Post-foodem Part 1: 30th Year Feast

I've taken a lot of time away from this feast, to digest and decompress everything that happened. I read through my notes I made, got feedback from patrons and fellow cooks, and now feel confidant to tackle this detailed breakdown.

To start...I kinda rocked the house. Everything went great, the food looked good and tasted good, there was just the right portions and I had a wonderful time. I had some of the best help a head cook can ask for, and some of the most loyal friends. This was an amazing effort from everyone involved, and we all knocked this shit out of the park. I know I already made a large thank you post right here, but I just wanted to stress that point home.

Top 5 What Worked - 

1) Study - I spent a whole bloody year putting myself out of my comfort zone, studying a new culture as well as cooking style. Spending all that time becoming so familiar with the food to truly know it was a huge advantage, when issues and errors happened I was able to quickly react to fixing it.

2) Trust the experts - Who prepares Japanese food better than the Japanese? I purchased pre-made pickles, pre-made miso and other critical ingredients from the culture to best recreate the food. The grocery store clerks gave me the best options for cooking many foods and often recommended ingredients that I normally wouldn't have purchased (but came out better because of their recommendations). Yes I studied for a year, but these people have lived this food for decades and they will understand it better in ways I never will.

3) Trust my volunteers - One of the hard things is always letting go and trusting others when they have the ball, even when you're the team captain. There were plenty of times where I trusted the fantastic instincts of Corey when it came to cooking food, when I couldn't see what he saw and let him go. When you assigning tasks to folks you are trusting that they'll follow instructions to get what you want, but also trusting that f they can improve it they will. A good example is the red bean paste desert, I had envisioned tall/thin cuts in a deep pan, but Corey was confidant that short/wide would get the better result and look. And he was totally right, I was so much happier with the finished cut he did than my own. That's trusting your volunteers.

4) Feast menu's, schedules and instructions - I loved how I posted everything on the walls. Having it out in the open for everyone to check, double the sheets to force me to double check everything, and having in high traffic areas really helped a lot. Definitely adding this to my feast prep package.

5) Portions - Nuff said, I portioned the hell out of this feast and am proud of my math. I went to the limit on so many dishes, I was very proud of my math and my purchasing ability (all which was double/triple checked by my wife thank goodness!).

Top 5 What Didn't Worked - 

1) No solid book - I loved how I did my menu's and schedule this time, having it posted in multiple spots was really awesome. But what I found myself missing was an actual feast book, like I've done in the past. I didn't like the loose leaf copies of recipes, and many times I felt myself looking for my book. I think I'm gonna do the postings and the books, for my own sanity.

2) Not scheduling enough water/food breaks - Yeah...I failed on this one. I got stressed a lot during times, and it took me a while to realize I wasn't eating/drinking enough. I normally have to schedule myself these breaks, and I didn't put in as many as I needed this time around. Next feast I need to take care and take care of myself better, so I don't get too hungry or thirsty.

3) Serving the H.A. room - I had a blast serving this room, and my two servers did a great job with me, but in the end it made me more twitchy than I prefer. I don't like being out front when I cook feast, I like to be in the kitchen and hear reports. I'm glad I did this for the experience, but in the future I will stick to my kitchen!

4) Measuring cups - Soooo much food was so tightly controlled, it'show my portioning worked as well as it did. But that meant I needed TIGHT portion control of ingredients, and the kitchen was lacking severely in various cups. I know for future adventures that I need to bring my own if I am in need of a specific size measuring tool.

5) No solid cleaning plan - Unlike Ocala or other sites, I've never had to worry a great deal about dirt and outdoor mess getting into the kitchen. Not true with this site, the doors and airflow bring in a crap ton of dirt and muck from the outside into the kitchen. I didn't have a plan for dealing with this, so I frequently found myself delayed as I wiped or swept various areas. Need to remember at least every other hour cleaning checks.

Next post I will break down each dish and make a few comments on each.

