tammylc

I think (and hope) that we'll start to see more of the actual cooking once a few more people get eliminated. When they have to show what 11 people are doing, the time spent on each is going to be really minimal. Not to mention that there are that many more opportunities for "interesting" interpersonal content.

I'm obviously in the minority, but I thought the episode was fun. The whole sex shop thing didn't bother me at all. C'mon folks - they're in San Francisco! I thought Tiffany's cookie on a string idea was absolutely brilliant. Too bad they didn't taste good - otherwise she would have won easily. How hard is it to make cookies that taste good!

Another Midwest award: Ari Weinzweig the Co-Founder of Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, MI was one of five named to the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage, "presented to culinary professionals who have made significant and lasting achievements and contributions to the food and beverage industry for ten or more years."

Okay, I decided I was getting too complicated for myself, so I just started putting ideas together. Here's a start at menu planning. Anyone have an ideas or suggestions? Hors D'ouevres: Rosemary Parmesan Coins Mini tarts with creme fraiche and caramelized onion Wine: something sparkling First Course: Beet/Goat Cheese/Walnut salad or tart Wine: Sauvignon Blanc Second Course: Farfalle with Smoked Salmon and Creamy Vodka Sauce Wine: White Burgundy Third Course: I'm thinking duck, but I haven't decided what to do with it yet - any ideas? Wine: TBD Fourth Course: Five Spice Powder Braised Short Ribs, Parsnip Turnip Puree, Snow Peas Wine: Australian Shiraz Fifth Course: A tasting of blue cheeses Wine: Alvear Carlos VII Amontillado? (I had this really interesting sherry back in December at the Zingerman's Roadhouse cheese dinner. It went beautifully with every cheese we tried that night, but none of them were blues. Does anyone have a sense if it would work well with blue, or if we should sticks to something traditional like port?) Sixth Course: a citrusy dessert Wine: Iniskillin Ice Wine (whatever I have in my basement - can't remember if it's a Reisling or a Vidal) Seventh Course: little chocolate something Wine: Port or Banyuls

Coming a little late to the thread, but I'm another baby food making mama. I used some jarred foods when Liam was still deciding that he wanted to eat, but after that he's been on homemade food all the way. He's almost two now, and I still make two of the recipes I've been making for him since he was quite little, although everything's in much bigger pieces now. (He mostly eats whatever we're eating, but I need to send a lunch with him to daycare, and it's handy to have something in the freezer I know he'll like.) Super Baby Food really annoyed me, but I loved Annbel Karmel's First Meals. And I've also used homemade baby food in regular cooking. And blogged about it, no less! (Actually, there's a lot of baby food talk in that blog, and cute pictures too!)

I was thinking that myself. I should be able to make up a couple big pots of stock. I could reduce it way down, freeze it, and use it for my next common meal.

