Goetia food

“Food is a way to involve another sense into a full body larp experience.”

From “Food for Thought: Narrative Through Food at Larps”, by Rosalind Göthberg and Siri Sandquist

I don’t cook for a larp often. I used to run a restaurant, so I know how hard professionals work. Then maybe once every couple of years something crops up that I really do want to do. In 2015, that was Crooked House‘s God Rest Ye Merry, in 2017 it was Strange LRP and earlier this year – the UK run of Katrine Wind’s Daemon. It’s always on the model that Göthberg and Sandquist advocate. It’s not just feeding people, it’s stitching food into the narrative of the event. Victory is when the food shows up in the stories they tell about the events afterwards.

Last weekend, it was catering for omenstar’s Goetia.

Design

“Act Three starts at nightfall with a banquet. The feast represents the harvest of sin brought to the halls of hell by the fallen angels.”

A description of the Grand Finale of Goetia, from the Omen star website

Everyone designs. I was designing a menu to symbolise sin. It wasn’t a huge leap of imagination to conclude it had to have seven courses; one for each of the seven deadly sins. Design is about constraints. It had to be feasible to deliver for 70, in the fairly good kitchen at Ingestre Hall. I can’t remember if it were omenstar or I who decided it was going to be vegan, but I was perfectly happy with that too.

This is how it started.

In April, I hammered a few ideas down and asked for feedback: “Feel free to reorder, re-think, although – I think Envy works, and Greed, Lust and Anger are Ok with tweaking.”

Envy – green pea soup, spring onion oil, with every 3rd bowl topped with crispy onions, every 4th with thinned oat yoghurt cut with roast garlic, and every 6th bowl a half portion in size.

Sloth –  a salad of dressed leaves and seeds.

Greed – A big platter of roasted saffron onions, chickpeas, yellow courgettes and squash, on a literal mound of couscous, gold leaf, roast almond flakes, tahini and oat yoghurt dressing – served to “share.”

Pride – a “boiled egg” – a blown egg shell, filled with lemon sorbet and a mango sorbet “yolk”.

Lust –  watermelon, macerated strawberries, cherries, black pepper and chilli dressing, scorpion.

Anger –  sticky glazed tofu, roast beetroot, horseradish.

Gluttony –  drinking custard, maderia if liked.

Turns out I was right about Envy and Greed, was lasted pretty much unaltered. Everything else changed. Sloth was always the problem – that salad was a rubbish idea, and even the final concept was the weakest of the menu. That first iteration of Pride didn’t last because egg shells aren’t vegan. Nor are scorpions, and I couldn’t find a decent substitute. I gave up on that Anger idea because I couldn’t work out how to scale delivering sticky glazed tofu without risk of burning sugar onto baking trays. I kinda liked that Gluttony, but in the end it’d have been too much custard.

Iteration and test

I got some excellent feedback, and changed a bunch of things. The scoping document is here – I like to see how ideas changed in the version history.

Two weeks before the event, I did a dummy run for 8, as a birthday meal with the final menu, and that worked. I cooked on my own, and it was perfectly deliverable on that scale. The menu itself didn’t need major surgery.

After that, it was a matter of multiplying quantities up, and then making lists. Sorting them (Thanks Google Sheets!) gave me shopping lists.

It got a bit more complex when my second chef got an important medical appointment; and I knew I’d need to get more prepared ahead of time. I started prepping at home; got three time-consuming jobs done and frozen before the event weekend. I did a bit of prep on Friday night – not as much as I wanted, Tesco didn’t deliver until Saturday morning. I had a word and the Dutch crew wondered if this was the famous English “Passive Aggression”.

It was.

Where it finished: banquet delivered

Prep started at 6am, cooking was mostly done by 4, and mis en place finished by 5 in time for a meeting of the crew involved in service. Sarah Cook was in charge of eight out front, with three of us in the kitchen. Gloriously, I got to announce (near) every course, with a combination of short description of the food and a bit of welcoming blather. The word for every course cued in lighting and sound effects, and every course got a cheer.

It was quite an experience. Shouting “Brigade!” to a line of staff, and getting a crisp “Yes, chef!” back. Responding with “Service!” and seeing them snap into action under Sarah Cook’s leadership. We’d been talking about a larp of The Menu. I don’t feel the need for that experience so much any more.

Seven courses.

Envy

“A green pea soup”

This was David Proctor’s recipe: a puree of peas, onions, roast garlic and thyme and vegan stock. It’s so simple, so quick and built for mass catering. We plated in the hall. To hit the theme every 2nd bowl was topped with spring onion oil, every 3rd with thinned oat yoghurt cut with roast garlic, every 4th bowl was a double portion in size, and every 5th was served cold.

The idea here – it’s green, and there was plenty of variation to be jealous of. I was a little busy to pay much attention, but really did seem to land. Folk noticed the difference. People wanted other people’s serving style.

Everyone was envious of our elegant delicious and fitting dish

From the duke of Envy

Wrath

“A ‘tagine’ of puffed tofu. A line of chilli sauce.”

