We have fully booked the 220 places in the food board section of the event! I am writing this over a month and a half before the event, so that is surprising. The event steward is requesting that we open more spots, but I’m not sure that this is feasible given the kitchen size. We are in negotiation. I will let you know how we go.
Until then, my next worry is ‘how to not make people sick’ – AKA: Allergy and Diet Management.
There are a lot of great blogs on this subject (I suggest you try this link), so I won’t go into great detail here.
However, Allergy and Diet Management needs to be at the forefront of your mind when putting together a Mongolian Feast (as does food storage and handling). Below is my current Allergy/Diet Matrix:
With this feast, so far, we have been able to adapt to the dietary needs of our special diets and allergy guests. This is not always the case, but I am always happy when I can feed everyone.
Once I have the allergies/diets matrix together, I look at my recipes and put an X where things contradict that allergy/dietary need.
Next, I list all my dietary/allergy management guests with their needs on a list like the one below:
Further on Allergy/Diet Management:
Cross Contamination: We have set up a procedure to avoid cross-contamination of food in the kitchen. This includes making sure that the many boiling pots we have are not close to one another, have lids, and that allergy issue foods are not cooked beside non-allergy issue foods. It’s quite incredible how many pots overboil into other pots. Obviously, we also don’t double use tasting spoons nor use cooking utensils on more than one dish.
Serving: I always make sure that we plate food so that allergy issue foods are served on seperate plates. I believe in good plate gaps. For our special guests, I provide a menu with notes as to what they can and cannot eat. I will try to get a picture of this up on the next blog.
That’s all I have on Allergy Management (well, other than to encourage you to do some research). Next time, I will go over the rest of my paperwork.
Until then, may the sun warm your shoulders and the rain clean your tears.
~ Natal’ia