 |
|
 |
VARIETIES OF BARBECUE - COOKING IN A PIT - HOTPLATES - FLOW OF FOOD JOBS - SIGNS
Our policy has been to provide good quality food at reasonable prices and have this cooked over open fires and barbecues. We believe this provides the necessary atmosphere and that the high quality of food will mean people will return for more both this time and in the future.
A great deal has been written about barbecues, which is odd considering what essentially simple things they are. What could be simpler than lighting a fire and burning some meat over it? It's precisely that simplicity which can lead to burgers like cinders and exploded sausages.
Firstly
let's say that anyone can produce a burger at home without too many disasters.
But what we're looking at here is something different. For a start you
may be cooking 500 - 1000 burgers and sausages in a continuous flow but
with peaks and troughs of demand. Try to attain a constant flow of food
rather than feast or famine. As demand decreases you must judge whether
that's a permanent falling away or a temporary hiccup and your judgement
will be used to slow or speed up the number of pieces of meat going on
to cook. If you make an error one way you'll have a pile of meat which
no-one wants and which in ten minutes will be too dry or burnt; the other
way you'll have a queue of customers waiting for food and wondering why
you can't do a simple thing like cook a burger in time.
It's worth adding here that a bain marie (essentially a lidded tray kept over hot water) helps to stop food drying out. To prevent burning make sure there's a perforated plate or some rows of piping to keep the bottom of the food tray from the bottom of the hot water tray. The hot water tray can be heated from below by a small gas burner.
One of the answers is to use foil tins over hot plates, another is to be brave enough to throw away any food which isn't up to standard. The best is possibly to use a barbecue systematically: my favourite plan is, using a two-tiered barbecue, starting at the bottom left to add the uncooked sausages then slowly rolling them over every few minutes so they all move to the right until they are elevated to the top layer when they move left until ready to be removed. A big range of barbecues is available from specialists such as the bbq.co.uk here in the UK.
Jock (above) is posing by a gas barbecue fuelled by butane and behind him is a second, similar machine. It has 2 cooking racks, a lid to retain heat and moisture, whells for moving it around and is quite manoueverable. It is great for our Feast breakfast and for supplementary burgers and sausages, but could not sustain a whole day's cooking for large numbers of people. For that, consider a large multi-burner industrial sized gas bbq or a charcoal fuelled half drum.
Barbecues tend to have hot spots however well you rake over the coals and this should be used to your advantage to speed up or retard cooking. Sometimes this is also true of gas barbecues, though they should cook evenly. Don't forget to clean out the fat tray after use. We have had a gas barbecue burst into flames because the drip tray caught alight.
Home Barbecue Tips
- Use the woody stalks of herbs - rosemary, bay, thyme - or eucalyptus (gum tree) leaves to add flavour placed over coals.
- Use tongs for turning steaks chops and sausages - if you stick them with a fork you'll lose the juices
- If you're using wooden skewers for kebabs or to link sausages together, soak them well before use
- Always allow sufficient time for your barbecue to heat up before cooking - for charcoal wait until the fuel is covered in a light white/grey ash
- Cover and store raw and cooked foods separately
- Cook burgers for 4-6 minutes each side; sausages 12 minutes in total. Juices should run clear before serving. remember burgers need more cooking than steaks because the bug-laden outer is now mixed in and burgers must be cooked thoroughly - they are not like rare steak even if they were made of it!
- If you're short of time, want to ensure everything is cooked through or the rain curtails your barbecue, remember this food is ideal for grilling, and use your home cooker grill. It's a cheat, but it's safe!
Barbecues
have different requirements depending on how they are fuelled, how many
racks they have, how adjustable they are and how big they are. I have
successfully cooked fish and crab fresh from the sea on a fire on a pebble
beach fuelled with drift wood - but that wouldn't help to feed the five
thousand at your Feast any more than a small hibachi or a pressed tin
tray.
We generally prefer charcoal for its flavour, but gas fuelled machines are much more responsive, heating up in a fraction of the time and frequently having a lid to retain heat and improve cooking. There are so many different models of barbecue that it's pointless to describe them all, but the simplest metal frame or half barrel is perfectly satisfactory for most things.
The Altar barbecue on the left has a hinged rack over a fire tray and a hot plate to the right. The metal mesh below stores wood or charcoal but mainly strengthens the legs. This would feed a dozen people at a time
A good balance may be had by having the spit roast plus two half barrels supported by a gas barbecue and a hot plate. Smaller Feasts will need less and can manage on perhaps one half barrel and one gas barbecue. The balance between the two types provides the area of throughput needed by large numbers of customers plus the flexibility of the smaller faster gas machine whose heat can be varied in response to demand.
