cookg-classes-msg - 9/28/09 Ideas on teaching and running classes on cooking. NOTE: See also the files: AS-classes-msg, AS-food-msg, teaching-msg, AS-classes-lst, AS-ideas-msg, chd-ck-clsses-msg, p-cook-child-art. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 02:11:31 -0800 From: "Anne-Marie Rousseau" Subject: Re: SC - Long...How to run a cooking symposium An Tir style Hi all from Anne-Marie kat asks about running a cooking symposium. I have taught cooking classes, and organized symposiums, collegiums and Ithra sessions of all sizes and flavors (including the classes at 3YC). How we do it here in An Tir may not be how you do it wherever you are, but maybe you can glean some helpful info from this. Also, please realize that I tend to plan things within an inch of their lives. i don't like suprises, and am happiest when I know what's going on. 1. As an instructor I am happiest if I know exactly how many I need to plan for. This tells me how many handouts I need to have, how many recipes to have ready and how much food to buy. It also allows me to have a budget and not take it in the shorts when only three people show up for the class. 2. Sometimes a session is run so that there is no pre-registration, so you have no idea how many students will be in the class, paying the fees. As the autocrate/organizer/Chancellor, can you cover an difference between reciepts and clas income? ie, "OK, get supplies for 10 students. If you get les than that, the event can eat the difference". That way the poor isntructor won't get stuck with a bunch of costs. 3. Carefully schedule the kitchen and make sure the instructors know what time is theirs. I've taught classes where I thought I had an oven, but it turns out the roast fromthe last class was in there, so I had no oven after all. Make sure the instructors know that their class slot includes clean up time, and that the kitchen is to be left ready for the next instructor. Ditto with the equipment/pots/pans/etc. 4. Strongly encourage instructors to provide a handout. If nothing else, with a bibliography. Ideally, a set of the recipes to be used in class. 5. Ideally, instructors should be responsible for providing all their own materials, including grocieries. You'll have enough to do. In one case, I flew in from Seattle to teach at a Western Collegium, and so one of the event staff (bless her heart and soul!) did my grocery shopping for me from a very detailed list (I gave brand names when I could, and if it was wierd stuff, i just stuffed it into my luggage). 6. I find that cooking classes work best if you have four hours. This is time for a short lecture on history, sources, etc, time for reading through the recipes together and answering questions, plenty of time for cooking and plenty of time for eating and clean up. I've done them in two hours, but that's with already reconstructed recipes and me riding shotgun on them the whole time to keep on track, quick playing with the marzipan and then eating on their own lunch hour. Lecture classes can be done in any length of time. I've delivered lectures from 15 minutes to four hours long (ugh). 7. I highly recommend publishing info on the classes in your newletter, in a catelog, or something so folks can see what great classes you're offering and hopefully come. You'll want to include the time, who the instructor is and a fascinating blurb about the class explaining why you just don't want to miss this. Oh, and the class fees, if any, and what the student will get for that money. I'm sure there's lots more I can say about this...just ask. Oh, and don't forget to have fun! :) - --Anne-Marie Date: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 14:49:09 -0800 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - help! - How to run a cooking symposium? Kat asked about cooking workshops/symposia. 1. Our typical cooking workshop is: we find out how many people are coming, select recipes, do shopping. People arrive, we hand them a stack of printouts saying, "Here are the recipes, pick one." People cook recipes, being reminded frequently to measure everything, time everything, and write everything down. When something is finished, everyone tastes and comments. (Cariadoc: "too little pepper, too much saffron!" Elizabeth: "too much pepper, too little saffron!") What was done plus comments get recorded on our master; copes are made for anyone who wants one to take home and play with some more. 2. We once did a cooking symposium as an official event. We had, as I remember, some hands-on classes (Alys Katherine did one on sugar plate) as well as lecture classes and discussions (how to grow period fruits and vegetables; period Islamic cooking; how to do period food at Pennsic: three different points of view). Classes were out of persona/mundane clothes; evening was in persona/in garb. We finished off with a feast by Madeleine des Mille Roses that was a masterpiece (I use the word literally)--very well researched, menu as well as dishes, and excellent food. Elizabeth/Betty Cook Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 17:03:48 -0500 From: david friedman Subject: Re: SC - Cooking Classes Roibeard wrote: >I've seen several references on the list about cooking classes and was >wondering what you are teaching. I want to teach a few classes on medieval >classes but don't know where to start (i.e. period foods, spices, methods of >cooking, etc.) Here is our basic outline for a class on cooking from period sources: I. The Problem: Primary Sources--finding, reading, redacting in which we explain why we think it is better to use primary sources, how you go about finding them, why you have to be careful about translations, and how you go about making sense of 14th or 15th century English. II. Redacting in which we explain how you go about working out recipes, with examples from our experience (especially the mistakes) and some free samples of what got worked out to our satisfaction, and we explain how our cooking workshops work. III. What is out there and where in which we discuss what sources are available: English/French 13th-15th c., Italian, German, eastern Europe, Islamic, etc., and also what we haven't found. IV. Ingredients