Thursday's menu: Eggs Masala, Chana Dal, Cucumber-Mint Raita, Rice, Peas. I only had 40 people sign up (28 adults, 12 kids), a pretty small meal for me. Don't know if the menu scared them off, or if everyone was just otherwise occupied. In any case, they sure missed out, because it was a very tasty meal, if I do say so myself. And having only 40 people meant we had a lot fewer hardboiled eggs to peel. In fact, the eggs were the source of the only problem with the meal - I didn't adequately separate the plain eggs I was holding back for the kids from the rest of the eggs, so when my assistant cooks were halving the eggs and putting them on plates to be topped with sauce, they cut those up too. And I didn't notice until they were all topped with curry sauce! Doh! We told the parents to just scrape off the mild sauce, but I'm sure that wasn't acceptable for at least some of the kids. Oh well, just meant there were more curried eggs for the rest of us. I started the chana dal early, as legumes take a long time to cook. This wasn't really chana dal, but just plain yellow split peas. They're boiled with some turmeric and sliced ginger. When they're tender (about 2 hours of cooking for a big pot like that), you add salt and a bit of garam masala. Then, you fry up cumin seeds and chopped garlic in a lot of ghee, dump it in to the pot and stir it all together. As usual, mine was too watery, so I let it cook for a while after the lentils were tender to evaporate off more water, and in the end the consistency was exactly right. The Eggs Masala recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrie's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, and it is indeed quick and easy. Hardboil some eggs and top them with a spicy tomato curry. Sounds odd, but I think it's a divine combination. We planned for 1 1/2 eggs per adult, plus 1 per child, so that was 5 dozen eggs. I brought them to a boil in two big pots of salted water, then left them off the heat for 25 minutes to finish them up. Using the standing method helps make sure you don't overboil the eggs and end up with that green ring, and the salted water is supposed to make them easier to peel. They were pretty easy, so that made me happy. If we'd had to peel 60 hard-to-peel eggs, it would have been much more of a pain. The recipe I was working from makes enough sauce for 4 eggs. I was making 48 eggs worth, so I had to multiply the recipe by 12! We made up two batches of the sauce - one mild (1/2 tsp cayenne for the whole batch) and one spicy (3 tsp cayenne). While we were portioning out the serving platters, there was much worry among my assistant cooks that we didn't have enough of the mild eggs. But in fact, the spicy were the first to go! We marked the plates with dots to indicate which was which - red dots for hot, green for mild. To make the sauce, you brown cumin seeds, onions and ginger, then add a spice paste (made from turmeric, coriander, cumin, salt, pepper, lemon juice, water) and cook for just a few seconds, then add some finely chopped canned tomatoes and let the whole thing cook for 10 or 15 minutes to come together. Easy as pie. At the end, you stir in a whole lot of chopped cilantro (1 bunch per batch of sauce). Normally you'd put halved eggs into the sauce to warm for a few minutes, but that was too difficult to manage in quanitity, so we just topped the eggs with the sauce. The raita was just yogurt mixed with chopped fresh mint, diced cucumber, and salt. And then there was a big pot of basmati rice and some plain green peas. For dessert I made homemade chocolate chip cookies, plus some ice cream that was left in the freezer from a previous meal. Not really in keeping with the "theme" of the meal, but that's what I felt like making, and I knew the menu was simple enough that I'd have the time. While we were cooking, we drank a bottle of Tocai Fruilano, a nicely acidic Italian white with pear and mineral flavors. With dinner, we had a really tasty German Reisling that was a great counterpoint to the spicy food. Shopping/Ingredient List: <b>Eggs Masala</b> (Recipe times 12) 4 dozen eggs 3 lemons (actually only needed 4 tbsp, so one lemon would have been plenty) 1 1/2 lbs onions (there were some in the pantry, so I used those instead of buying) 1 jar grated ginger (I'm not a fan of pre-chopped garlic, but the ginger puree rocks my world) 7 cans diced tomatoes (pulsed briefly in the food processor to chop more finely) 2 bunches cilantro Turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne, cumin seeds, salt, pepper (all except cumin seeds were already in the pantry and didn't need to be purchased) <b>Split Peas</b> (Recipe times ~5) 8 cups yellow split peas 24 cups water 2 inch piece of ginger, sliced into thin rounds 7.5 oz jar of ghee (yes, I used the whole thing!) 2 heads garlic, chopped Cumin seeds, turmeric, garam masala, salt <b>Raita</b> (Recipe times 4) 2 lg containers whole milk yogurt 2 lg containers low fat yogurt 4 cucumbers 1 pkg mint salt Other stuff: 7.5 lbs rice (which turned out to be exactly the 18 cups that can fit into our rice cooker!) 3 lbs peas 1 doz eggs (supposed to be plain for the kids - oops!) 1 lb butter, 1 pkg chocolate chips, 2 lb pkg brown sugar (for the cookies, rest of the ingredients from the pantry) I didn't note the organic/non-organic split on the above, but this meal was a really easy one to do nearly entirely organically. Even organic free range eggs are still really cheap protein! Cost: $106.44 or $4.04/adult (includes the 12% pantry fee) Next up, Jambalaya again. And then after that, a new idea - a Rotisserie Chicken dinner. Since I can buy fully cooked really tasty rotisserie chickens from the grocery store for less money than I can buy chickens and cook them myself (not to mention that we don't really have the oven space to do enough), that's what I'm going to do. I'll do up a vegetarian main and the sides myself, and just send someone out to the store for chickens shortly before dinner. Should end up easy and cheap!

