Dinner for 40

[TJHarris]

Tammy,

It sounds as though all is going very well for all your meals.  I was wondering though,  how to find out more about co-housing communities.  Does your community have a web site?

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Our website is at www.gocoho.org. Feel free to PM or email me with questions. I see you're in the neighborhood, so if you want to come by for dinner and a tour some time, just let me know!

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Thanks, I will PM if I have questions.

[tammylc]

So Thursday I recapped the jambalaya I described earlier, and it was even better than last time. I'll share details later, but right now I have a request. My assistant cooks and I are planning a Thai feast for Sunday's dinner, and I'm looking for your favorite recipes for Thai Beef Salad. It seems like one of those recipes that has tremendous variation from cook to cook, so I'd like to see where the similarities and differences lie.

[Rachel Perlow]

I use the recipe in Hot Salty Sour Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. If you don't want to buy it, check your local library. I'm assuming that you're serving the beef on the side so the veggies can have at the salad too? Fried & marinated tofu would be a viable option for them.

[tammylc]

The menu is the Thai Beef Salad for the meat eaters, Tofu Satay with Peanut Sauce for the vegetarians, and then a vegetable curry with rice for everybody. I want to do sticky rice with mango and coconut milk for dessert, but it seems like sticky rice is tricky to cook, so I might just do some mango ice cream or sorbet or something (store-bought).

[Rachel Perlow]

It really isn't. I've made it a bunch of times. It's basically a rice pudding. In fact, when I haven't had the correct Thai rice, I just make rice pudding and serve with diced or sliced mangos. Make a rich rice pudding, with egg, and use some coconut milk for flavor.

[snowangel]

Tammy, yes to what Rachel said. No, it's not difficult. But, it you want to be safe, make rice pudding with coconut milk. This is definitely the way to go if you can get ripe mangos.

[Della]

I just came upon this thread today and I have to say it is very intriguing! Thanks for posting.

[tammylc]

Okay - way behind again. I never did get around to writing up my jambalya redux, and it's too late now - I don't remember anything. Plus I managed to lose my receipts.

My Thai meal turned out pretty well. The salad (which was the reason I decided to make the meal in the first place) was just great, fabulous, words can't say. I also found a great quick and easy peanut sauce recipe online that I used to top fried tofu for the vegetarians. And I made a vegetarian curry with rice for everybody. This didn't turn out so well - I misjudged the timing and my veggies got mushy. And of course, because I was trying to accomodate the vegetarians, I couldn't use fish sauce in the curry, and Thai food just doesn't taste the same without fish sauce. If I do something like this again I'll probably make separate curries for the meat eaters and veggies.

The shopping list:

For the salad:

4 lbs steak (I think I ended up with flank steak, can't remember exactly)

3 cucumbers

4 tomatoes

2 red onions

1 bunch green onion

cilantro

4 romaine hearts

For the curry:

2 heads cauliflower

2 lbs green beans

4 green peppers

2 cans bamboo shoots

2 bags frozen peas

5 cans coconut milk

1 can green curry paste

basil

Assorted flavorings:

serrano chiles

garlic

red curry paste (for the peanut sauce)

palm sugar

lots of limes for juice

fish sauce

2 cans coconut milk

fresh ground peanut butter

Lots of rice

I can't remember how many people I had for this meal - I'll have to check that and come back and edit thee poste so these numbers will be useful for the future. We ended up having to borrow a can of coconut milk for the curry because we didn't have quite enough, and I should also have bought another can of curry paste - the curry didn't really have the right balance of flavors.

[snowangel]

If you can find them, buy the tubs of curry paste. What's amazing is that the cans are $.79 for 4 oz. and the tubs are $1.19-$1.49 for 14 oz.

[tammylc]

Still catching up...

Last Sunday I revisited one my earliest meals - Middle Eastern night. I was foodblogging last week, so I did write it up promptly and just need to crosspost it over here. I recalled the falafel being a lot of work last time, so I decided to skip them this time and make baba gannoush instead. This was a mistake - I should have done the falafel. We had hummus, tabouli, baba, yogurt and cucumber salad, lamb kabobs, pita bread and feta cheese.