Most of my barbecuing pals who work all day at cooking find a large gas barbecue like the one below much more adaptable and easier to work with than charcoal. I personally prefer charcoal for taste.
 |
 |
These two commercial gas barbecues, by Cinders, cost £1700 and £4500 respectively, though they can be hired by the day for a relatively modest sum.
If you were to design a charcoal barbecue for the specific purpose of a Feast like ours I think I'd have:
- a half barrel
- a sturdy frame to support it plus a couple of hooks to hang the utensils on
- a low level grill to hold the coals and let the ashes fall through
- a medium level grill or hot plate for the main cooking, but divided in two to enable access to the coals
- a small high grill for warming.
A Feast I saw in Cortona in Italy, used a low wall built in a square over which were laid eight metal grills about 5 feet by 3 feet square. Each grill had handles on the outside and hinges on the inside and each square frame had metal rods across its top and bottom surfaces like a set of double barred prison windows. The beef steaks were laid on the top, charcoal between the two layers and the ash fell below into the space created by the low walls. Here's a picture of it. Note the small arches in the walls to rake the ash out and to create a flow of air for the coals.
The amazing thing for me was that the next day it had all been cleared away - the wall had been demolished and the ashes removed.
It is thought that the two-day Feast at Cortona, called the "sagra", came about first as a commemoration of Mary's Feast Day, celebrated in Antioch in 370 AD.
The same grills are used later in the year for the town's feast for the autumn "porcini" or mushrooms for which Cortona claims the world's biggest frying pan.
Maybe not a perfect alternative to the barbecue, but worth considering for some situation, cooking in a pit is a traditional cooking method in Indonesia and Polynesia. The Polynesian Omai, brought to England by Captain James Cook in the 17th century, cooked a lamb in such a pit for the Earl of Sandwich, with great success. In Hawaii it is called luau, a feast of a pig baked in a pit. Maoris call it a Hangi. It certainly works without fireproof pots and rotating mechanisms and is ideal for a beach where digging is easy.
Essentially you wrap the food in an insulating material and bury it in a pit in which stones have been made hot from a previous fire. It is a slow process but produces a well cooked moist meat.
Dig a hole 2-3 times the volume of the meat you intend to cook. Line the bottom and sides with large stones. Build a big wood fire over the stones and let it burn for a couple of hours until the stones glow white.
Rub spices into the meat and wrap it tightly in greaseproof paper, damp newspaper, then aluminium foil until it is sealed. Wrap in chicken wire to make it easier to remaove the meat from the fire later.
Cover the pit with turf, boards or sand to keep the heat in and leave for several hours. Suggested cooking times, necessarily vague, are 5 hours for a chicken, 7 hours for a leg of lamb and 12 hours for a 20kg carcass. Drink beer while you wait ... then use a meat thermometer to check it's fully cooked.
Hotplates are also useful for keeping food constantly warm (see Food Hygiene) while not taking up valuable cooking space. A piece of stainless steel over a bed of hot ashes will do this simply and foil bowls with lids will help too. Better even than that is the "bain marie" - a container full of boiling water in which trays of meat can sit without burning. A gas flame below and a lid above should keep food piping hot and moist.
This is essential if you are to make best use of your hardworking helpers. You can miss this out the first year because soon enough you'll have critical path analysis carried out for you, loudly, by the ever-increasing line of customers waiting for their sausages. It will start "I don't know why they don't..." and by the time you've heard it a few times you'll be wondering too.
 |
 |
Two views of the Feast food tent
from the back. Food is assembled (foreground, see bain marie and
cut rolls),collected by the servers (centre) and given to customers
(background). Separate people collect money at two tills and call
out the order. Salad and relish are laid out for self service. 8-10
people working at any time. See food flow diagram below.
|
|
 |
 |
At the side of the food tent nearest the spit
roast the meat is cut into portions and kept warm in the bain marie. |
A smaller marquee is used for nights where there
is less demand for food. 4 or 5 people can cope. |
Try out these tips:
- Keep money separate from serving of food (it's part of health & hygiene and it's easier to organise too)
- Keep the making up of the food separate from the serving of it to customers
- Keep the cooking and the carving separate from the making up
- Have as many queues as there are servers (though the queue may be a single one at an earlier point)
- Have as many servers as possible
- Let the customers serve themselves salad and garnish but spread out the lines of salad and sauces so customers don't hold up the queue.
If you do this you can design a flow of food which [see diagram below and photographs above] moves from cooking in several places, towards making up into units with a roll, onions and salad if you prefer to do that, then to servers who simply pick up the required units and give them to customers who have already paid.