Feast Thank You's

Any project is composed of multiple parts, and a feast is not just the head cook; dozens of people play a vital role in making a dream become a reality. Before I delve into a full breakdown of my feast I want to take the time and thank many key people in this successful journey.

Three people deserve special mention, for all they helped me make this feast a reality. Kristin picked up a dropped ball at the literal last minute, she helped make my feast hall vision a reality and without her I would not have been such a success. If you appreciated the hall at all, please send her a note of thanks. Andi, my Laurel, of course deserves special mention for all she did for me. From counciling and advise to slapping me silly and keeping me focused, she was the rock I needed. Of course I cannot forget to thank Corey amongst these three, in the kitchen and outside of it he was my right hand in everything i did. He and I had been working towards this project for many months, and he never left my side in the kitchen. I could not have completed this meal without his skilled hand and artistic vision, he deserves much praise.

My sister Ever is a wonderful person as well, she took on the hard job of organizing servers for this and did an amazing job. Molly, Fionnula, Deniese and all the Butterflies did an amazing job helping wherever they could and however they could; I wish I knew everyone's names who I saw lending a hand so I could find them and hug them so very tight. I was overjoyed that my lovely wife Sarah made it from work to spend the day with me and experience feast, that really cheered me. And my lovely family who barreled in to clean my kitchen, Far-Flung is my family and I am proud to be one of theirs as well.

His Majesty continues to surprise me, kudos to him for that, and I was humbled to receive such an honor for my feast. I loved my crowd who all attended the High Authenticity experience, their participation and willingness to go full on board made me smile so much. The event staff who allowed me to chase this dream, those who donated items to decorate the hall and even those who stopped me to make sure I had eaten or had water: thank you so much.

For all the people who helped and I cannot name, thank you for what you did for me and my Dream.

Reflections on an Event: Fall Coronation 2015

Fall Coronation has come and gone once again, the start of our Trimarian new year in many regards, and as always it was an ending of old and beginning of new. In future posts this week I will delve deeper into the feast, but for now an overview of my time.

I had an utter bast all weekend. We started a new site for Kingdom events and I fell in love right away. Long winding paths, deep woods and a beautiful lake adorned the camp and the stars at night were just beautiful to spy while laying in the grass. My only concern is the actual lack of light on site, without a lamp or flashlight of some kind is a must to avoid any pitfalls while traveling. The kitchen is quite lovely, an important feature for me obviously, and the hall is in such a great grid for planning designs. I think this site is going to be a wonderful addition to our Kingdom and well used for years to come.

As always, my personal connections with people changes at this event. Andi and I got to welcome a new person into our household with Jason accepting an apprentice belt, and I felt we really bonded over the weekend even more. My friendship and love for Kristen and the Butterflies continues to grow, many of them going out of their way to be overly kind in ways I could never expect. The Butterflies made me cry in good ways all the time, and I hope to find some way to repay them. I got to spend some quality time with many new SCA friends, deepen my friendship with others and made some brand new friends as we bonded over food!

I was very happy to see my wife recognized with an award in Court, and was quite surprised by my own given to me at the end of feast by the King. Many good friends and good people got well deserved awards and honors, and seeing peoples smiles when given gifts of favors always touches my heart. Seeing such great acts and lovely behavior inspires me, inspires me to be better and improve in the year to come.

The tradition is at new years that you make a "resolution", a promise of a thing you will do in the upcoming year. I feel like this is a thing I should do, and I know I can accomplish this goal because I have friends and family that will support me. My Trimarian new year resolution is that I will become a Gulf Wars Champion with this years Art/Sci entry.

What's yours?

Preparations of a Feast Part 5

So far we've talked about the food culture, what food is being served, its flavor profile and appearance. Today, in my final post before the event, I want to talk about how you the guest should go into my feast to get the best eating experience.

When you sit down, the table will be decorated simply. This is done intentionally, to help you get into the simplistic mindset that the food will be dwelling in. Chopsticks will be provided for each guest, though not required it is highly encouraged that you eat with them to get the best experience. The chopsticks are very important, they will control your portioning as well as keep you eating each bite in the proper method. Japanese food culture evolved around chopsticks, using them will help you best experience this.