First, my shopping list:

2 lbs dried bulgar wheat

4 tsp dried mint

4 bunches of parsley

2 bunches green onion

12 cucumbers

4 tomatoes

8 cans of chick peas (I could save a lot of money by using dried, but it's too late now)

4 c of tahini

8 lbs eggplant

3 lg containers yogurt

4 1/2 lbs lamb or beef for kabobs

1 pkg fresh oregano

4 heads of garlic

a bunch of olive oil

enough lemons to make 5 cups of lemon juice

some feta cheese (how much will depend on how my budgets coming together)

8 packages of pita bread

2 trays of baklava

I had 17 meat eaters, 10 vegetarians and 5 kids signed up for dinner in advance, and got another 7 adults and 2 kids through late sign up slots.

It was only okay. t wasn't bad, just not very exciting for the work required, and I think by the time dinner came around I just wasn't in the mood for the food.

I headed into the kitchen around 3 and put the bulgar on to cook, then pierced the skin of the eggplants and through them into the oven to roast. When the bulgar was soft I spread it out on a sheet pan and put it into the fridge to cool. Then I proceeded to hack up the lamb I'd found.

Ideally I'd have liked a nice simple boneless loin to work with, but I didn't have time to run all over town to get one. So I just grabbed a 5 1/2 lb leg piece from Kroger and cut the meat off the bone. Trimming it took quite a while, and I'm sure I didn't do the most professional job of it... I made a marinade of garlic, olive oil and oregano and set it aside to soak.

I set Keith, one my assistant cooks, to juicing up the 20 lemons I'd bought. They were nice juicy lemons, so we ended up with about 8 cups of juice - more than we needed, but it's nice to have extra. Meanwhile, I tasked Hope with cutting up all of the veggies for the tabouli - parsley, green onions, tomatoes, cucumber. Unfortunately, she cut the parsley a little to course for my preferences, but I didn't realize it until we were mixing it all together and it was too late. Here's the tabouli all plated up and heading out to the tables.

I worked on the hummus, giving frequent tastes to Keith and Hope until we got the right balance of flavors, then put it in the fridge and moved on to the next thing. We garnished it with a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkled it with a little paprika and parsley.

Hope scooped out the eggplants and mixed up the baba ganoush. I don't particularly like eggplant, so I wouldn't have been the right person to judge the correct balance of flavors. Speaking of that, we used the cookbook Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd as the starting point for the hummus, baba ganoush and tabouli, mostly to get a sense of proportions, but mostly did it all by taste.

We chopped up a whole mess of cucumbers and mixed them with full fat yogurt, salt, cumin, garlic and a bit of lemon juice. This is one of my favorite Middle Eastern side dishes.

Keith finished skewering the lamb and went off to set the dining room tables while Hope was finishing the baba ganoush. I waited to cook the skewers until just about 15 minutes before service, so they'd still be hot. They'd have been quite nice on the grill, but firing one up would have been too much work, and they turned out great with just a couple of minutes per side under a hot broiler. There was only one skewer per meat eater (I was approaching the meat as a condiment, not as the center of the meal), so rather than putting a few on each table, I piled them all up on one plate and left them on the counter for the meat eaters to collect. I've done similar things with a special vegetarian item, when it doesn't make sense to spread it out. But I wish I'd made more - they were my favorite part of the meal - juicy, tender, nicely medium rare. Mmmm. I'd do these again, with some different side dishes, but go to a butcher who could cut them up for me.

We put out some halved pita bread and bowls of crumbled feta cheese, and we were done. It was never frenzied, but we did have to work steadily to get everything done on time. The nice thing about this meal is that because so much of it was served cold or at room temperature, there was no rush to get everything out to the tables at the last minute.

Dessert was store bought baklava, and it was nummy.

(The original foodblog post has pictures.)

I spent $117 at Arbor Farms, which included $24 for a 3 L container of EVOO that will be charged to pantry costs rather than my meal. Then another $34 or so at Kroger (I've managed to lose the receipt - doh!). My assistant cook spent $24 on two pans of baklava and four packages of pita bread. Total: $151.

