Malawry

I thought serving coffee was something that encouraged a diner to linger, rather than get out the door rapidly. Chris, have you had the coffee at Eve? (I have not, but I don't usually drink coffee after dinner.)

I always peel them first with no issues. I don't care for fishing skins off of hot potatoes personally, I'd rather peel them before cooking. I have not had this sort of problem with Yukons but I agree it sounds like a storage/age issue more than anything else. I worked at one place where all the mashers were Yukon Gold and they never had any problems with them. They also peeled before cooking. But this place went through about 50lbs a day, so of course they were always fresh.

Yes, you can blanch and shock your beans in advance. I usually wrap them in a dry paper towel or two (not a damp one) to absorb extra moisture after blanching, shocking and patting dry. I do it all the time for catering. Yes, you can do the ziti early. You can even freeze the ziti to make more fridge room if needed, it just takes longer to reheat and may need an extra hit of sauce after residing in the deep freeze. Do not do your mashers in advance. Some people will disagree with me but I think mashed potatoes lose texture if chilled and reheated. They're just not as good, they get mealier and less creamy. You can make them early in the day but keep them warm, don't let them cool and definitely don't stick them in the fridge. On Thanksgiving Day itself I usually direct my 14yo cousin on making them late in the morning, and then I put them in a metal bowl and cover with butter wrappers pressed on the surface (you can just film with butter if there's no wrappers handy). The bowl is rested with its bottom in a pot of hot water on the stove which I periodically turn on and off to keep the water, and therefore the mashers, hot. Restaurants often use Alto-Shaams for this same job.

Do not be deceived. The onions are nearly impossible to peel when raw, and are only moderately easier to handle once blanched. You can pop them, but you'll often lose the outermost layer of onion flesh if you try it. And yes, you have to peel them, unless you relish onion skin. Obviously, I'm still smarting from my decision to tackle 4lbs of these last week. I think next time somebody asks me to make boeuf bourgiugnonne for 67 people, I'll buy the frozen ones and dare anybody to make a stink about it.

I'll probably need three urns, ultimately: caf, decaf and water. Maybe I should just buy the West Bend for the water.

What sucked about the Westbend? It is a lot cheaper than the other models...

I just dealt with 4lbs of those for the wedding I catered Saturday (they went in the boeuf bourguignonne). Peeling them SUCKS. Get somebody else to do it. Those are particularly small and uneven which makes them more annoying than the sort in net bags at the supermarket--but being from Costco of course they are cheaper than the net bags. The white and yellow ones look the same once peeled. Peel and cook them separately from the red ones. Combine at the last minute or the red ones will bleed all over the pale ones. You can cook the red ones with a splash of red wine or red wine vinegar to enhance their color as they are much paler when peeled than they look in the skin.

The urn I borrowed for the wedding Saturday was a Farberware, and I thought it was pretty attractive. Plus the coffee didn't suck, but that was more a function of my sous-chef than any actual skill on my part or excellence on the part of the urn.

Chef-instructors at my culinary alma mater were fond of saying that chefs always wish they were still cooks and it's only cooks who want to call themselves chefs. I'm not sure I've seen this play out IRL though. I think Abra and I both have jobs quite different from what a restaurant chef does, but a restaurant chef is not the only type of chef out there. We both take responsibility for budget, creative control, hours, sanitation, inventory, and when needed we hire a brigade/staff. To me, those are the things that delineate a chef--not whether or not you're running a restaurant per se.

Sorry for the double. Does anybody have recommendations for large quantity coffee urns? I am considering buying two or three (caf/decaf/hot water) rather than renting for the next time somebody wants coffee at an event.

Ewww. I thought I had these proportions figured out at the first wedding I catered, a month ago. Apparently the decaf was weak though. So now I'm kinda nervous about getting it right. I hate crap coffee.

Thanks for the reply, Irwin. My sous-chef swam in at the last moment and made the coffee for me, and it looked right (nobody complained), but I'll keep this in mind for the next job.

I use the word "chef" to describe myself when I am catering or teaching cooking. I also used it when I cooked for 34 girls at a sorority for a year and a half, even though I had no staff and worked entirely independently when I was there. In all of these cases, I use the word as a shorthand to explain that: a. I am in charge of the job. The buck stops with me in all cases, in all the good and bad ways that can be true. b. I have creative control/responsibility for the situation. c. I have budgetary control/responsibility for the situation. I do not use it to imply that I am a superior person or that any staff I have don't deserve credit. I do have a culinary degree but I didn't call myself a chef upon graduation. I do not use the word "chef" to describe myself when I trail in a kitchen, help out on somebody else's special event, or in other cooking non-managerial contexts. I also try hard not to create an implication that I'm a restaurant chef in the classical sense, with a brigade and long-term responsibilities. My chef work is not like that and I recognize that I would need more skills to handle that on an ongoing basis...I would not apply for such a position.