On the table before you will be some paper explaining much f what's on the table, and encouraging you to explore it. Once table service has begun, drinks will be served to refresh and prepare the palette for the food that will be consumed. The first course will be served as it would be for the Shogun himself, the dishes will  be announced and one at a time will they be presented. The Shogun (in this case TRM Trimaris) will approve the first course and the dishes will be given to the populous. The dishes can be eaten in any order or combination, each "course" is designed for all the food to be eaten as one, but there is a recommended order to trying them and the servers will bring the dishes in that order. 

With my artistic pieces, the servers will present this dish then read a haiku for the table. This poem pertains to the dish, it is meant to be pondered and considered as it is eaten to better enjoy, or if you wish to abstain then to simply admire the art and think on what the poem means to you. 

Each course will be brought out in such order, until the meal is complete. Take your time, enjoy each bite and relish the flavors as they blend and work within you. Your bites will be small due to the chopsticks, savor each one. Enjoy the work put before you, and let it inspire you and cause you to think of your own art that you endeavor. This is simple pleasures, simple joys of nourishment and companionship. Let the meal slowly ebb and flow into you like the tide, in no hurry and at its own pace.

For those sitting in my special seating, your experience will be quite similar but still has its unique qualities. Beyond the room decoration, each place setting will be provided for you. You will dine on pillows as is tradition, and will be honored guests of the Shogun and thus will be served by the head cook directly. It will be a fun time for everyone!

Thank you for following this progress, and for supporting me in this endeavor. This feast is by far the most complex I've ever done, and it is a labor of love not just by me but my friends and family as well. Expect a recap of the meal after the event.

Preparations for a Feast Part 4

As I said in a previous entry, one of the things I felt the need to touch on was how important the image of the food was to the meal itself. Yes the mood had to taste good, yes the food have to taste CORRECT (which I covered in Part 3); but almost as importantly the food had to LOOK artistic as well. Especially considering the “optional” food dishes, this is a topic I want to discuss in depth here.

    In Japanese high culture, art was the thing. The house was designed with art in mind, the clothing was an art, the weapons and armor had an artistic bent and to that even the food was artistic in nature. It was a sign of high culture, of refinement, that you were able to produce not only a good tasting meal but a good looking one at that. Understanding the artistic styles and applying them to food was an amazing gift that was meant to be shared, this is an aspect I am trying to emulate upcoming feast.

    So let’s talk about that, shall we? The food itself is to be a work of art, so it must look the part. Sauces will be carefully placed, not to smear or dribble about in presentation. Vegetables and fruit will be cut as square and clean as possible, to show off the angles of the cut. Plating will be warm and inviting, food will be arranged to create shapes or images (like my Triskle Chesnut design I’m gonna do) and the colors will be vibrant to stand out against the stark white serving gear. The idea for this artistic display is to heighten the taste of the food and appreciation for the skill of the artisan crafting it. It wasn’t just what was served on, it was the served items themselves.

    Another aspect to this style is food designed for appreciation, not so much for eating. A massive show of wealth, these were dishes that used inedible ingredients for color/shape or were often not that tasty. You were meant to reflect upon the nature of the dish, see what the dish meant to you, perhaps hear a haiku read about such a dish or just appreciate the artistic touch gone into crafting it. I have three such dishes, mine will all be edible because food science has given me a modern edge, and each is unique in its theme. The Pine Cone Tofu will be a baked tofu shaped to look like a pine cone and covered in sweet spices, it is shaped to look like a pine cone before it releases its seeds in promise of new life. The Uji River is designed to resemble the mighty river in the thaws of spring and new beginnings, Udon noodles dyed blue will run along the caramel colored sauce with pieces of Nori carefully placed along the sides to represent the green hills. Lastly is my Blue Sea Soup, a chilled cold soup of fruit juice dyed blue and topped with fresh made whip cream waves (fish shaped mochi topped with red bean paste will be served on the side which go delightfully well with the tasty dessert). 