Refinements
There are refinements to this pattern, which can require at least a dozen people. You may manage without someone making up the units if you self-serve salad and onions. If you prefer that then the servers will be working extra hard and the lack of a buffer zone can put more pressure on the cooks. Try a hotplate as a buffer and put one of the servers part time in charge of that. We use an excellent big bain marie in which there are four trays - one for each meat variety - and it's kept warm from below by continuously heated hot water. With the lid on or only partly removed for access the steam helps the meat to keep moist. We can store cut meat for hours in good condition.
Cooking burgers and sausages separately is usually easier as they have different cooking requirements.
Food Zones
As well as a hot zone, remember a cool zone. Salad should be kept cool and at least in the shade as long as possible. Salad also needs preparation in cutting up and keeping the bowls topped up. If you feel that background tasks such as cutting salad, rolls, pittas or whatever are better carried out in a cool place remember that someone has to transfer them to the serving zone on demand. Polystyrene cool boxes could be useful here.
The Gopher
We try to have a "gopher" whose job is to check what's running low, fetch meat from the cooler, top up the relishes, cut and arrange extra supplies. The gopher runs from zone to zone keeping everything in balance while other folks concentrate on a narrow band of activity.A gopher also helps by leaving cool food under cover until it's really needed. This is called JIT - Just in Time delivery and apparently it's now a fashionable business practice. We call it it RALM - Rushing at the Last Minute!
Dispersed Outlets
Consider also dispersed food outlets around the site. While a family
might want to buy all its food at the same spot at the same time:
"That's one burger with mustard, one without, one sausage, one
lamb with no lettuce and one pork with a lot of salad please"
Others find the variety of outlets more suitable:
"I'll go to the roast with Jimmy, Sarah can get a burger over
there and you have a bacon roll over here".
What you don't want is:
"You mean I've queued all this time and I have to join another
queue for sausages?!"
Whichever arrangement you go for, make sure you have enough workers and
the signposts are clear.
We have our local Delicatessen to provide vegetarian food - near our meat
but not too close - and the separation is helpful for everyone.
The first - or last - point in the food flow is the customer. Neglect the customer at your peril - they are what you are here for! This means having as many servers as possible, food which is available when you arrive at the counter, a menu with prices advertised clearly in advance, perhaps one overseer able to dash between jobs and ease bottlenecks, an efficient money collector and a queue which moves purposefully. If you can achieve this first time you should take up catering or crisis management full time! It's certainly important to aim for it.
The Feast in Cortona had booths at the entrance to the piazza where the event was held selling tickets. Each ticket had two parts and on the assumption that most people went in groups, the ticket holders joined a single queue which then broke into two - one for a plate of meat, another for salad fruit and drink. The ticket tore easily into two parts and two people would split up and meet again when they'd collected their part of the ticket. This avoids food servers dealing with money which is an organisational as well as a health and safety issue.
Food Flow diagram A. Click here for a larger version.
| 1 & 12 attend roasting beasts; remove and carve. | 2. Take cut salad, cut buns, assemble salad into buns. Help 5 when possible. |
| 3. Collect carved meat, sausages, burgers. Help 5 when possible. | 4. Cut and arrange salad; ensure constant supply of fresh salad. Cut buns if free to do so. Help 2 when possible. |
| 5. Combine meat with assembled salad buns and arrange in groups (burger buns, lamb buns, pork buns, steak buns, hot dogs) | 6 & 7 Ensure constant supply of fresh burgers and sausages. Heat up carved meat if necessary. Deliver to 3 if possible. |
| 8, 9, 10, 11. Take orders, collect from 5, take money. | 13. Food manager to oversee
the whole show. Identify poor flow, patrol Queue. Keep constant
touch with all 1-12. Assist where flow breaks down. Ensure supply of cooled food. Take the rap when the system breaks down. |
|
|
|
| mark out pitch | assemble trestles, tables, scaffolding, roped off area |
| dig pit | order, collect, stack firewood |
| set fire | order beasts, salad, sauces |
| assemble and attend beasts | make sign posts - Queue Here, In, Out, Price Lists |
Here is Foodflow Diagram B
Ever on the lookout for improvements we've revised our foodflow over the years. Here's the most recent suggestion. We might rotate the make up table and bain marie by 90 degrees next year
Do people know where to find you and where to queue? Previously produced signs on posts might include "Queue here" (have several as you won't know the length of the queue); "Out"; "Server 1" "Server 2" etc; "Pay Here"; Price Lists (several) made up to sensible round numbers.
Syd forgot to post a menu in a suitable place and didn't mark where the queue should start. Customers therefore made a snaking line far into the arena, blocking access to the bar and when they finally did arrive kept on asking "what have you got?"
Plan out the line of a queue of at least 50 people and have someone standing there for the first 10 minutes. After that, assuming you have a regular stream of customers, everyone will follow. If you have more than one till, let the single queue divide a few yards from the tills to help direct customers to the right spot.
 |
|
|
|