I'm catering a wedding this afternoon. I'm terrible at figuring out making coffee in large quantities. The groom is bringing a large urn his mother owns and some coffee, and I'm expected to turn them into a hot urnful of goodness. I've Googled and not succeeded in finding guidance on this sort of thing. Can you help? No, I don't know how big the urn is yet, but I will later this morning.

I use it to melt butter, boil water (I don't own a kettle), warm up coffee and soups. Some braised dishes I'll warm up in the mic. My big secret shame: I put leftover cold steak in the mic sometimes, but only long enough to take the chill off...I like it at room temp but not cold from the fridge. We're talking only 30-45 seconds here, any longer and it gets truly nasty. I also zap wet ingredients (milks especially) for baking to bring them to room temp.

Marlene asked me that via PM too. Here's what I told her: Risotto cakes: Make your risotto of choice, but make it less liquidy at the end so it's not quite so creamy. Add plenty of parm-regg while hot. Let it cool. Stir in a couple eggs (or egg yolks only for extra luxe). Put it in a pan and pat it out so it's even. Chill overnight, uncovered. The next day, cut into squares and roll in breadcrumbs. Let the cakes set in the fridge for an hour or so if you have time, uncovered, to dry out more. Pan-fry or you can probably just brush with lots of EVOO and bake if you need to do them all at once without standing over the stove. I make both risotto and risotto cakes by "feel" rather than by following a written recipe, so I don't have one to post in RecipeGullet. Usually when I make risotto I just make extra and make some cakes outta them the next day. They make a great lunch or dinner with a spicy tomato sauce.

Ask Rachel Perlow. It was her gig. I recommend against risotto for a crowd, though, personally. It has to be done at the last minute (risotto doesn't rest well) and large quantities are hard to keep ahead of with stirring. You can parcook it but you'll still have to finish it at the last minute. However, risotto cakes (a larger version of arancini) might be delectable. I adore them.

I don't think of curry as universally likeable. Besides, it's already been made and frozen...

Jackal10, I don't want anything a la minute like a hot egg sauce. And the chicken breasts will be served hot, so I don't want a cold mayonnaise type sauce. I need to make this sauce Thursday to serve Saturday. I like the ideas you have, but they won't work for me in my situation. Jgm, that's part of my problem--everything's better with alliums! I don't have any champagne laying about but thanks for your suggestion. I may end up doing some kind of white wine sauce--or maybe a veloute or something.

Interesting, Abra. Do any of them require stock? (My chicken stock contains alliums, and I am NOT going to make more stock between now and Saturday.) Ditto for demi-glace, which is even more time-consuming to make. I had briefly considered some kind of apple pan sauce. I have some really nice Calvados that would be great. But I always add demi to this sort of thing, and I think of fruit sauces as more for pork and game meats than for chicken breasts.

So I'm catering a wedding this weekend, and the groom's mother has an allergy or intolerance of all the alliums--no onion, garlic, leek, scallion, chive, shallot, anything in that family. She's helping to pay for this event, so her son wants to make sure she gets something nice for lunch the day of the party. Nice idea. So I said sure, no problem, I'll whip up something real nice for Mom. I have chicken breasts with a mango salsa already on the (buffet-style) menu for this party. (The other entree options, a coconut-chickpea curry and boeuf bourguignonne, are obviously out of the question for adaptation.) I could just do some mango salsa without any scallions, but I'm not sure she'd be into mangoes and I'd hate for her to feel she has to scrape a sauce off her food or something. Besides, I got the idea that she'd appreciate something special plated for her and delivered to her table rather than having her guess at what on the buffet is safe for her to eat. Whatever it is, I want to make it Thursday because on Friday and Saturday AM I'm gonna be too busy to fuss with it. I'm thinking something simple but really good-looking that I can add to a plate with chicken breast, basmati rice and grilled vegetables to make a nice plate for this lady. Something I can squirt out of a squeeze bottle decoratively or quenelle and throw on a chicken breast at the last minute. Right now my only ideas are a pesto or a balsamic reduction, but...yawn. You all saved me with my lemon-caper sauce for a wedding I did a month ago, surely you can help me with this little issue?

Bring a cooler and report back on what you find, Doug.

Compound butters are simple. You can make one by putting some cold butter on your cutting board, laying fresh herbs on top, and chopping down the herbs directly into the butter. Keep scraping the butter off the board and moving it around until all the herb is chopped finely and it's evenly mixed with the butter. You can also do this in a food processor. Just don't let the butter get too warm or it might start to separate out. I almost always eat my steaks pan seared, finished in the oven, rested, with a knob of butter and a sprinkle of crunchy Maldon sea salt on top.

FWIW, most of the prices at Hemp's are in line with at least Costco prices, although unlike Costco Hemp's doesn't make you buy 5lbs of ground beef.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm jealous. Do you have to stir your sauce ingredients together in advance to prevent them from evaporating too quickly? (I usually sauce my stir-fries by shaking in what feels like the right amount of the various condiments, which works well on a regular home stove setup.)