That sounds very cool, and just the sort of thing I'm looking for. I'm wondering if there's a way to do it so that we don't have to open so many bottles - look for combinations where the good match for one course is a neutral or bad match for another course, for example. If you could PM me pairings, that would be great. I think I'll also see if I can get a cheap used copy of the book via Amazon or something.

So, I've posted a few times here in the past, looking for food pairing ideas for my wine club. You've all been very helpful - thanks! April will be the one year anniversary of the wine club, and we want to do a special dinner. The group is really interested in food and wine pairing, so I thought it would be really fun to plan an event that can really highlight some "matches made in heaven" and maybe also show some of the downsides too. Here's my thought - plan four courses (plus dessert), with a wine for each course. But we'll pour all four wines so people can compare and contrast and see how the food really does work with the chosen wine more so than the others. But to pull this off, I need some advice! Anyone have any ideas for interesting combinations? (Note - we do have at least one vegetarian in the group, so suggestions that can be easily modified for her would be especially welcome, especially for starter courses.) Thanks!

Yeah, that'd be a LOT of falafel! A really good option that I've cooked would be the chick pea and carrot stew. It won't help your low-carbers, but it's totally vegan. Onions, carrots, chickpeas - nothing really needs to be refrigerated. Tasty too. How many days do you have to feed your ~150?

I don't think so. People know that I do these wacky things every once in a while (like cooking an entire Thanksgiving dinner for 72 people), but they don't object when I go back to the simpler things later. The cleaners appreciate it! For my next meal I'm thinking about making a hard boiled egg curry. It's a great recipe - easy and very tasty. The only problem is peeling the ~85 boiled eggs we'd need. It's been suggested that I recruit some of the neighborhood kids to come help, so that might be one way to make it a little easier... Anyone have any tips? I'm thinking I'll buy the eggs in advance and leave them on the counter for a couple of days so they'll age a little, since old eggs are easier to peel.

I've never had any problems with it sticking, actually, but I'd gotten the "low and slow" tip from another eGullet thread. I cooked it for about 10 minutes per side on medium.

Thank you! Reading that made my day!

Oh I hate it when that happens. It always makes me mad at the shop: don't you realize I depend on you? ← I had the same issue when I was buying salad greens. I usually get the big 1 lb pkg of organic spring mix, which is a great deal at $5.99. This week the 5 oz packages were on sale, so they only had those in stock. But even on sale ($2.50 instead of $2.99), it's still more expensive to buy an equivalent amount in the small ones. It was funny - the produce person that was helping me was commenting on how well the large packages sold at that store, and I'm just betting that having three cohousing communities down the street is to blame. I bet Great Oak is responsible for 6 to 8 1 lb packages a week all on its own.

Response was definitely positive. I usually aim for $4/person in raw ingredients, so as to keep it under $5 with the pantry fee. For this meal, we were aiming to keep it under $6. Most people don't start getting concerned about the cost until it gets up to $7 or higher, so this was a great price - we were concerned that we'd have to "lose" some receipts to keep it at the $6 mark, so the fact that we were so much under is amazing. I made sure to mention the estimated price when I posted the menu, because I knew that based on the description alone, some people might be worried about price.

Thanks all for your help! The meal went off perfectly. You can read about it over in the Cooking for 40 thread.

Thanks all for your help! The meal went off perfectly. You can read about it over in the Cooking for 40 thread.

