The Steel Chef Challenge
I had this idea in my head to create an opportunity that would span skill levels and everyone would gain something from it. The plan was to allow people that were new to redacting to approach redacting medieval recipes in a less stressful fashion and for those already comfortable with redacting to give them the opportunity to do so as a group activity so that they would be exposed to different ways of approaching a recipe and perhaps gaining a slightly different POV that would help them. What I decided to do was to hand them three recipes, a bunch of ingredients, split them into teams, and see what they did with it.
I wanted to write out an analysis of what I did so that I can improve on the experience the next time that I do it. There will definitely be a next time - at an event that I’m not cooking.
Successes
I had seven participants that all not only had a good time, they learned something.
The interpretations were extremely good on the recipes that were selected.
The more experienced did lead the less experienced, however, they did guide the choices made in a non-pushy way - which is more about the participants than the competition.
We had two very tasty interpretations.
Everyone was a great sport and despite some of the shortfalls in the structure of the competition itself, they did their absolute best.
Shortfalls
I did not plan as well as I should have because I was focused on preparations for the feast. There were ingredients that were left out because I did not give it the time that it needed as I didn’t really have the time in this context.
This was done with very little structure, which I liked, but the judging structure needs to be more than “Odriana makes a decision”.
Prizes are a plus.
In general, I was happy with the selection of the “Secret Ingredient” (eggs from my chickens) and how the recipes were approached. Everyone had fun with the activity and with some additional planning, I think that it will be even better for the participants the next time.
Also, I can not stress how valuable the cookbook search at Medieval Cookery is for this kind of thing. I was able to shave hours off of the job of selecting the recipes and making sure that they were diverse enough and included somewhat simple recipes.
If you would like to run this kind of challenge, please contact me and let me know how it went. You can use the “Steel Chef Challenge” name as long as you let me know you’re going to do it. If you want to do something similar, please contact me and I would be happy to talk with you.