Puffed tofu was relatively new to me; I think I caught this on Saturday Kitchen recently? This was going to be glazed with oriental flavours on a suggestion from Lu Dunraven; but I was terrified of cremating it. I went for braise in the end; and once I’d got solid on North Africa with couscous – well, I do like a tagine. It was loosely, very loosely, based on this recipe. No veggies, apricots not dates, essentially making a sauce, which I then marinaded a stack of puffed tofu in, and braised off for service. It was plated in the hall, with Sarah Cook’s fearsome organisational skills keeping plates moving.

Hot like anger, right? That was the idea.

Sloth

“A roast hispi cabbage, served with roast tomato sauce, caraway ‘mayo’, chives and roasted sunflower seeds. Your plates will not be cleared.”

Sloth took ages to sort. I was going to riff on a recipe from Xo kitchen for roast cabbage and black bean sauce, but lost my nerve. Yotam ottolenghi came to the rescue with this. On the test-run, I griddled all the cabbage and got beautiful char lines, but there wasn’t time at the event. It blackened in the oven, then sat in the warming cupboard, and came to no harm. An extremely obliging dish. It went out plated, with what I guess some would call a “rustic” presentation. I loved it.

This was the weakest link to the brief; it was simply the plates being left, but it got a laugh.

…you may think Sloth was the least brief appropriate dish. I maintain my stance that “decide after griddling four quarters of cabbage we haven’t got the time, let’s throw them in the oven, oh shit, I forgot they are still in there” is a perfect backstage representation of the sin.

Demi-chef

Greed

“A platter of roasted saffron onions, butternut squash and yellow peppers, in a literal mound of couscous, dukkah, tahini and oat yoghurt dressing, pomegranate seeds, and gold leaf – served to “share.”

One thing I’ve found, when mass catering: don’t fry. You’ve not got the time to give it your full attention, and you’ll burn it. We cubed a lot of squash and peppers, sliced a stack of onions, and roasted it all first thing Saturday morning. A bit of saffron steeped in hot water, and the onions went a beautiful yellow. Mixed it all in with 4kg couscous, and it definitely made a mountain. I overcatered on this. The dukkah recipe was something like this – Jolanda made it, and it was so good. That went on top – except for one platter, for those who didn’t do seeds. Another platter we made up with rice not couscous, for gluten-free diets. Then pomegranate seeds like jewels, a splash of yoghurt dressing and gold leaf.

It was all very gold, and folk could be as greedy as they wanted with it.

Gluttony

“A green tea, dressed with mint leaves”

Sarah’s plan was to garnish tea cups in the hall, place one in front of each guest, then fill from teapts of tea. Made the whole thing flow. It’s worth mentioning “Clearance!” too – her barked order for the staff to clear a table. A pleasure to watch.

A simple tea felt right at this stage, and the joke worked.

Superb banquet! The Court of Gluttony in the Third Circle was well pleased!

From the Court of Gluttony

Pride

“A trifle” – announced by demi-chef, demon of sloth.

This was the great betrayal.

Trifle has such resonance as a food and we brutally subverted all that with a savoury version.

I’m very proud of it.

The base is a tomato consomme like this one – but made with Henderson’s Relish so it’s vegan and gluten-free – made into a jelly and layered with croutons and sun-dried tomatoes. Then a cheeze custard layer, made with Applewood smoked block, almond milk and nutritional yeast. Finally, an oat yoghurt cut with mustard, and flaked almonds dry-fried in smoked paprika. Bowls went out first, then a trifle for each table.

It looks like a trifle. It was announced as a trifle. It does not taste like a trifle. I’d cooked it twice before, and I genuinely like it. Others, particularly those who are expecting an actual trifle, differ.

Sometimes you need to swallow your pride. Sometimes pride comes before a fall.

I’m very grateful to Ork De Rooij for catching a player’s reaction so perfectly, and to them for the most perfect triptych of expressions.

I was IC furious about the trifle, but OC giggling hysterically!

From the King of Pride

“That is NOT what I want when you say trifle, and I am LIVID.

A Marquis of Wrath, on the way to becoming a Prince of Avarice

Lust

“Lychees poached in grenadine syrup and pink peppercorns. Margarita sorbet. Rose petals.“

This started as an idea of Dominic Zeal’s – a vegan oyster. It got twisted, made a lot sweeter and finally served warm with sorbet. It was plated in the kitchen dining room, on a ceramic dish, and brought through on trays.

It was sweet, it was sour, it was plated symbolically. It was a final flourish.

Thank you

“nothing short of astonishing”

Actual feedback

Then there was the food after a menu created by Harry Harrold based upon the seven deadly sins. I rarely photograph players eating food, it is one of those moments where people often are self-conscious – but here the the food and food service was a star player.

Kai Simon Fredriksen, phtographer

Credit is totally due to Jolanda, who actually fed the whole event for two days pretty much on their own and was central to getting the feast out. To Ollie who actually was the sous he claimed to be, and sliced 6.5kg of onions after observing that frozen pre-sliced onions were a thing that could be bought. To Sarah for improving all the recipes with sharp feedback – apart from David Proctor‘s green pea soup, which was as he gave it me. To Amanda Greenway Harrold who put up with a dummy run of the whole thing for her ‘birthday treat meal’. To Ork De Rooij who did music and sound so when I announced each course – it had its own custom theme music and the hall was bathed in a specific light. Unbelievable. And to Rebel for trust and simply letting me get on with it.

That was one Hell of a banquet 

Actual feedback

I was very proud of the whole thing.