Mottmott

What do you suggest for a family dinner for 15-25 people a week and a half in the future. It will be held in someone else's house, but cooked in my kitchen. I will have little time to do much cooking the day or two preceeding the dinner and am looking for suggestions for things that may be made well in advance and frozen. There will be a couple non-meat-eaters in the group (cheese, seafood ok). Someone else is providing dessert. My first thought is to make a ham which can be made ahead and served room temperature or slightly warmed on site. An obvious dish for the vegetarians would be a lasagna which can be made ahead, frozen, and heated on site. But the sides for the ham elude me. So far, I've come up with cucumbers in a sweet/sour pickle which I like against the saltiness of the ham and can make quickly. Any other suggestions? Perhaps some of you with catering experience can counsel me.

I just made up a bunch of pasta. Cut some for lunch and have sheets drying to use in a lasagna I plan to make during our threatened snowstorm tonight. My main problem is getting the sheets to roll out nice and neat. The edges tend to be frazzled a bit. I can't seem to keep the sheets the width of the rollers and no more. They turn out nice and silky, but I often have to trim the sides. Too wet? too dry? My other problem is my son scoffed up the leftovers from last night's roasted cauliflower that I'd intended for my lunch So I settled for some bottarga, lemon, garlic and oil. I sure like the tender quality of homemade pasta.

I also like your approach of drizzling the dressing on some of the salads rather than making up a vinaigrette to coat every inch of every leaf, etc. I like discreet bursts of taste.

My doctor who has warned me off the white stuff specifically exempted semolina pasta. For me, that's reason enough to use semolina.

You might check Fante's. I checked the site and nothing came up under rice papers but if you call them, you may find they do stock them. http://www.fantes.com/famous.htm

Having a mirror over the sink is something my mother did, so it seemed normal to do it, though I don't know anyone else who does this. Of course many people have their sink under the window which is very pleasant. When my kids were small, though, the window was VERY useful -- A little like having eyes in the back of my head. Another place I like to have a mirror is on the landing that's halfway up the steps between floors. Just this evening my DIL & I exchanged a few words about something too trivial to climb steps for. We spoke"face to face" even though she was on the first floor and I was on the second.

I have a tatty old carbon steel smallish cleaver. Its edge has been chewed away a bit so that it has a small serrated section that's very handy. At first I was going to grind it smooth, but decided against it.

Consider a mirror on the wall opposite your fridge with TV. I have a large mirror over the sink. I do most of my prep in the corner between that sink and the the stove, and I can see the TV on the fridge behind me in the mirror whenever the "action" gets hot. I love to watch food shows while I'm cooking.

I don't have a cabinet over my fridge, but I do have a TV there.

My addled brain can't seem to keep it straight: which is saltier by volume? Morton? Diamond?

I think the "rule" depends on circumstances. I live alone, I'm an experienced home cook, and it's just not practical to do a trial run on many of the dishes intended for 6-8 people. Many times, I'll make something from what looks good at the market that day. When I serve a new dish to family or old friends, I'll even ask whether it should remain in the repetoire and know I'll get honest answers. If you're an experienced cook working with mostly familiar ingredients and techniques, I see no danger. Just read the recipe through several times before hand, playing it out in your mind. (I have found errors in couple recipes that way.) It's also helpful to check out other recipes for the same dish to explore variations on the concept. Those of us who've cooked for may often actually only use ideas from several recipes rather than follow a particular one. More complex dishes (especially desserts) are often composed of subrecipes that are combined, so it is easy to be sure of the success of the individual elements well before finishing the dish. The exception for me is when I try something with an unfamiliar technique. For example, I've never made anything using tempered chocolate. Were I to try a dessert that requires it, I WOULD try the technique ahead of time!

And then, too, your friend_______ will say, "yeah, I got it from my friend, Annie Girl. I think she must have left out an ingredient. Don't you hate it when people do that!"

For a couple years I've been drying out tangerine skins just by exposing them to the air as I don't have a dehydrator. It seems to work pretty well as they are certainly dry and slowly darkening. As I understand it, the real stuff is about 20 years old, but this is a start. Perhaps someone can suggest how it is used in authentically eastern dishes. I've been adding it to winter braises with pleasing results, but there must be other dishes where it would star.

Thanks, Katherine and Sam. I knew there would be suggestions. My memory of this dish is quite fuzzy, but the pasta was definitely flat, so while it could have been the quadrucci, it was definitely not the quills. I suspect that it was something like home made quadrucci hand cut at about 1/2" or slightly larger with the irregularity of size that making it by hand would be likely to bring about. When I start making pesto again, I'm going to make some quadrucci even if that's not what I had I'm sure it would come close. I think I'll compromise when I make the pasta: roll out the sheets on the machine, but hand cut them into the quadrucci. But speaking of quills, has anyone here ever hand rolled them? I saw it done on one of the TV shows. Talk about labor intensive.

Today's rerun of a Jaques and Julia program on vegetables included a cauliflower gratin: parboiled or steamed, broken into flowerets, covered with a white sauce and topped withcheese (gruyere, I think) that was then baked.n Sorry, but I missed the oven temperature.

