[Sca-cooks] siege cooking at outlandish - update

[Kathleen A Roberts]

well, the rainy and windy weather (hail last Thursday 
night, but it did keep the dust down) made connor and i 
decide to daytrip for the siege cooking on Saturday for 
me, and general schmoozing for him. he had the better 
time. it was 36 degrees at 8 a.m., warm and sunny all day. 
extreme fire conditions, so nada but propane. the

scenario: with a seafaring/pirate theme, the team (3 cooks 
and 1 scullery) had to prepare two meals, one for the crew 
at 3:45 (in town hall) and one for the captain and guests 
at 4:30 at the team's campsite). staggered times for four 
teams. we began first, at 8:30.

all four teams met at town square at 8 a.m. the 
coordinator was late. we then learned that each team of 
cooks had to basically go through a guided scavenger hunt 
to get the food. we were given a few basics in a bucket, 
but otherwise it was long distance hiking shopping. (note: 
if you were disabled or rickety in some way, you could 
have a designated walker assigned.

all directions and rules were given to the teams at that 
time. i had emailed the coordinator to ask (if 
permissible) how many judges, so the team could have 
enough platage. she emailed me EIGHT! i forwarded it to 
the team - we almost quit then.

despite slightly bad knees, i didn't think i needed the 
designated walker, and forged on with my captain, one-eye 
emma and fellow cook, zee spenyerd (OLE!) ). we didn't 
have a chance to look into our bucket to see what we had, 
being the first boat out, but it looked pretty usual... 
oats, flour, honey.

oh, yes... and we had to do it all travelling in a BOAT of 
pvc pipe in an elongated pentagon shape, that we had to 
hold up with our hands. all travel required all three 
persons be in the 'boat', holding it up. during your 
voyage from place to place you could be raided by the 
pyrates, and they could take your provisions if you did 
not have sufficient bribes. the other boats could raid you 
if you passed. you had to ask permission to dock at ports, 
but had to stay at respectable distance if another ship 
was already there.

but wait, there's more.....

so our team sets sail for the pyrate camp first, thinking 
it furthest from our camp, that we would go there and 
double back to the ports on the way to camp. we got to the 
pyrate camp, and only three people were awake, and had no 
idea what was going on. we were advised to come back when 
everyone was awake.

so.... we hit the other ports of call where we got our 
provisions. my bribes of song and/or homemade 
oatmeal/almond,raisin/cranberry cookies got us some other 
goods, as did emma's glass beads, but not especially 
useful in the end.

but, hold the phone... we go back to the pyrate camp (the 
farthest port from our camp) about an hour later to be 
told that the captain had given all of the provisions to 
the first boat there, early bird, worms and all that. we 
informed him WE were first there and no one knew what was 
going on. he said, well i wasn't awake yet. 
grrrrrrrrrr...... fortunately, a friendly pyrate, and 
great inventor, gave us a bottle of dead man's ale 
(complete with little plastic skeleton in the bottle). 
extremely miffed, we sailed away to camp, needless to say, 
bitching all the way.

and then.... we complained to the siege cooking 
coordinator who had no idea what was going on. we later 
found out other teams had been dismissed by the pyrates 
similarly.

soldiering on... we checked our provisions. we had packets 
of seeds in them. (insert scooby doo bewilderment noise 
here). we were supposed to barter at a certain port of 
call for extra veggies. BUT - no one told anyone that. we 
found that out later. off in the boat again....

now mind you... the scenario called for two meals in 8 
hours, or rather 6 hours (cuz it took us two hours to make 
the rounds to get the provisions) for an unknown number of 
crew at town hall (oh, just put down whatever dishes you 
want, or as a buffet) and 45 minutes later dinner for 8 in 
captains quarters,

we had... about a cup of flour 4 cups of oatmeal
2 cups barley (not prepped or hulled or anything)
three leeks (one of them bribed)
a quarter cup of coffee beans (bribed)
4 tomatoes
1 pineapple (!)
1 round watermelon
a 3 inch round of goat cheese with cracked pepper
a 2 inch block of gruyere
1 and a half cups of diced figs (coated with 
unidentifiable powdery spice stuff - at first we wondered 
why we
   had been given purina dog chow, cuz that was what it 
looked like in the baggie)
a cup of milk
one onion
one pound of carrots
three hardtack biscuits
one half cup of spiced rum (bribed)
1 bottle of ale (bribed)
6 eggs
1 cup of milk
handful of salt
handful of black peppercorns (thank god for the crab 
mallet)
two apples (gotten by my charm and guile)
a vanilla bean
a quarter cup of olive oil
a quarter cup of distilled white vinegar
a generous quarter cup of honey
a generous half cup of raw sugar
a piece of beef round, about the size of two ladies fists 
put together
a sandwich sized zip lock bag of beef jerky
two HUGE turnips
two tablespoons of dill seed (!)
a bottle of mead

no citrus, no salt pork, no wine/brandy, no rum... (i 
strongly suspect there were salad greens somewhere as we 
later found a bag of mesclun seeds in the bottom of the 
bucket)

and an hour later, to make up for the confusion at the 
pyrate camp.... a piece of smoked venison the size of my 
hand and less than an inch thick

then someone said they were coming to take some of our 
meat because of a mix-up. fortunately, no one was chopping 
at the time, but we convinced them we weren't the people 
who were supposed to be giving up meat.