and sources : spices, gourd, murri, verjuice, sourdough V. Discussion and questions The handout is the source list from the beginning of the Miscellany and a page of examples of 14th and 15th century English recipes for people to try to read. We also teach a class on period Islamic cooking; there, we describe the sources first and then go through a whole lot of recipes fast, pointing out what is characteristic in spicing, procedures, and so on. The handout for that is simply lots of period Islamic recipes with our worked-out versions, taken from the Miscellany. Each class takes about an hour talking fast. Elizabeth/Betty Cook Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 22:49:54 -0500 From: "Sharon R. Saroff" Subject: Re: SC - Kindergarden through 3rd >I am currently trying to help a local school teacher organize some activities >for her TMR class (Trainably Mentally Retarded) and have been asked to >provide some recipes that the home ec teacher could use to make some period >snacks appropriate for people with the mental capacity of Kindergarten >through third grade. > >I am at a loss as to what to suggest. > >Ras I taught a class like this a few years ago. I remember doing lots of recipes that were quite normal for anyone learning to cook. The one they seemed to get the most out of was when I did a unit on different ways to make things rise. I did a biscuit recipe using baking powder, a recipe that used baking soda, a scottish fruit bread that used 5 eggs to make it rise and a raisin bread recipe that used yeast. I also found that my students worked well as a team and taking turns. One mixed, one measured the dry inqredients, one measured wet, one washed the dishes, one dried them, etc. There are a lot of cookbooks on the market that are specifically designed for young children. I would suggest trying to match similar period recipes to ones in those books. Sindara Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:29:16 -0500 From: Johnna Holloway Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Foods for Begining SCA Cooks To: Cooks within the SCA SilverR0se at aol.com wrote: > This coming April I will be teaching a class in Caid's Collegium > called "Getting Started in Historical Cooking." > Renata You could take the approach where you start with a literary reference to a dish. Or something 'food in art' with an artwork that depicts people eating or preparing dishes or foods. Then provide a series of recipes that use the ingredient or show the dish. Go from early to later or use recipes from various countries. Throw in some dietary advice courtesy of those texts. Then show and serve the dish. That gives the audience the opportunity to see and gain some idea about what it is that SCA cookery and foods are all about. Just a suggestion, Johnnae Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:44:42 -0500 From: Michael Gunter Subject: [Sca-cooks] Period non-alcoholic drinks class To: Cooks within the SCA I did my second period non-alcoholic drinks class at our King's College this weekend and it was a definate success. It was also a much better idea to do this class in the outdoor June King's College than the last one I taught, "Open Fire Cookery". Standing all day around a couple of fires in June in Houston, TX was not my brightest of ideas. But having a class in cool drinks during the hot Texas summer is much better. There were around 15 people attending the class and I brought 2 mason jars of tamarind syrup, 1 jar of lemon syrup, 4 litres of small mead and 4 litres of lemon barley water. I also had a large cooler of ice water to mix the syrups with. I provided both small tasting dixie cups as well as larger cups so that attendees could take away a larger drink of their choice after the class. In addition to the lecture on how to make the drinks and others that were in the class notes we discussed period sugar production, verjuis, water sources, sekujaban, ciders and how to make variations on the themes of the recipes given. Tastes were offered of the syrups alone and then mixed with water. I am rather shocked that some folk enjoyed the syrups by themselves. My biggest surprise was the tamarind drink. I've never been much of a fan of tamarind before but the act of steeping tamarind pulp and then making a syrup of the water creates a wonderfully refreshing drink. After the class I took the remaining drinks and syrups to the water pavilion for general distribution and by the end of the event, all that was left was a half bottle of the small mead. I'm hoping that more folk see how easy it is to make a period drink for events and start getting away from sodas, tea, gatorade and powdered lemonade. I've sent Stefan a copy of my class notes so they should be up in the flori-thingy soon. [Now in the Florilegium BEVERAGES section as: Non-Alco-Drks-art -Stefan] Gunthar Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:59:33 EST From: Bronwynmgn at aol.com Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Topics for Classes for Scholas To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org In a message dated 1/18/2009 9:31:29 AM Eastern Standard Time, euriol at ptd.net writes: <> What level students are you considering? If it's a newcomer's academy, then a basic class on available foodstuffs and some non-threatening things to taste would be great. Or, I have a class that looks at commercially available cookbooks that might have period recipes in them, how to decide how trustworthy they are, and how to decide which one suits your needs, which usually goes over pretty well. At the Known World Cooks and Bards Schola, there was a more advanced class that looked at available AngloSaxon foodstuffs and some conjectual recipes. The teacher had some ingredients available and there as a small kitchen, so we kind of got on a Anglo-Saxon cooking brain and tried to come up with plausible stuff. We made griddle cakes with honey, butter and flour and baked them on a tray on top of the woodstove, made some poached pears, and two of us made (very different) pork pasties. It was a tremendous amount of fun, but you really needed to have a good background in historical cookery for it to work. Brangwayna Morgan