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Cst-Iron-Chef-art - 9/17/19

"Cast Iron Chef 2019" by THL Dagonell Collingwood.

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NOTICE -

This article was added to this set of files, called Stefan's Florilegium, with the permission of the author.

These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

While the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.

Thank you,

Mark S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous

stefan at florilegium.org

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You can also find more work by this author on his webpage at:

http://www-cs.canisius.edu/~salley/SCA/

You can find photographs of this event at:

https://www.facebook.com/david.salley.50/media_set?set=a.10216827376779942&type=3

Cast Iron Chef 2019

by THL Dagonell Collingwood

I'm always open for adventure, so when the World's Greatest Labor Day party was cancelled this year, I decided to enter Delftwood's Cast Iron Chef. I had a blast. It's a medieval cooking contest, loosely based on the Iron Chef TV show.

Bring all the equipment you want, but no food. Compete for ingredients, put together a five dish (or more!) medieval style feast and present it to the judges as attractively as possible. All cooking is done over a campfire. Teams consist of an archer, a cook and a sous-chef. I asked Lady Simonetta d'Alfassi of Rhydderich Hael (Buffalo, NY) to be my archer. Lady Magdelena Txoperena de Guerra, from Nithgaard (State College PA), wanted to join a team, so she volunteered to be my sous-chef on the day of the event.

I brought my feast gear, two iron pots, two iron pans, some wooden spoons, some knives, and all the BBQ gear I could get my hands on, figuring it would be enough. I thought I had to make one dish, not an entire feast. Next year, I will be bringing even more. :)

Saturday was an extremely busy day, as it was the Seven Pearls tournament, where all champions from all seven baronies compete in armored combat, fencing, archery, thrown weapons, arts and sciences and bardic contests. Lady Simonetta is head retainer for Their Excellencies Padraig and Juliana of the Rhydderich Hael, so I volunteered to be assistant retainer so she'd have time to shoot for me. I got to see most of the competitions. The armored combat and fencing looked like any other armored combat and fencing with opponents facing off against each other. It wasn't until the archery competition occurred that it drove home the point (no pun intended) that these were all champions. No arrow missed the target, a thing that normally happens in a regular archery competition.

Lady Simonetta went off to do the woods walk, where the archers "hunt" for meat for the Cast Iron Chef competition. I learned later how well she did. Her very first arrow was a clean kill on a deer target. I had a venison roast to play with. Later during the hunt, she scored again and I had wild boar (pork tenderloin) for my feast. Vivat!

When the competition began Sunday morning, they announced how the archers had done and we were leisurely allowed to select our meats based on their performance. It was the last leisurely thing we did that day. If an archer's team failed to score, the team got a chicken to work with. Each team got a large selection of spices to start with. These collections would have served as a prize in any other cooking contest I've been involved with. The next phase of the competition was a selection of goods from the pantry. Each chef was given a basket to hold their selection. Remember the game show Supermarket Sweep? We had one minute to gather supplies. I grabbed a second basket from my gear. I had planned to use it as part of the decoration. The judges conferred briefly and decided that since any non-modern equipment was acceptable, the extra basket was allowed. This was an enormous help to me. The starting gun (a orchestra triangle!) sounded and we raced thru the pantry. I made it out within the time-limit, so no penalties were applied.

We returned to our tables and started cooking. We decided the venison needed to start cooking immediately, the pork should wait until the final hour, and the veggies dishes could be cooked as time permitted, put aside and re-heated just before plating. Lady Maggie took the roast and iron ware and went to the fire to braise the meat while I started peeling and chopping root veggies. The fire was enormous. A 10' by 40' pit had been dug and once the main fire was going, it was separated into multiple campfires. Firewood was brought to the pit by a pay loader... twice! At one point, Lady Maggie was tending three different pots simultaneously, the venison, the pork, and a huge cauldron of rice pudding. All three were eventually cooked to perfection.

At the halfway mark, the sous-chefs were sent to pantry with a thirty second time limit. We had been making a mental list of things it would be nice to get if there was a second chance at the pantry, so the shorter time limit wasn't a major problem since we knew what we wanted and what the pantry had. Lady Maggie took the two baskets and made it out with five seconds to spare. When the judges called time, she called out "I will barter for honey!" The judges decided this was again legit, so there was frantic trading among all the teams sous-chefs. She got half a jar of honey for half a carton of eggs! Well done!

In the final half hour, we changed tactics. The venison and rice pudding were declared finished, the pork remained on the fire to cook, and Lady Maggie started baking the flat bread dough I had put together in my copious spare time. :) I started clearing the table, washing it down and laying out my feast gear and plating the food for presentation. My banner hung behind me and the center piece was the main charge on my banner. We finished everything with about five minutes to spare!

We had been told the theme was Food and Friendship. We decide to elaborate on the theme and welcomed the judges to Sherwood Forest where Master Loxley had ordered a feast to celebrate the safe return of Richard Lionheart to England, thus justifying our use of English style cooking with Middle Eastern spices. Our dishes were Flat bread (flour, water, canola oil) with a Ricotta dip (ricotta cheese, honey, lavender and figs for garnish), Venison Roast with Forest roots (venison, carrots, onions, turnips, ME spices) Wild boar (pork tenderloin washed in buttermilk and breaded, apples, onions, celery, ME spices), Armored turnips (turnips, cheese, butter), and Rice pudding for dessert (rice, buttermilk, apple bits and cinnamon) The venison and pork were perfect, cooked thru to the center without charring the outside. Even the rice pudding was perfectly done. Lady Maggie is a wizard at the campfire!

After the judging was finished, the camp was opened to the populace. (And I was wondering what we were going to do with all the leftovers, hah!) Results were announced in baronial court later that evening and we were given the judges score sheets afterward. We finished 1.6 points behind first place, however, we won Baron's choice for our venison roast. The judges dinged us for my long hair being under a cap instead of a hairnet :(, the breaded pork struck two of them as too modern (Discussion is currently going on the SCA Cooks FB page, it's late period, but period), one judge felt we weren't heavy handed enough with the spices, and the armored turnips were a little overcooked (guilty! :( )

It was one of the most intense competitions I've ever been in, my team mates are wonderful, I had a helluva lot of fun and I'm planning to do it again next year! Photos below courtesy of JJ Art and Photography, official photographer for Cast Iron Chef! Additional photos of the competition available at:

https://www.facebook.com/JjArtAndPhotography/

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Copyright 2019 by David P. Salley. <dagonell at hotmail.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.