Okay, that was REALLY fun. The menu, which we posted on the usual board and also printed one for each table: <center><i><b>Dinner at the Great Oak Bistro</b> Local Amish Duck Breast ~ or ~ Silver Goat Chevre served on “Grilled” Polenta, Wild Mushroom Ragu, Port Wine Reduction, and Truffle Oil with Rosemary Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Brussels Sprouts, and Spring Mix Salad For the wee ones ~ Mac & Cheese Steamed Broccoli Dessert Cream Puffs</i></center> (Our audience wasn't experienced enough to note all the fancy restaurant menu in-jokes - listing the provenance, scare quotes - but hopefully y'all appreciated our attempt at humor.) After figuring out we could accomodate a few late signups, we had 63 people - 26 duck eating adults, 16 cheese eating adults, 2 duck eating kids, 2 cheese eating kids, and 17 other kids. It was important for this meal to figure out in advance if kids would be eating the main meal or not, because we actually did individual PLATING! And as it turned out, someone came who wasn't signed up, or a kid who we weren't planning for took the main meal, because we actually served 47 dishes total. And some people who signed up for cheese must have taken duck, because although I was down for duck, by the time we were done serving, there was just cheese left, when we should have had just enough. We only plated the main course, and served the sides family style. The plates were quite lovely, and I'm sad that my assistant cook didn't ask "Did you get a picture?" until we were done - I'm sure we could have found somone with a camera phone. We placed a slice of "grilled" (fried, really) polenta in the center of each plate and topped it with a spoonful of mushroom ragu. On top of that went either 2 thick slices of goat cheese (about a 2 oz portion) or 4 slices of duck breast (about half a breast or 4 oz). A drizzle of truffle oil and single chive finished off the top, while an artful drizzle of port wine reduction graced the plate. It was a long cooking journey, starting last weekend when I did all my polenta experiments. Wednesday night I went to the store to pick up the brand of polenta I'd been working with, and they were totally out! Cramped for time and with toddler in tow, I ended getting the Red Mill Coarse Cornmeal instead of their Polenta. It worked alright, but wasn't as nice. Wednesday night I cooked up the polenta using Sara Moulton's oven method, then poured them into loaf pans to chill. Even though I was cooking each batch in its own casserole dish, doing four at once per oven did affect the overall cooking time (or maybe it was the change in product?), but I got it done, with only slight worries about the texture on a couple of batches, which was a smidge looser than I'd been using. Thursday morning I started shopping for the rest of the ingredients, took a detour to the airport to pick up my friend/guest cook, then hit a couple more stores with him in tow. All told, six different stores contributed to the list - Costco, Arbor Farms, Meijer, Sparrow Meat Market, Trader Joes, and Zingerman's! The shopping list: Protein: 6 1/2 lbs duck breast (14 half breasts) 3 11-oz pkgs goat cheese Ragu: 3 14 oz pkgs portabello mushrooms 4 lbs button mushrooms 1 lb bag dried Shiitake mushrooms 3 lb onions 1 head garlic 1 bottle cheap Burgundy from TJ's Polenta: 5 lbs of coarse cornmeal 1 lb butter (two sticks for the polenta, and the rest got used for other things) Garnish: 1 bottle white truffle oil 1 bottle cheap port from TJ's (for reduction) 2 pkgs chives Sides: 16 lbs sweet potatoes 4 lbs brussels sprouts (could have had more - these ran out quickly) 2 lbs spring mix greens 1 pkg rosemary (for the sweet potatoes) 1 bunch parsley (bought this potentially for the ragu, but we didn't like it there, so we sprinkled some on the brussels sprouts) Kids: 3 boxes Mac and Cheese (should have had four) 2 heads broccoli 2 lbs baby carrots Total cost: $212.16 or $5.40 per adult (including the 12% pantry fee). Note - I'm only charging for the 1/4 bottle of truffle oil that we used since I'm keeping the rest, but even so, that would have only added another 35 cents to the price. We stopped for lunch at Zingerman's Roadhouse (smoked goat sandwich - yum!), but then came back to the common house and immediately started cooking. Otherwise we weren't going to have enough stove space, thanks to our too-tightly spaced burners. We started by setting the port on to reduce - it's pretty amazing watching an entire bottle of port turn into a mere 1/4 cup! Near the very end we had a boil over and lost some volume, so we ran a little short of what we needed to finish all the plates. For the mushroom ragu we caramelized the onions, and sauteed the mushrooms in small batches to get some good browning. We used about half the shiitakes, soaking them in 12 cups of water, which generated about 8 cups of mushroom stock. Some of the soaked mushrooms were pretty woody/chewy, so I picked through them and chopped up the ones I liked into small pieces, about 3 cups worth. But what we were really after was the fabulous stock, which we combined with about a cup of wine and reduced down to 4 potent cups. I made a roux to thicken the stock and combined it with the mushrooms, onions, garlic. As we adjusted the seasonings we added a little more wine, but it was still a very thick and chunky ragu, with not a lot of sauce, which is what we were going for. It was very tasty and got raves - but next time I'd hit it with some balsalmic vinegar at the end, as the overall dish needed more acidity. The polenta crisped up beautifully, and we kept it warm in a 200 degree oven, as it took about 90 minutes to brown all 48 pieces (12 each from four 9inch by 5inch loaf pans). Meanwhile, in the other oven, we roasted the sweet potatoes with the rosemary. We had to overfill the pans to get it all in the one oven, so they didn't come out as brown as I would have liked and some were more steamed than roasted, but they tasted good. We'd run out of room for the brussels sprouts, so I took the roasting pan of them over to my house and threw them in my home oven. Oh, I forgot to mention - about 3:30, one of my assistant cooks calls to tell me she's not going to be able to make it. Assistant cooks start at 4. We had an extra pair of hands because my friend was cooking with me, but we'd counted on having two assistants as well. Fortunately I was able to recruit a few people off and on to help with the prep, plating and serving, and we managed to get everything done on time. Last thing to be prepped was the duck, which we seared well in cast iron pans then threw in a 350 degree oven until the probe thermometer read 130. We only had a probe in one of the 14 breasts, so there was a fair bit of variation in doneness, and on the whole they tended to be a little overdone. But that was probably for the best in a group probably not used to eating duck. The duck was finished resting about 6:10, so we dispatched someone to ring the dinner bell and started the plating for service at 6:15. We did it assembly style, laying out 12 plates at a time, then sending runners out to the dining room to deliver. The bulk of people were served by 6:25, although there were a few stragglers that didn't get served until closer to 6:30. Our portioning was perfect - we had a little bit of mushrooms leftover, but they got scarfed up in short order. All in all, it went quite brilliantly, if I do say so myself. Exhausting, but brilliant. My co-cook and I are already planning to cook "Another Dinner at the Great Oak Bistro" - but not until 2007, we think.