[tammylc]

Alright, now that I'm caught up I can move on to planning Thursday's meal. By popular demand, I'm going to make the tortilla soup again. eGullet's own CaliPoutine is joining me as guest assistant chef, and I believe she'll be making peach/raspberry crisp for dessert (with her own home canned peaches, no less!).

I'm a little bored of plain green salads for sides, so this time I thought I'd make something different and go for a roasted corn and red pepper salad, or something like that. I haven't looked up recipes or developed a plan yet, so your opinions are most welcome. I'm figuring to roast frozen corn and probably just use jarred red peppers, and mix it up with a lime cilantro vinaigrette. Maybe add some black beans? Finely chopped red onion? Tomato? Normally I'd do avocado, but I'll need a ton of them as garnish for the soup and they're expensive, so I don't want to buy them for the salad as well.

Please post any ideas or recipes!

[snowangel]

Thanks, Tammy, for keeping this up. I'm doing a couple of do's this summer for crowds of about 40, and this is great info and food for thought.

[SushiCat]

Tammy, thanks for sharing so much info on your cooking escapades. I'm going to be cooking for a large crowd this summer - possibly more than 200 people and am always looking for recipes that can be increased. You chickpea / carrot stew sounds intriguing as do some of your other ideas/recipes. Let me know you thoughts.

Of course I am open to others opinions too!

I'm doing breakfast and lunch - lunch is the big meal. Dinners will likely be a combo of things we can make during the day including a vegetarian main dish, a salad and then we will likely have a meat dish that is cooked in a commercial kitchen and brought in. Ideas for anything are most welcome including easy cakes / treats as I will also serve a snack at about 4 p.m. and usually that needs to be sweets, although sometimes we hack up watermelons.

I'll be sure and post what the plans are and how it turns out - but meanwhile I'm just starting to think of what might be fun to make!

[tammylc]

Tammy, thanks for sharing so much info on your cooking escapades.  I'm going to be cooking for a large crowd this summer - possibly more than 200 people and am always looking for recipes that can be increased.  You chickpea / carrot stew sounds intriguing as do some of your other ideas/recipes.  Let me know you thoughts.

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That stew is definitely one of my favorites. It's really easy to multiply for large groups, and it's really cheap. If you're not trying to cook organic, you can just buy chick peas in the giant #10 cans, or to be even cheaper you can use dried beans.

[tammylc]

Tortilla Soup, Redux

I think I could make this meal every time I cook (twice a month) and still have people breaking down the door to get it. It's very popular.

Thursday nights we alternate hosting meals with our neighboring community, Sunward. So between our members and theirs, Thursday night dinners can be large. This week I had 23 meat eaters, 18 vegetarians, and 12 children of assorted ages, for a total of 53.

I decided to make 4 recipes each of the vegetarian and meat version of the soup (figuring meat eaters could have the vegetarian if they wanted extra, but not the other way around). I shopped at Meijer this time instead of going to Arbor Farms like I usually do, for a couple of different reasons. One, I didn't indicate that this would be a mostly organic meal, so I didn't feel compelled to buy as much organic as I usually would. Two, I needed ingredients that I couldn't get at Arbor Farms, but didn't have time to go to three stores (I also needed to go to the Mexican market).

Doing the shopping at Meijer reduced the cost of the meal quite a bit, as did a key discovery. Last time, I bought cartons of stock, but at $3 a carton it added quite a bit to the cost of the meal. But I didn't have the time or energy to do stock from scratch, which would have been cheaper. This time, I was looking through the latest Cook's Illlustrated and noticed that Better Than Boullion stock concentrate came out second in their chicken stock tasting. Looking on line, I noticed that it came out second in the vegetable stock tasting too! At $4/jar, this made for a huge cost savings to the meal, and no sacrifice in quality from the liquid stock I used before.

eGullet member CaliPoutine was visiting the area and offered to assistant cook. She was did a great job and was a fabulous help - thank Randi! She brought along 4 jars of home canned peaches to contribute to a peach berry crisp that she made for dessert, plus she smuggled in four avocados from Canada, where for some reason they are much cheaper than in the US. And good thing, since Meijer didn't have enough ripe avocados and we would have been seriously short without them.