OK, I'm going to take advantage of this coven of pasta mavens to pose an embarrassing question. Does anyone know of a pasta shape that begins with the letter "Q"? Or perhaps a pasta dish name that begins with that letter? Many years ago in the early 60's when Italian meant red sauce to me (or scallopini on a good day), a beau fed me a wonderful dish at an upper east side restaurant. I'd like to identify the dish. My recollection of it plus later knowledge suggests it might have been some small out of the way pasta shape (would small squares have a name?) with a pesto sauce spiked with either minced prosciutto or pancetta. I confess in those days to never having heard of any of these. Unfortunately the beau was even more beautiful than the pasta dish, so I neglected to make notes.

Does anyone use caul fat to line the terrine? I've never done it, but I think I've seen references to it.

Marlene, enjoy you new KA. After awhile you won't even bother to put it away (unless you have absolutely NO counterspace). Besides using it to make cakes, pie dough, mayonnaise, yeast breads, meringues, whipped cream, etc., you can explore the world of attachments. I use mine with a meat grinder to make ground meat which I think tastes better than what you get at the supermarket as it is fresher and made from the cut you choose. It also can be cooked rare more safely. Or use it to prepare sausages, pates. Also, if you're into pasta, making it is a snap. You can prepare the dough in the bowl and use the KA attachment to roll it out.

I keep raisins at the ready, soaking in rum or other liquor/liqueur at all times. Ditto currants. Sometimes other fruits. Oddly enough, I don't care for raisins in cookies - they look like little bugs - but I do like them in such sweet things things as bread puddings, scones, quick breads. I like to add raisins to some savory dishes such as empanadas, fish in sweet/sour sauces such as the Venetian en soar preparations. I also like dried fruits in stuffings for pork. Oh, and there's always fruit cake for those of us who like it.

What a wonderful start to your career. Congratulations and best wishes for your future. I hope you'll share your future triumphs, too. You're inspirational.

An interestiong point of view and an admirable one. I agree with you that it's fun to find your own way, but it's also interesting to see how different people approach the same dish. I've noticed that many of us at eG (even the professionals, prehaps especially the professionals?) have a kind of academic, or perhaps collector's, interest in how to prepare food, checking out various ways of doing a dish and how small variations in technique or ingredients or even the equipment used can change the results. Some of this may be a desire to tweak our own cooking, but I suspect much of it may be pure curiosity. It's much like a painter going to a gallery to see what other painters do even though we may have no desire to paint that way ourselves. Personally, as someone without any professional training, I look to recipes (and their variations) as learning tools. Sometimes I will follow a recipe rather closely - particularly if working with a new (to me) ingredient or technique, or a relatively unfamiliar cuisine. Often, when I want to make a new dish or twist a familiar one, I will look at as many recipe versions as I can find to see what people have done to make it and then perhaps work out my own rather than actually follow someone else's. But when working with familiar ingredients and cuisines, I mostly just wing it. When I do make a dish from a recipe someone has given me, it enriches the experience as it always makes me think of that person. One of my favorite soups is a zucchini soup from a friend I seldom see. It's always "Donna's Zucchini Soup." Her little twist of adding some wine and vinegar to this otherwise basic soup has morphed into my sometimes using a similar amount of just sherry vinegar. And I have taken to using this with other sorts of soups, too. But each time I add a soupcon of wine vinegar to soup I think of this friend. So I'm happy to give out any recipes I may have developed or those by others I've altered. My only reservation is that the recipient may not follow it exactly and blame me for the result, thinking I've "purposely" left out some critical ingredient (as many have discussed above) even though I'm usually boringly, pedantically overspecific -- unless it's something I've just thrown together and cannot remember details.

About 10 years ago, I spent a month or so in residence near Temecula in CA and STILL remember the great Mountain High yogurt available there. Every morning I would put a big dollop of it on top of some granola, then lots of wonderfully ripe strawberries on it and have the best breakfast in the world. It was as good as ice cream (gasp, did I actually say that?). Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it in the Philadelphia area.

Oh yes, lets see the recipe for the enticing red bell pepper jelly! I'm making some onion confit in the next couple days. I use mine mostly on a pissaladiere which I make on a very flaky all butter pate brisee instead of a yeast dough. What more could I ask for in life, butter, sweet onions, and the salty slight brinynessof anchovies and olives on crisp buttery pastry. Ecstasy just thinking of it. Sometimes I add either cassis, port, or madiera to the onions as they cook. Other times I add a touch of very good vinegar (banyuls, sherry, balsamic). I do like the touch of complexity the acid from the vinegar gives. Wonder what a touch of lemon zest would do.... And not only does it keep in the fridge, but I often make a double recipe to have some on hand for the next pissaladiere. I don't think it's quite as good once frozen, but still very good.

My mother used to make these when I was a kid, pretty much as described above except that she breaded hers. It was so long ago I can't recall whether they were heads on or off. Probably I would have remembered heads on, though.