'Medieval' Feast - Preparation

Have you ever wondered how those huge banquet feasts were done? Or was it a case of "I'd rather eat this but good lord it is a lot of work to prepare!" and your great untapped reserves of food awesome go ... well, untapped?

No! I say, they shall not remain untapped and I will rise to the cooking station and make a feast! Why? Because I like to cook. And cooking is fun. But, I understand that not everyone has the same delight in cooking, and the idea of preparing a 'feasts' worth of food makes hearts quail and eyes grow large with the anime-esque sweatdrop of nerves down the brow.

I'm rolling up my sleeves, and taking the trauma out of preparation and the cooking process. It is, after all, what this blog is for. To de-mystify recipes, to hopefully, help people make sense of the procedure and how to turn out glorious bits of food from everything and anything in the pantry and fridge. As of writing this,  I have not, yet, actually -made- my feast, so if it doesn't work too well, you'll find out when I do!

Let us begin...




Step 1: What Are You Cooking?

This is the beginning question. What sort of feast do you want to have? And I do mean 'feast', multiple courses, more food than you can shake a tree at. This is easier if you try and give your menu a 'theme'. My theme is 'medieval', though, only loosely. For this purpose, I'm just going with 'rustic'. So the bottom line is; if you can eat it with your fingers, or a single eating dagger, it's good for this feast.

Now the automatic assumption would be 'pig on a spit' roast. Have you any idea how big a pig is? They are HUGE. And a whole pig will feed around 70 people. At least. Along with taking 16 hours to cook. Not doable.

Step 2: How Many Are You Feeding?

Veeeery important. Try not to overstuff your guests -too- much, nor starve them. Try to hit that sweet spot between making them feel greedy for wanting more, and regretful at being unable to do the food justice.

Now I try to lean more on the 'too much food' thing, because leftovers are delightful, and I -like- people to go back for seconds. And thirds. And to pile up the food. So when I cook for multiple people, I tend to over-estimate. If you estimate around a handful of whatever, per person, will be more than enough proportionately. That is, that's the serving size. But we're not having our 'sensible portion' dinner, we're having a -feast-.

Step 3: Starting The Preparation

Make a menu. No seriously. Remember, not everyone coming to your feast is as omnivorous as the rest, be sure to include vegan or vegetarian dishes. :)

Work out your 'pre dinner' menu, that is, people filtering in and such to nibble on before you start serving the food. This is mine:

Home made Party pies
Chips (potato crisps etc because I'm lazy)
Cocktail Onions (bought because pickling is really time consuming)

Now this might seem like 'not a lot', but there is a -lot- of food in the rest.

Sides:
Shredded Garden Salad
Coleslaw
Roast Potato, pumpkin, carrots and onion
Gravy from scratch (both meat and vegan varieties!)
Corn bread (new recipe!)
Damper (potentially! This is really easy)
Corn on the Cob (steamed or roasted)

Entree:
Roast Pumpkin Soup (vegetarian)

Mains:
Roast Mutton (it's like lamb, but the older sheep. It shrinks less than lamb and is so delicious)
Roast Beef
Roast Pork (with crackling!)
Crumbed Chicken drumsticks.
Parsnip, Cranberry and Nut loaf (Vegan! And a new recipe)
-or-
Stuffed Mushrooms
-or-
Roast Sweet potato
I haven't decided yet. Roast sweet potato is probably going to happen, got a couple lovely ones already.

Desserts:
Custard Tarts
Carrot Cake (new recipe!)
Baked Lemon Cheesecake
Vanilla Sponge Fairy Cake (New recipe for me!)

Step 4: Organise The Order Of Your Cooking.

This is the tricky part. You need to decide on how much time, and work, you want to do on the day. Now I'm a strange person, in that I would like to -eat- some of the food that I'm preparing. So I do not want to do all this cooking all at once. So you work backwards from your serving time, on how much time each item would take to cook, and prepare.

My feast will be on the Sunday Dinner, so Sunday will be devoted to cooking the 'hot' food, and eating, and serving, and the actual 'party'. With four roasts and the drumsticks, I'll start preparing to cook at around 10am on Sunday. ...Which means Sunday is out for anything other than adding heat to the food. So skip back to Saturday. Which will be taken up for -preparing- all the food for the heat adding. For example, seasoning the roasts, chopping up the vegetables, cooking the soup (yes 'strange', but if you cook the vegetables and puree them and everything, then all it needs is heating up again, a stir through, and the final garnishes added and tada!) so ... Saturday is full too! And we're all the way back to Friday for making the desserts! That is, the baking. Whew. ...So thursday will be the day I'm going to go shopping, and get the last minute perishables.

Now 3-4 days of cooking may seem like a lot, but it can happen much more slowly, and easily this way. Rather than in a mad rush to get everything done the day/night before or on the day. Food isn't stressful, food is fun!

Upcoming posts when I do the cooking!

Are you excited? I'm excited!