[Sca-cooks] kitchen tips

[Elaine Koogler]

More suggestions:

--Measure your spices ahead of time, but take a long an extra bit in case
you need to increase what you've added.  I usualy put them in small plastic
baggies.

--Have pre-cooks, doing as much as you can ahead of time.  You may need to
experiment to figure out what can be prepared ahead of time and what can't.
This decreases the amount of work and tension the day of the event.

--Make sure that some of your help in the kitchen are folks that you can
simply hand a recipe to and let them go...but be sure you check on what
they're doing to make sure it's working out the way you intended.

--If you're using one of those software programs that will automatically
expand quantities, always add less seasoning than the expanded recipe calls
for...often the quantities of spices won't be accurate and it's always easy
to add more than it is to remove too much.

--If you have room in your freezer, look for sales well ahead of your feast,
particularly on meats.  Often things like beef, lamb and pork can even be
frozen in their marinade (if you're using one), adding to the flavor and
tenderness of less expensive cuts.

That's about all I have....maybe you might think about taking all of these,
putting them together and doing an article for TI???

Kiri



On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius <
adamantius1 at verizon.net> wrote:

>
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 4:19 PM, Gaylin Walli wrote:
>
>  Not too long ago, I published a question on the Middle Kingdom Cooks list
>> asking what kind of tips people had come up with for working in SCA
>> kitchens. I wasn't interested in the "Make sure you have a plan" sort of
>> suggestions, or "Use Excel" kind of tips, but things a bit more practical,
>> such as "If you run out of pasty bags, try using a zippered plastic bag
>> with
>> the corner cut off" and "When shopping in bulk for some of your feast
>> supplies, wear a modern chef's jacket."
>>
>> I received a few responses, but I'm sure there are more that other people
>> have garnered over the years. What are they? I'd love to hear them.
>>
>
>
> Post your menu on the wall. Post your recipes to the right of that, with
> quantities and instructions.
>
> Sideboards are a wonderful, wonderful invention. Put cold course on
> sideboard before feast, serve a hot course first, then the cold course,
> which leaves you more time to cook and assemble the third, hot course (or
> some variation on this if you have a lot of courses).
>
> Always buy a box of Kosher Salt (or be sure you have one). Season with it,
> throw handfuls of it on the floor when someone spills grease on the floor in
> the middle of service and there's no time to stop and clean properly. Later,
> scour pots with it.
>
> Sometimes it's cheaper to buy more expensive cuts of meat, if you can cook
> them quickly and minimize shrinkage, rather than buying the cheaper cuts
> that require boning, trimming, skinning, etc. You may find that after you
> throw away half of the meat's weight, it was more expensive.
>
> Time _is_ money. Sometimes it's worth it to take the extra time to save
> money, and sometimes it's not.
>
> Adamantius
>
>
>
>
> "Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls, when we
> all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's bellies."
>                        -- Rabbi Israel Salanter
>
>
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