This post is to give you an insight into my workings when I am planning and organising a feast!
Initial concept and research
When I was asked to cook the feast for Southron Gaard's Yule in A.S. LVIII (2023) with the King in attendance who, firstly, was a resident Southron Gaarder and secondly had a German persona, a German feast seemed only fitting. Luckily I had recently received Volker Bach's The Landskneecht Cookbook which was a good starting point as was this translation of Sabina Welserin's cookbook. I also read Beyond Bratwurst by Ursula Heizelmann as I found the overview of German food through the ages helpful to get me thinking about the flavours that would have been common. I borrowed Bach's The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany from a friend and it was so good in discussing 16th century German food that I immediately bought my own copy.
Test cooking and planning
When I cook a feast I create a document where I include links, references and recipes of what I think I would like to cook. Here is this document for the German Feast. I then use this to document when I do my many test cooks. My friends and family often end up coming over for dinner for these test cooks, which have two purposes - one to see how the recipes work and secondly to see how the dishes eat together. I think about whether the flavours of a course go together and do they eat well together. What I mean by this is are there enough different textures of food in a course? Are there too many wet dishes as these can all blend together into one which can be unpleasant for the dinner? Is there a mix of flavours and do they compliment each other? Is there enough for vegetarian or gluten/dairy free diners? You do need to take into consideration major dietary issues such as gluten and dairy allergies. If you cook regularly for your Barony you will develop a good knowledge of these but be prepared for others when you receive the final list of attendees. As you can see from the document above I find the note function on google docs useful as I can write down corrections and clarifications as notes on this document. All these thoughts go into my planning of the courses for the feast. For each course I try to have one or two meat dishes, a carbohydrate dish, and at least two vegetable dishes. I found this means there is covers a range of food requirements and provides enough variety for the diners.
Site and equipment considerations
The other big consideration when cooking is what the kitchen facilites are like at your feast venue. If possible see if you can visit the site beforehand and take photos of the kitchen. If this is not possible see if you can get someone else to take some for you. Things to take into account:
- Oven space
- Stove element space
- Kitchen equipment at the site e.g. large pots, mixing bowls. Check the drawers - do they have peelers, wooden spoons, graters, rolling pins, tongs. Check for oven mits too!
- Are you bringing your own tea towels or are these provided?
- Will you be using any kitchen equipement from your Baronial stores? We have Baronial slow cookers and rice cookers available
- What is the work space like in the kitchen? Is there enough room to roll out pastry and chop vegetables at the same time?
- What is the washing up space like? Is there enough to wash personal and feast dishes? Is there enough hot water for the event?
Also see if you can find out how well your oven and stove top works. There is nothing worse than planning a series of roast meats, only to discover that one of your ovens doesn't work. You also don't want to plan a feast dependant on 6 dishes cooked in pots served at the same time when you only have three burners available. Remember often that the kitchen equipment that ends up in church halls or camp facilites is pre-loved and well used so may not be as efficient as what you have at home. The same can be said for the ovens. Check your food regularly when it is cooking in case your oven runs very hot or very cold which will impact your cook times. Also cooking a 1.5kg roast at home for your family requires much less time than a 20kg roast in an elderly oven. Rather than taking all your own kitchen equipment, consider what is most required to work well and bring that. I always take my own knives as I know they are sharp.
Luckily when I cooked this German feast I had cooked Yule at the same venue the previous year so was somewhat familar with the kitchen. However, the oven which had worked well last year did not work this year which meant we had less oven space than planned and had to do some juggling of the roast meat for course two.
Heading towards the feast
When it comes closer to the time of the feast I copy the recipes over and make any necessary corrections to them. this is my working document. I do tend to remove some of the links and extra detail so that I am not searching through pages of text to get to the recipes. I also include the scaled up quantities for each recipe, these quantiies are copied over from my spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is multi purpose as it is where I work out how much I need of each ingredient, plus costings. I do the scaling manually rather than using a formula as I am not great with spreadsheet formulas plus I feel I have more awareness of what I need to buy this way! I use the spreadsheet to work out my spending for the feast so I stay within budget. I also record where I am going to buy each item and I highlight when I have ordered the item. Where it is not highlighted it is because I already have those items on hand. I do tend to buy groceries from a variety of sources so I can get the best prices. I have found the online grocery websites locally an excellent way to compare prices and as I work out costs I will have several of these open at a time to check prices. If you go to page 20 of the working document you will see the start of my run sheet for this feast. At this point in my planning I divide the day into morning, afternoon and before service and decide what processes I want to do in each part of the day e.g. chopping and peeling vegetables is best done in the mornings as there is more time and space in the kitchen to do this or if I am making bread I will make the dough the night before or if I am cooking fish which only needs a little time to cook I will make sure I have a clear time to start this in the before service section. I will however add and change things on the day so this is never a final list.
On the day
I have a white file box I take with me when I am cooking feast called 'The Box of Menu' and this includes essential supplies for a day of feast cooking including a clipboard, several ballpoint pens, a marker, a box of white labels, bluetak, scissors and a block of chocolate. I will often put in any recipe books I have used for the feast creation just in case. Before the event I print out the menu and my working document including my run sheet. In the past I printed these on A3 paper and stuck them on the wall of the kitchen but as I have progressed as a feast cook I have found this less necessary. I will also often make a fancier version of my menu and provide a copy of each table. Here is one I did for a Iberian feast. I now put all documents on my clip board and write all over them during the day. I especially do this on the menu page as when I look at the menu I can see what I need to do next. You can see the aftermath of these documents below! It is however very important to prepare to be flexible on the day. You are not always going to be familiar with the ovens and other kitchen equipment and therefore you cannot expect a process that took 20 minutes at home to take 20 minutes on site, especially when your oven may be poorer quality. It is impossible to be completely prepared for every eventuality unless you have cooked the same feast in the same location for the same number of people before.
Concluding thoughts
Good planning is a large component of a successful feast as it allows you to have a clear idea of how much you are spending so you can still stick to your budget. By providing yourself with a roadmap for how you are going to cook the feast you can make the best use of your time throughout the day. While there will always be a level of stress in a feast kitchen I have found that planning like this stops the stress turning into panic as panic makes the food taste bad! It is however important to note that like any road map you are not required to stick to it. One important part of good kitchen management is the ability to be flexible so that when things don't go quite to plan you can adapt to the situation. This is why I don't include all processes on my run sheet. While there are certain things that are time critical, there are other processes that can fitted around these. When I was cooking the German Yule I had more people than I expected to help in the morning so I was able to do some processes earlier than expected. There have been other times when I have had less people than expected so have had to replan how the afternoon was going to work to take this into account. It is best to be prepared but expect that you will need to adapt your plan as the day unfolds!
My working document for the Yule at Raincliff Feast
My working document for the German Yule feast
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
