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Mise á deux
Jan. 21st, 2008 11:13 pm(If that title is ungrammatical, pardon my French!)
Since the brain is still just burbling on from this weekend, here are yet a few more thoughts resulting from Midwinter's.
Here's a couple of useful concepts which come to my mind about doing SCA feasts, which I only recently learned names for:
1. Mise en place - literally "put in place" or "set in place". This is a chef term I learned from Anthony Bourdain's fascinating and entertaining book "Kitchen Confidential" (in US kitchen slang it's shortened to mise, prounounced "meez"). It means everything in place to cook the recipes for the occasion--"the prepared ingredients, such as cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, spices, freshly chopped vegetables, and other components that a cook requires for the menu items that they expect to prepare during their shift. Ingredients are measured out, washed, chopped and placed in individual bowls. Equipment is gathered, ovens are preheated. Preparing the mise en place ahead of time allows the chef to cook without having to stop and assemble items, which is desirable in recipes with time constraints. Also refers to the preparation and layouts that are set up and used by line cooks at their stations in a commercial or restaurant kitchen." (Wikipedia)
One of the big shifts from home and other small-scale cooking to SCA feasts (and, of course, professional cooking) is that at that scale and that pace you simply do not have time to get halfway into a recipe and only then realize you need 2 tablespoons of freshly ground coriander, or two pounds of washed, sliced mushrooms. Part of the mental preparation for a feast is thinking through and identifying ANYTHING, any stage, any step, that you can possibly do in advance (whether months, day, or hours) of the actual cooking. In the process you also identify which of those steps can possibly be done by other, potentially less skilled people, so that you can focus on the stuff that you alone can do, whether because of skill or simply because you know what you have in mind. It's a process that becomes fairly obvious and instinctive as cooks get more experienced, but isn't always obvious earlier on, and it's useful to have an encompassing term for it.
2. Mise en scene - lit. "put on stage". This is a bigger one. Variously defined, but generally it's a film/ theater term that refers to everything that appears before the camera/ on the stage and its arrangement – sets, props, actors, costumes, lighting, and blocking (the positioning and movement of actors on the set). I learned the term, or at least grokked it, within the last 4 or so years of doing theater, and found it a useful label for a concept I'd had for a long time. I'm coming to recognize it as one of my most prized and desired elements in the SCA, something I seek to experience and am good at helping to create. To me it's about the totality of an experience. All experience is constructed, but the SCA gives us rare and interesting opportunities to construct an environment that is temporary, transitory, and in some ways imaginary, yet physically and emotionally real. So when I cook a feast, I don't just want to cook good food, though that is part of it. I want to create an experience, an environment, a reality. I want the participants (and they are that, not spectators) to taste and see and hear and feel and smell all the aspects of this experience. My favorite events and my favorite moments in the SCA are when all these elements were in place through skill and effort and luck, when all senses were engaged in synaesthetic fullness. The music, the banners, the scents, the food, the people, the movements, the light. Syzygy, synergy. That's what it's about.
Since the brain is still just burbling on from this weekend, here are yet a few more thoughts resulting from Midwinter's.
Here's a couple of useful concepts which come to my mind about doing SCA feasts, which I only recently learned names for:
1. Mise en place - literally "put in place" or "set in place". This is a chef term I learned from Anthony Bourdain's fascinating and entertaining book "Kitchen Confidential" (in US kitchen slang it's shortened to mise, prounounced "meez"). It means everything in place to cook the recipes for the occasion--"the prepared ingredients, such as cuts of meat, relishes, sauces, spices, freshly chopped vegetables, and other components that a cook requires for the menu items that they expect to prepare during their shift. Ingredients are measured out, washed, chopped and placed in individual bowls. Equipment is gathered, ovens are preheated. Preparing the mise en place ahead of time allows the chef to cook without having to stop and assemble items, which is desirable in recipes with time constraints. Also refers to the preparation and layouts that are set up and used by line cooks at their stations in a commercial or restaurant kitchen." (Wikipedia)
One of the big shifts from home and other small-scale cooking to SCA feasts (and, of course, professional cooking) is that at that scale and that pace you simply do not have time to get halfway into a recipe and only then realize you need 2 tablespoons of freshly ground coriander, or two pounds of washed, sliced mushrooms. Part of the mental preparation for a feast is thinking through and identifying ANYTHING, any stage, any step, that you can possibly do in advance (whether months, day, or hours) of the actual cooking. In the process you also identify which of those steps can possibly be done by other, potentially less skilled people, so that you can focus on the stuff that you alone can do, whether because of skill or simply because you know what you have in mind. It's a process that becomes fairly obvious and instinctive as cooks get more experienced, but isn't always obvious earlier on, and it's useful to have an encompassing term for it.
2. Mise en scene - lit. "put on stage". This is a bigger one. Variously defined, but generally it's a film/ theater term that refers to everything that appears before the camera/ on the stage and its arrangement – sets, props, actors, costumes, lighting, and blocking (the positioning and movement of actors on the set). I learned the term, or at least grokked it, within the last 4 or so years of doing theater, and found it a useful label for a concept I'd had for a long time. I'm coming to recognize it as one of my most prized and desired elements in the SCA, something I seek to experience and am good at helping to create. To me it's about the totality of an experience. All experience is constructed, but the SCA gives us rare and interesting opportunities to construct an environment that is temporary, transitory, and in some ways imaginary, yet physically and emotionally real. So when I cook a feast, I don't just want to cook good food, though that is part of it. I want to create an experience, an environment, a reality. I want the participants (and they are that, not spectators) to taste and see and hear and feel and smell all the aspects of this experience. My favorite events and my favorite moments in the SCA are when all these elements were in place through skill and effort and luck, when all senses were engaged in synaesthetic fullness. The music, the banners, the scents, the food, the people, the movements, the light. Syzygy, synergy. That's what it's about.