All things being equal, I probably would have used a non-Asian mushroom. But the price was right on these, and I am operating on a budget. Good suggestion to reconstitute some and try them out first. These are sliced, not whole, and from reading about them elsewhere it seems they should be a little less chewy because of that. But it would be good to get a feel for them in advance. They are just one mushroom in a mushroom ragu that will also include button mushrooms and portabellos, but since our budget will only allow a small quantity of the more expensive mushrooms, we wanted to use a dried mushroom for a more concentrated flavor (and to be able to use the broth from reconsituting it). But I will keep the texture and size issue in mind when deciding how to cut them up.

I bought a 1 lb bag of dried shiitakes at Costco this weekend for a big meal I'm cooking. I'll be combining them with other mushrooms, so I'm trying to figure out how much of the other mushrooms I need to buy. Once they're rehydrated, anyone have a guess on what they'd equate to in fresh (with regard to weight or volume or something)?

Planning proceeds apace for what I have titled "Dinner at the Great Oak Bistro" on our meal sign up web page. I conducted a couple of polenta experiments over the weekend and am confident that I have that part well at hand (I still have a bunch of polenta in the fridge at home, in fact). I went to Costco on Saturday and picked up a huge container of frozen mini cream puffs to serve for dessert - $10 for 90 pieces. But my real reason for going was the 1 lb bag of dried shiitake mushrooms (also $10). Anyone have any sense of how much this will equate to when rehydrated? We need to figure out how much of the other mushrooms to buy. Still to come is developing an actual shopping list, but there aren't really many obscure ingredients, so it should be pretty easy. Last I checked, we had 20 meat eaters, 13 vegetarians and 20 assorted children signed up for dinner. It wouldn't surprise me if we get up to the max of 64.