    These dishes will be something amazing to look at, and I eagerly look forward to sharing them with my guests. This whole feast experience has been amazing, and I want to thank you for following along with me thus far. I have one last post to write before the big day, on how people who eat the food to get the full experience, which will come out soon. Stay tuned!

Preparations of a Feast Part 3

Couple of things before we get into the meat and potatoes of this post:

I recently did a redesign of my blog layout. I wanted it to be easier for everyone to read, I tagged similar posts so you could read specific posts and hopefully made this a better experience for you. Any feedback you have would be appreciated!

I did change my URL for this blog, so if you keep me bookmarked please update with the new URL above!

It’s still a work in progress, and I plan on doing more redesign work in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

*************

In my last post, one of the things I said I wanted to discuss was the flavor profiles of the food for this feast. The food here will be different than what most people with a Western palate are used to dining on, even more so for period food in the SCA. Japan, and other “Eastern” cultures in many extents, had a unique flavoring and seasoning palate for their food. For Japan, especially during the Edo Period, this style of cooking was already well settled into the cultural ideals and thus we have a fantastic view on not just how they viewed food but culture as well.

In French of English cooking, the use of spice and varied cooking techniques was designed to transform the food. Take the steak and vegetables, change the flavor with spice and styles of cooking, adjust and transform. All this is wonderful food, and I have cooked plenty Western styles of dish to a rousing success. But I can’t do that here...that’s not how it was done in Japan. In their style of cooking, the Japanese did not test their culinary art in how they could change the flavor of the dish but how they could accept and highlight the natural flavor of the ingredients and dish. This has been a challenge!

Take for example my Fresh Crane Soup. There are a number of challenges involved with this dish that I had to struggle with, and I want to use this as an example of Japanese flavor profiling. The Japanese viewed crane as a delicacy, something for the upper nobility, and thus this was a carefully crafted dish. The soups of Japan were more like broths, meant to prep the body for a meal and not to be a meal unto itself, so had light flavor and were served warm-to-hot to enhance the flavor. You boil and cook with natural complimenting ingredients so the flavor isn’t lost, and the soup is the lead in of another major dish. Had miso before? That’s another great example.

And thus the challenge begins. Crane is not something viable for me to get in bulk, so I had to substitute for duck (which one document I read says happened regularly as the the flavors were very close in taste). I had to unlearn everything I knew about making soup, just to perfect this dish. Instead of a chunky meal-type dish, I had to minimalize the amount of meat that would be in the soup without sacrificing flavor. To enhance I’m adding mushrooms and light spice to season, these will compliment the taste of the bird as well as enhance the flavor of the soup. I will serve is more on the warm side than the hot, to mellow a bit of the sharpness from one of the ingredients added as it blends best when warmed. The portions will be small, maybe 4/6oz of soup at MAX to not overindulge the flavor onto the guest. This way you are getting the natural, enhanced flavor of the soup expressed how it “should be”. This will be done for every dish.

That’s another thing I feel needs to be discussed with flavor, portion sizes. Along with the correct flavor, the correct AMOUNT of the flavor is also an important thing to take note on. In Western styles of cooking you would pile meats and sauces and vegetables high, you ate larger portions because there would be (on average) less dish options available. In this Japanese style each portion is carefully measured and weighed out to match not just the flavor but its place in the meal. My first course is SEVEN dishes, which means portion sizes will be small and gradually increase in small doses as the meal progresses. What that means is each guest will be given a 4/6oz portion of soup, 2/3 bites of pickle, 2 bird skewers, 3/4 chestnuts, one long and thick chopstick wrap of oolong noodle, etc. Each bite is carefully planned for so by the end of the meal the guest is comfortably full, each flavor is appreciated in kind and no one dish overpowers another. 

On my next post I will be discussing the illusion food aspect that I will attempt with each dish, how important it was to the dining experience and what you can expect to see at the event!

