12th-N-Oertha-art - 7/7/00 Oertha 12th Night Feast, Jan 2000. Doing a feast at an event site without a Kitchen by Mistress Cedrin Etainnighean, OL. NOTE: See also the files: 12th-nite-fst-art, feasts-msg, feast-menus-msg, feast-serving-msg, Fst-Menus-art, p-menus-msg, headcooks-msg, kitchen-clean-msg. ************************************************************************ 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, 08 Jan 2000 22:32:21 -0900 From: Kerri Canepa Subject: SC - 12th Night postmortem - part the first Well, it's over and I'm still standing. Just barely, mind you. The short report is this; the food was a hit but the event needed more direction in the form of a schtickmeister. The more elaborate report; we ended up with 19 dishes served (20 were made but one of them got lost in the shuffle) in three courses with hypocras, wafers, quince jellies, and candied lemon peels to close. Here follows the menu: 12th Night Feast Ist Course Bruette Saake Egurdouce of Fish Chicken Lombard Perre Rapeye Pies of Paris A Disshe of Skirrets 2nd Course Compost Ham Armored Turnips Daryoles Fish fresh boiled Tartlettes Wardonys in Syrup 3rd Course Winter Squash Tart Salmon roast Pork roast with 3 sauces (2 actually since one was ditched because of time constraints) A Disshe of Rape (this wasn't served because it got lost) A Disshe of Beterotes Losyns To finish Hypocras Wafers Candied lemon peel Quince jellies Here's my comments which might seem a bit out of context if you weren't there. Sorry. Even though I knew I was getting us into a big pile of potential problems, we held the feast at a site with no kitchen. This was due, in part, to the difficulty in finding a site on the weekend we wanted and this site was available and reasonably priced. Not having a kitchen on site can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that all cooking will be done on your own equipment, in your home where you know what to expect. A curse in that you have to cook off site, transport it, and figure out a way to keep it warm or cool. However, this site had a second floor loft area which made a terrific food set up area. There were plenty of tables available plus 3 electrical outlets and a couple of large garbage cans. Also windows on two sides and open on one side overlooking the lower area. We brought in a whole slew of heating equipment, some borrowed, some rented, to the tune of 3 crockpots, an electric frying pan, an electric roaster, a chafing tray which held 3 8 qt trays, one 8 qt chafing pan, 1 small chafing dish, a warming tray, and a Coleman two burner stove. Needless to say, we didn't have a problem with cold food. All food was made off site although wafers were made using a hand held pizzelle maker over the Coleman stove which came out rather well. I have to say that if money is not an object (and in this case, it really wasn't, more on that later), checking into what facilities and equipment can be available to you through rental companies is something to look into. The barony we live in owns a gazillion matching plates of two sizes, plus a mess of coffee cups and saucers and miscellanious bits and pieces. We ended up buying a bunch of bowls since there weren't any, but we rented forks and spoons. We also rented the 8 qt chafing dish and the large chafing tray, a large insulated food transport box, and 2 standing brass colored candelabras which held 7 candles each. And we used everything we rented. It beat the heck out of trying to buy those things and then trying to figure out where to keep them. The original idea was to have a staging area, a dresser, at the bottom of the stairs to the loft. There was a table set up in a convenient place which didn't effect movement back and forth but we discovered it was right under a very breezy vent which could not be closed. So we brought all food directly from the loft to the diners. Without overhead lights, the stairs were a bit of a challenge, but after one server announced that it was seven stairs to the landing, then ten stairs to the bottom, everyone got into the swing of it. We also had 4 teenage young ladies who served with more enthusiasm than I've had in many a year; I don't think the stairs where much of a problem for them at all. The food, overall, was well received. Since I wasn't able to spend time keeping an eye on the diners, my husband reported that most of what food came back, was after the first course. He also said that foods with a high "goo" factor were the ones he saw the most of. We did serve perre which is a green pea mush and couple of other mushy things but for the most part, the diners ate most of it. The servers, on the other hand, tried everything and then asked for more. The word "awesome" was used more than once. They were the ones who took home the extra tarts, fish, and chicken lombard (actually, there were 3 packs of 4 chicken lombards; I kept one, our senior ranking server, a knight, Viscount kind of guy, got one, and the premere pair o' cooks, Bjarni and Annora, got a pack). A worthwhile note: The reconstruction of armored turnips that we did (using Gruyere cheese and a powder douce recipe we now can't find anywhere) was a hit. In fact, many people had no idea that they were eating turnips at all. Ha HA! The secret, peel, cut up and cook the turnips for about ten minutes in boiling water, then throw out the water. Turnips lose a lot of their bitterness that way. As to the money is no object thing I mentioned earlier, that's not technically true. However, after some discussion between myself and my apprentice Claire, we decided that we'd provide the feast at no cost and just ask for a site fee. Especially since 12th Night is the weekend before Winter Coronet, traditionally a rather expensive event, and we were pretty sure nobody could afford two spendy events in a row. This also gave us a lot of leeway as to what we were willing to serve. Note to self: Fish may have been inexpensive to medieval people, but it isn't in these parts these days. We easily spent the most money on fish over any other item or ingredient. However, the diners (and especially the servers) enjoyed the three different fish dishes that were offered. Of the three, Egurdouce of Fish was the most popular (fried fish with a fruit sauce), followed by the Sauce Vert we prepared for Fish Fresh Boiled. In the future, I'd buy less in amounts but still keep fish on the menu. Except for the first course coming out, there wasn't a lot of time between courses. We were on a limited time schedule; we had rented the site from 11:30 a to 6:30 p so we had to keep things moving. I'm happy to report that while it took us longer to set up than I'd wanted (no real surprise) we were out of there with the place spotless a little before 6:30p. A big round of thank yous to all the folks that helped clean up, took home extra food, or acted as sherpas. What a crew. Kerri Cedrin Etainnighean, OL Edited by Mark S. Harris 12th-N-Oertha-art 4 of 5