-msg   (30K)  6/26/06    Serving fish at SCA feasts.
> fish-feast-art     (6K)  3/29/00    Details and recipes for a mid-Lent
>                                        "fish feast" by Rudd Rayfield.
>
> Stefan