Shire of Silver Rylle, East Kingdom Lancaster, PA Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:23:09 -0500 From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Topics for Classes for Scholas To: Cooks within the SCA On Jan 18, 2009, at 9:30 AM, Euriol of Lothian wrote: My kingdom (and of course there is always Pennsic) has several events through the year where classes are taught. I would like to put together a couple of new classes, and find myself stumbling for specific topics. My question is then, what type of classes regarding cooking would you like to see taught? I don't know if this helps you (being more workshop-oriented), but a project I've been interested in is more in the nature of semi- intensive, immersion tracks in various subjects, such as pasta work, pastry work, sugar work, sausage making, etc. These are all subjects that I keep hearing people don't do, but have either never tried anything like it, or tried one thing which failed for some reason, and now the entire category is a closed-door-subject to them: I can't do that, I just don't seem to have the knack for that, etc. For me, the important question is finding something that the class can prepare in bulk and then use in six or seven (or more, or fewer) different ways: *What can we do with this unleavened wheat-flour pasta dough? -- We can take some and make loseyns, some for macrows, some for hares in papdele, some for rauioles, some for kuskynoles, some for tartlettes, etc. *What can we do with all this boiled sugar syrup? -- We can take some and make Manus Christi, some to make payn ragoun, some for penydes, we can cast some in pretty shapes in molds, etc. I think spending a day in this way gives the student (assuming all is successful, no explosions, no fistfights, etc.) a sense of accomplishment because they made a bunch of stuff, but also a chance to see slightly different behaviors from the same materials, in order to get a better sense of how to control effects, deal with problems, etc. And at the end of the day, fewer people saying they don't make pastry. Adamantius Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:49:44 -0800 (PST) From: Huette von Ahrens Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Topics for Classes for Scholas To: Cooks within the SCA Something I have been thinking about, but haven't been able to do, is do a two part class on redacting period recipes. This probably would be a better class for Pennsic or some other war. The first part is a lecture class giving the theories and your practical experience in redaction. The second part is dividing the class into groups, giving each group the same recipe, the same ingredients and access to a campfire, a propane stove, and cooking utensils, etc. At the end of the class, everyone presents their redaction and everyone gets to taste what was made. It could be a kind of expensive class, but you should divide the food expenses between all of the students. You can also scrounge equipment, stoves etc., from friends and groups or ask that the students bring what they can. This would give your students good, practical experience in redaction. You should be on hand to advise each group if they get stuck or have questions. Huette Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:20:52 -0800 From: David Friedman Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Topics for Classes for Scholas To: ahrenshav at yahoo.com, Cooks within the SCA What we have done, many times, is a cooking workshop, usually in our home. People arrive, usually Saturday at one or so. When you arrive we hand you a stack of period recipes, unredacted, and you pick one. During the afternoon each participant makes his recipe, with advice from us as needed, recording in detail everything he does. When something is done, everyone tries it and makes comments. The idea is, first, to convince people that they really can start with a period recipe and end up with something consistent with that recipe that is good to eat, and second to provide a start at working out a bunch of recipes. Participants can, of course, take home a copy of their recipe for further trial and error development. There's no reason it couldn't be done at a schola, provided you were willing to spend the three hours+ it would probably take. -- David/Cariadoc www.daviddfriedman.com Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:06:34 -0500 From: "Euriol of Lothian" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Topics for Classes for Scholas To: "'Cooks within the SCA'" As I see it, the issue is more with the logistics of facilities and/or equipment as opposed to time. If the site's kitchen is being used for "lunch" and/or "feast" as is common at AEthelmearc's event, then trying to make a class of it can be difficult. Also, depending on the time of year, the weather can make it prohibitive to do it outdoors. The temperatures were in the negatives yesterday when I was attending a nearby schola. I do recall being able to attend your cooking workshops which I very much enjoyed and the people in my barony are interested in such a workshop here. Euriol -----Original Message----- There's no reason it couldn't be done at a schola, provided you were willing to spend the three hours+ it would probably take. -- David/Cariadoc Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 16:01:36 -0500 From: Michael Gunter Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Idea for an A&S Entry To: Cooks within the SCA <<< I am pondering the viability of doing a cooking demonstration as an A&S entry into the Cooking area (static, not performance) Should I plan this out further or just do the recipe at home and dish it out, with documentation, at the Faire? Helen >>> Instead of just cooking a dish, it would probably be part of either performance or supported documentation, maybe you could do a demonstration of one of the recipes that can be accurately redacted to have two totally different results. Cook them together while following the instructions to the letter but using different interpretations. That could be fun and an eye-opener to the nuances of period cooking. Gunthar Edited by Mark S. Harris cookg-classes-msg Page 8 of 8