Preparations of a Feast Part 2

So in my last post we did a general overview of what is to be served at 30th year, today we discuss exactly what will be served. My menu for the event is thus:

Main Tray (Course 1)

Furesshukurēnsūpu 

(Fresh Crane soup)

Pikurusu

(Pickles)

Hakumai

(White Rice)

Kushi ni chīsana tori

(Small Birds on Skewers)

Ujigawa

(Uji River)

Kuri

(Chestnuts)

Painkōn tōfu

(Pine cone Tofu)

Second Tray (Course 2)

Fujisan no sarada

(Mt. Fuji salad)

Misoshiru

(Miso soup)

Sashimi

Jā-yaki sunaipu

(Grilled Snipe in Jars)

Edomaesushi

Third Tray (Course 3)

Mochigome

(Sweet rice)

Mikan to anto furūtsu

(Tangerines and Ant Fruit)

Burūshīsūpu

(Blue Sea Soup)

That sure does look like a lot of food, doesn’t it? A proper meal arranged like this does contain many dishes, but portion control is king in this style. One of the things to remember is that the primary eating utensil of the time was chopsticks, so each bite is designed to be properly sized for chopsticks. As well, each person can only eat so much food, and it was rude to snub a dish that was provided for you so culturally at least a bite was required. Over so many dishes, across such a wide variety of food, you would end up eating small amounts of each dish to be full in time for the end of the meal!

So when my guests sit down to dine at 30th year, they will not see mountains and piles of food on a plate but delicate and calculated portions. This is important for each of my guests to understand, so much so that I have created special cue cards for all my servers detailing not just things like ingredients/allergies but also portion sizes. Yes you may only be eating 2-3 pieces of sushi...but after already so much food will you really notice?

Another key detail is talking about some of the food itself. When a Western culture-raised individual thinks of a soup, perhaps you imagine hearty chunks of food and a creamy broth in a full bowl. You’re not wrong, and I’m hungry just thinking about it but that is not the Period Japanese style in terms of soup. A soup for them was light, sometimes savory or sweet, a deep rich broth filled with unique flavor. The soup was not a meal in itself, it was meant to be a part of a meal. With my Fresh Crane Soup for example, there will not be huge chunks of meat floating around to snag; it will be a delicate broth meant to add flavor, heighten anticipation for the next item and compliment the meal. 

Flavor profiles are something huge I also need to discuss, and will in my next post to more detail. Japanese valued a simple style in their art, and food was most definitely an art! You were meant to appreciate and admire the flavor of the white rice, the simple pleasure of melting tuna in edomaesushi, the crisp bite of eggplant or the rich soy flavor in a noodle. These are dishes not heavily spiced, or flavored to change the taste profile; these dishes were meant to be enjoyed as the flavor stood. Light seasoning to enhance the flavor will happen, and there is so much more I need to touch on this that i will on my next post.

In one last example, and another that I’m realizing needs a post all to itself, Japanese food of this period relied heavily on illusion and subtly. The art was not just in how it tastes, but how it looked. This is where things changed dramatically, yes the white rice was supposed to taste like rice but it was also supposed to be sculpted and shaped to look like a swan! Illusion food was such a commonplace that much of the text doesn’t even talk about how you should go out of your way to accomplish this; at the end it offhandedly talks about how you should make the food look. There are even dishes that are served that you are not required, or sometimes not even intended, to eat! The whole purpose of these dishes is to admire, reflect on what they mean to you and let their appearance and beauty enhance your eating experience. I have 3 such dishes in this feast alone; the Uji River, the Mt Fuji salad and the Blue Sea soup (all of which I will be discussing in detail in said next blog post).

What you can take away from this is that the food is going to be art, not just in visual style but in taste. It is my goal to preserve and enhance the natural flavors within each dish, to shape them to be visually pleasing and give my guests a unique dining experience they many not have had before in Trimaris. Portions will be small, but the whole meal will be filing with each bite.

Next time, I will dive deeper into the flavor profiles of my meals. Stay tuned!