and one hour later, ditto above four pork spare ribs

i think that was it. its a bit of a blur now. i know this 
is supposed to get your creativity going, but... one eyed 
emma set to making a beef stew for the captain's table. 
zee spenyerd (OLE !) used his blade skills to full 
advantage, chopping and slicing. bones the teenage 
scullery lad kept the pots and pans coming.

i was hoping for jerky cuz i had a good recipe for 
breaking it down into a neat gravy to put over just about 
anything (chuckwagon cookbook). unfortunately, it was not 
the dry, preserved jerky you find in some good jerky 
shops, but the sticky, almost teriaki sweet jerky you get 
in bags at the truckstops, both thin and gobbet sized.

let me say, that emma and i were exhausted by the time we 
started, with all the hiking. all of us worked away as 
best we could, and two hours before the time to feed the 
crew, we were staring at each other with glazed over eyes. 
this being rosalio's (zee spenyard (OLE !) ) first siege 
cooking experience, he was pretty much game for anything. 
we had our notebook, we had ideas, but there just wasn't 
enough of anything to do as much as we needed to do, even 
with little tastes.

the jerky wouldn't reconstitute. the rum was spiced 
(ICK!). what do you do with 4 spareribs 3 hours into the 
competition, and a pineapple, fer gawd's sake?

sadly, and after much discussion, we decided that we did 
not have the energy for the task at hand, and threw in our 
pirate bandanas. neither emmaline or i give up easily, and 
it was a hard thing to do, but it was beyond us.

as we were getting ready to go to the coordinators camp, a 
fellow team captain came to our camp to see if we had 
stolen her flag and provisions. (all teams had a flag to 
show judges where they were.) apparently some one had 
taken the raiding theme too far, and well into the 
competition time, as she was about to make a dish, 
discovered her eggs and milk were missing. (we gave her 
what was left of ours.)

after four hours of hard work, we had a passable beef 
stew, a pork/leek/apple dish that would not have served 
six a tablespoon let alone 8, an authentic dish of 
hardtack broken up and stewed with rum and sugar (that had 
the figs added to kill the weird spiced rum taste) and a 
nice little wrap of apple slice spread with goat cheese 
and wrapped with finely sliced smoked venison, and the 
rest of the flotsam and jetsam mocking us on the table.

oh, and a 'personal' judge came by every two hours to see 
how we were doing, check on our teamwork and test us on 
our pyrate trivia. extra points for documentation or real 
pyrate recipes. he was a sweetie, and thought some of the 
rules were crazy too, and actually gave us some 'sympathy' 
chocolate for our experience with the pyrates/protein.

it was sad. the coordinator was shocked we surrendered our 
flag. it was supposed to be fun, and she was sorry we were 
not having fun with it.

if we hadn't had to lug those boats around every time we 
went somewhere, if there weren't so many mouths to feed, 
such disjointed provisions (i am used to odd, but this was 
WIERD), if there weren't confusion about what and who 
could be "messed with", then fine. but it wasn't worth it. 
at noon, my husband stopped by and told both of us we 
already looked exhausted and maybe this wasn't worth it. 
being stubborn, we insisted it wasn't that bad. it got old 
really quickly.

i am not a quitter but in retrospect i really think it was 
the best thing. we left early, i don't even know now how 
many teams finished or who won with what. i really didn't 
care.

the team was great all around, and bones was blessing for 
toting within the camp, and zee spenyerd's (OLE !) knife 
skills are incredible. our personal judge told us that 
with some of the things he was hearing from us, including 
the pyrating of eggs and milk, he was going off to have a 
talk with the coordinators. he visited us after we 
surrendered, and was rather sympathetic. nice young viking 
gent.

we had fun with each other -- we would shout OLE! every 
time one of us said "zee spenyerd" and were going to put 
the skeleton in the crew's mess -- but the competition was 
no fun.

future siege cooking coordinators, learn from this. it's 
about cooking, not about cool, complicated and confusing 
themes. KISS!

cailte

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which 
sustained him through temporary periods of joy."
W. B. Yeats
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathleen Roberts
Coordinator of Freshman Admissions
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM
505-277-2447
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