Mini-Messisbugo: Theory and Execution

In the week before the dinner, I was compulsively checking my iPhone weather app several times a day to divine whether there would be a significant chance of rain on Saturday. The largest flaw in my dinner plan was the absence of a sheltered area to hold it. (I don't have one of those big ol' honkin' sunshades and I didn't want to ask anyone else to haul one out just for the one meal.) My back-up plan was that if it were raining then the sit-down dinner would convert to an afternoon buffet (also on the theory that rain would make people less willing to hang out at the event after court). But although there was some heavy mist in the morning, and although there was wind to contend with, the weather cooperated otherwise.

As I do, I'd been fidgeting with staging the serving dishes and non-temperature-dependent food supplies for half the afternoon. In the break after the tournament and before court I started setting up the tables and laying out the dishes and decorations that would be present at seating. At this point I also heated the large pot of water with the bagged dishes and set up the smaller pot for cooking the tortellini. During court, I began plating out everything that wasn't heated, poured the wine into pitchers, and generally fidgeted with things (with a small excursion to court to hear Asa's performance piece). This meant that when court was done all I had to deal with was getting the opening entertainment settled (Joan the Harper, playing background music) and briefing the servers on structure and expectations. This was a "lightly served" meal. We did allow the diners to serve themselves after the initial service and each table had only one attendant doing both serving and carving. That allowed time for the servers to eat a little between courses and gave me plenty of breathing space to do the last-minute plating of the hot dishes while the others were clearing the previous course.

A bit on theory. When I'm doing fancy at-tournament dinners -- whether it's just a dinner party for 3 or something this large -- my basic principle is to allow for as few possible delays as humanly possible. All cooking is done in advance. As much plating as possible is done in advance. Nothing should require the washing and reusing of dishes or utensils during the meal itself. It helps that I've been collecting up serving dishes of all sorts for the last 30 years or so. So each course simply involved removing the previous dishes and stacking them out of the way, plating anything hot, and immediately taking the course out to serve. The timing of the courses was based on monitoring the diners. Were they still actively eating the previous course? Was there an involved conversation going on? Or had we come to a natural lull? I didn't time the whole process but I think each course lasting maybe 20 minutes from start to end at most. I could be way off. There were two minor entertainment breaks: one when Joan had to leave and I called the diners attention to her so she could be thanked before packing up, and one for Vittoria to sing (I think between the 2nd and 3rd courses).

Backing up even more on the theory part, given my philosophy of at-tourney dinners, this means that the menu is very carefully designed around dishes that can be made in advance and that -- whenever possible -- can be served cold. So pies are nice, but they have to be ones that are good cold. Roast meat is ok, but only if it will be appealing cold (e.g., chicken, but not so much beef) or if it can be heated in a sauce using boiling bags (as with the pork loin). Things that must be assembled (e.g., salads) should be prepped except for the final combination. In this particular case, the servings for each table were packaged separately for transport/heating so that it was one package per dish.

Ooops, end of my lunch hour. More later.