Introduction
Deciding on a Theme
Selecting Recipes
Costing
Costing Worksheet
Scheduling
The Precook Outline
The Day Of Timeline
Nice Touches
Bibliography
Calontir Cookery Guild

Kateryn de Develyn's Homepage

Scheduling

After deciding on a feast theme and selecting all your recipes, but before setting your feast to print - let's take a look for any timeline or scheduling problems. There are two phases to this: One is the scheduling of your ovens and range tops for the serving of your courses as planned. The other is the scheduling when the recipes are to be made: precooked or day of.

Determining Course/Recipe Scheduling

Step 1: Will the recipe be in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd course?

Step 2: How long does it take to make a recipe? To chill or cook it?

A good way to figure out whether your course/recipes will work as planned is to start with the following:

Figure backwards the time to start preparing each recipe for each course.

For example: Serving the venison roast in the third course. The third course is tentatively scheduled to be served at 7:30. The 18 roasts will take approximately 20 minutes per pound to cook. The roasts are approximately five pounds each. So, we will have to cook each roast for one hour and 40 minutes. But, since we're trying to cook six roasts in each oven, we should allow some extra cooking time - say 20 to 30 minutes. Well, now we've pushed the cooking time up to 2 hours and 10 minutes. And we will want it to "rest" for 10 minutes once it comes out of the ovens. So, we have 2 hours and 20 minutes. We also need to figure the amount of time it will take to mix up the herbs and spices and roll each roast in them before we put them in the ovens. Another 10 minutes.

Two and 1/2 hours of prep and cooking time are needed for this one recipe. We need to start working on the roasts then at 5 o'clock in order to serve them at 7:30. What this also means is that we will be tying up all three ovens (18 roasts / 6 roasts per oven). So, we will not be able to bake or roast anything else for the rest of the third course, or for courses one and two.

This is the point where you need to consider several options open to you:

• Change this recipe to the first course. Of course, if you have carefully researched your recipes and courses and have planned the courses to be historically correct as to what foods were served when during the course of a feast… This will mess that up.
• Consider alternative heating methods: Grills, smokers, crock pots, roasters
• Substitute another recipe which doesn't require oven time or as much oven time.
• Precook the roasts, then slice down into large chunks of meat, and warm up the meat in the ovens. This would mean that you would only need to dedicate the ovens to the roast venison for 45 minutes to an hour. But you have to decide when you are going to precook the meat. At someone's home? Or earlier in the day on site? Where do you store the meat while it is waiting to be precooked?

Do Step 2 for every single recipe you are going to be serving that day.

Step 3: Figure out if you have potential scheduling problems with the ovens and range-tops.

• You can't put everything in the oven at once.
• You can't have everything on the range-top at once.
• You may need to think about alternative sources for heating things: Grills, smokers, crock pots and roasters to extend your ovens.

Step 4: Figure out which foods can be served cold, cool, warm, and hot. The hot foods get first priority in scheduling. Warm foods get the next highest priority.

Step 5: Now that you have figured out what needs to be served when, and you have determined how to keep the hot foods hot and the cold foods cold. You need to build your detailed timeline.

Remember: A good timeline helps reduce the number of decisions you have to make the day of the feast.

A good timeline allows you to recover from disasters faster. Because if you are following it, you know what has been done, and what still has to be done.

Spell out that timeline by writing it down on paper. Allocating how much time has to be spent when in order to get the meal out on time really helps you to spot and solve problems before they occur. Things like pie crusts can be made early in the day. The meat for the meat pies can be chopped into bite-sized pieces and mixed with their spices and stored in a cooler until it is time to put them into the pie crusts and bake. It helps to define those things which can't be changed - like how long it takes to cook a pound of meat. And which things can be moved around at will - mixing and measuring the spices needed for the sauces. The premixed and pre-measured spices can be stored in a labeled baggie, or other container until you are ready to make the sauce. All of this should be listed explicitly in the timeline. As well as instructions on how to arrange the food on the platters. This way, you don't need to worry about making decisions at the last minute, and your helpers will know what to do when after reading the timeline.

Be sure to build in slack time. You will need slack time so your helpers can take breaks without interrupting the schedule. You will need slack time for when problems arise, you have the time already built into the schedule to recover and go on without affecting the scheduled serving times.

NOTE: Make up the timelines early. Make sure a separate copy or two of the timeline as well as the recipes go to the site in a different vehicle as yours. If you have an accident on the way to the site - the feast can still go on as you planned.

Remember

• Can't put everything in the oven at once.
• Can't have everything on the stove top at once.
• Think about alternative sources for heating things. Grills, smokers, crock pots and roasters to extend your ovens.
• Build in "slop/slack" time.

Precooks

One of the first things you need to do after all the recipes have been selected, is decide if you are going to do any precooking or prepare ahead some of the ingredients/recipes. A precook may be as simple as peeling/paring carrots and slicing them into coins, to elaborate preparation making use of Seal-A-Meal bags and freezers.

So, sit down and look at your recipes. And start asking yourself the following questions about each recipe:

• Which ones can be made ahead?
• Do you have the storage space for the items made ahead of time? It does not good at all to precook three weeks in advance if you don't have the freezer or refrigerator space to store the item. Do you mind having no refrigerator or freezer space left for yourself and your family? How many friends will loan you room in their refrigerators and freezers for the necessary storage?
• How will you store it if you make this item ahead of time? Do you have enough containers? Large enough seal-a-meal bags?
• How will storage affect the taste and texture of the recipe? Freezing some foods makes them mushy when they are defrosted. Bread made too far in advance and not frozen will develop mold. Storing in a refrigerator or freezer may dry out the bread. Some recipes depend on the subtle flavoring of spices for their success. Making foods ahead, allows the seasoning to blend together - and this may destroy the success of the dish. It will be edible, but people will not rave about it. The opposite may be true with some recipes as some seasonings improve with time - like chili always tasting better when it has been reheated the next day.
• Determine what is to be made fresh the day of the feast. Many head-cooks make everything from scratch the day of the feast. But, you should consider those recipes which absolutely cannot be made in advance. Recipes where the subtle blend of flavors would be lost if made ahead. Or the texture would not be preserved.
• You need to consider making some things on-site, because the aroma of cooking foods helps to stimulate the appetite of the feaster.