A Cuisinart will work just fine for making baby food. That's all I ever used for Liam. We did have one of the grinders from the link, and it was good when Liam was just starting on solids, as it was easy to grind up just a little tiny bit for him to try. But once he really started eating food, I just made big batches in the food processor. I recommend First Foods by Annabel Karmel as a great make-your-own baby food book. Butternut Squash with Sage-Butter Sauce, anyone? The only time we bothered with jarred foods was if we were going away for the weekend and wouldn't have good refrigeration or heating access. Otherwise I just threw a food cube in a little tupperware container and we were good to go. Making baby food for Liam actually helped me re-appreciate concentrated simple flavors. A fresh sweet potato, cooked and mashed, has an extraordinary amount of flavor all on its own, especially if your tastebuds have never had anything but breastmilk or formula before!

Well, I conducted a polenta experiment yesterday. I cooked up a single batch of polenta using the Sara Moulton baked method. When it was done I transferred it into a loaf pan and chilled it for several hours. It sliced and fried up beautifully! I'm very pleased - I wasn't looking forward to stirring an octuple batch of polenta on the stovetop for 90 minutes, and this way I can just cook a bunch of individual pans in the oven at the same time. The loaf pan method was really convenient, but didn't really give me the form factor I was looking for - I ended up with an untidy 4"x2" rectangle. But I might get something I'd be happier with if I just filled the loaf pan higher. Or we may just use sheet pans, since that will let us cut the polenta into any shape we want. Just have to figure out how to keep a bunch of sheet pans cold (weather permitting, I can always use the great outdoor refrigerator, since I live in Michigan). I rubbed my somewhat-non-stick griddle down with olive oil and cooked the polenta slices on medium for about 10 minutes per side. I brushed the tops with olive oil before turning them, because all the oil had been sucked up by then. They didn't get quite as brown and crispy as I wanted - I need to play a little bit more with the time and temperatures. Thanks for your help - this thread was really useful for me. Any further advice and suggestions are welcome. I'll be talking about the evolution of the entire meal over in the Dinner for 40 thread, if you're interested.

No one here had any creative ideas, and my friend and I didn't have any either. So we decided to just make our original plan work. We're downsizing the duck portion per person, and have found a source for cheap button mushrooms that we'll enhance with some dried shiitakes or porcinis. And maybe we'll just "lose" a few receipts - we want to do something fun, but not have it be hardship for other people, so if we pay $20 or $40 for our own entertainment, it's no big deal. Yesterday I did a test run of the polenta. I've never cooked it before, and needed to get a sense of how quantities would look, and whether Sara Moulton's ultra-easy baked method would do what I needed it to do. Which, I am happy to report, it did. I was not looking forward to stirring an octuple batch of polenta on the stovetop for an hour and a half. This way I can just cook a bunch of individual casserole dishes at the same time. Still trying to get the form factor right, though. Last night I poured a single batch into a loaf pan. It was easy to slice and portion that way, but I ended up with basically a 4"x2" rectangle, which wasn't really what I was going for. We can either try filling the loaf pan higher to get more of a square shape or using sheet pans, because then we can cut it into any shape we want. Or using skillets or cake pans or something and doing rounds cut into wedges. We still need to decide what will work best. And we still need to decide if we're going to be wacky enough to actually do individual plating. Since we have to assemble all of the stacks anyway, it's not that big of a deal to do it on individual plates, which lets us have fun with decorative garnishes and sauces. We just need runners to help get it out to tables, but that should be easy to accomplish. We'll serve the side dishes family style, and just plate up the entree - no point in having brussels sprouts go to waste on people who won't eat them!

There's no brunch menu listed on the website anymore: http://www.evetherestaurant.com/apps.htm It is sad. Their Cuban Reuban sandwich was one of the best things I've ever eaten. ← actually - there's a loop that get's you there - go to the wine bar menu - at the bottom, it give you the option of brunch menu!! that's why i thought they still offered it. u.e. ← It seems like a telephone call is in order.