[Sca-cooks] I posed these questions to my kingdom....

[Craig Daniel]

On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 10:46 PM, Stephanie Yokom <sayokom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 1.  What dishes and/or foods will make you want to go and feast?

Anything where I can eat my fill and avoid foods I don't like. I'm a
supertaster with a strong dislike for green vegetables. Serving greens
is good, and if I ever find myself cooking a feast (I haven't yet, but
someday when I'm able to be more active in the society...) I'll almost
certainly do so, but I wish to avoid eating them. In the SCA, this is
not hard for me to do. In fact maybe it is easier than it really
should be. So, truly, SCA feasts make me want to go and feast.

Not a food, but timeliness. I should be eating shortly after I sit
down, and there should not be long gaps between finishing one course
and seeing the next. And yes, I'm aware of how much court not running
long would help with this; if (God forbid) I somehow find myself
stewarding an event, I'm going to make sure court happens after feast.

> 2.  What don't you like to see served at a feast?

I don't mind out-of-period food, any more than I mind out-of-period
garb. But just as I mind blue jeans, I mind food that's obviously out
of period. Please do not serve me any corn, tomatoes, potatoes, or
chocolate, unless the theme of the feast is post-Columbian and they
are being used in an authentic manner.

That said, I love me some Chocolate or an Indian Drinke, which is the
first recipe I know of for something that is documentably late period
but missing actual pre-1600 recipes. It's also very blatantly not
modern cocoa, and no, doing what I've heard of being done and adding
some cayenne pepper and maybe a pinch of other spices to modern cocoa
does not make a drink that's even remotely close to period. (What it
does make is a drink that some modern Mayans apparently consider
traditional, but traditional is not the same thing as five centuries
old.)

> 3.  What would you like to see served more at feast?

Dishes I've never tasted before.

> 4.  How many courses do you think is a proper feast?

Most events have a theme, and a feast that tries to fit the theme.
This is a question to be answered when researching your feast, rather
than to ask my instincts.

> 5.  What is your favorite country or region to taste dishes from?

The near east, but really it's all good.

> 6.  Would you want to see other country's period dishes represented that are
> beyond the traditional SCA borders? (Chinese, Arabic,etc.)

Yes, please, but please do research these the same way you research
Europe. Traditional + foreign != period.