Shopping List, with notes for next time

Soup

1 jar Better than Bouillon Chicken

1 jar Better than Bouillon Vegetable

8 large white onions

3 heads garlic

16 tomatoes

1 bunch cilantro

1 pkg oregano

3 chipotles

Garnishes

2 pkgs (6 dozen) corn tortillas (needed more with this number of people, we ran out after the first pass)

2 pks Cotija cheese

1 3/4 lbs Montery Jack

3 limes

2 bunches of cilantro (I stole a little bit for the salad, and we ran out again)

16 avocados (That's what I wanted - we ended up with Randi's 4, and 9 from Meijer, one of which was bad. One can never have enough avocados in this crowd. 16 would have been better.)

3 jalepenos

Chipotle sauce (the rest of the can, pureed in the food processor)

2 1/2 cartons sour cream (there were some leftovers in the fridge, so I just bought one more 750 ml size from Meijer)

Salad

Instead of a green salad like last time, I decided to make a corn salad. I cooked the corn and then rinsed it in cold water to start chilling, chopped up all the other ingredients and mixed it all together with the dressing. I thought it turned out pretty well.

4 lbs frozen corn

3 jars roasted red peppers (Alessi brand - could have used more)

1 red onion, finely diced

1 bunch green onion, chopped

1 bunch cilantro, minced fine

6 limes, juiced

Olive oil (about 1 1/2 times the quantity of lime juice)

Salt

Black pepper

Cumin

A little fresh oregano from the garden

Peach Berry Crisp

These are ingredients in addition to the four mason jars of peaches Randi bought, and the whole wheat pastry flour, oats, cinnamon, etc that were already in the pantry.

1 lb butter

2 lbs frozen peaches

7 lbs frozen mixed berries (Meijer had a big bag of frozen berries on sale)

1 pkg slivered almonds

brown sugar (because the common house pantry was out)

Big tub of cheap (Dean's) vanilla ice cream

Best part has to be the price - $129.30! So it'll be about $3.50 per person. Compared to almost $6 last time! Part of that has to do with the ratio of meat eaters to vegetarians (I had to buy more chicken last time for fewer total people). I meant to buy tofu to have some protein for the veggies, but forgot. Oops. The stock made a big difference, plus there were some economies of scale - I still only needed one pkg of oregano and one bunch of cilantro for the soup. for example. This was just about the perfect number of people in terms of maximizing the value.

Just another comment about the soup itself. One of my neighbors was asking me what the broth was, because it's so flavorful. And it's a tricky recipe - the soup looks pretty much just like plain broth, but as one of my neighbors said, it has layers and layers of flavor - "Where," she asked "did that come from?" You start with stock, then enrich it with chicken and aromatics, then puree tomato and onions and garlic and chipotle, saute them, and then add them into the broth for something that's deep and delightful.

[tammylc]

Tom Ka Gai soup, Sesame Noodles (with chicken or tofu)

Last Sunday I did a new menu, after a couple of reruns.

We're experimenting wth some different cooking teams, so rather than my usual two assistants, I just had one other person to work with. The idea being that you both work a longer set of hours, and can more easily coordinate advance preparation if you're so inclined.

This meal didn't require advance preparation, and really would have been better done with the regular team staffing it. Of course, it would have helped if my co-cook had shown up at 2:00 when I started, rather than at 2:45. She is a friend, but also a flake, and tends to overcommit herself to things. But we still managed to get dinner out on time, so it wasn't a tragedy or anything.

This was a big meal - 32 meat eating adults/teens, 11 vegetarian adults/teens, and 16 kids of various ages.

My sesame noodle recipe is from Cook's Illustrated. It's a nice dish to do for common meal, because it's served at room temperature - no last minute rush to get everything out to the tables while still hot.

The recipe served 4-6, so I did 5 batches for the carnivores, and 2 batches for the vegetarians. There was just a little bit leftover, so this was the perfect amount.

The shopping list (mostly organic):

8 lbs of spaghetti (2 lbs cooked up plain for the kids)

1 3/4 c sesame seeds

1 3/4 c peanut butter

2 heads garlic

lots of fresh ginger

soy sauce (bought a small bottle, and ran out - bigger bottle next time)

hot sauce (used what was in the pantry)

brown sugar (pantry)

6 bunches scallions

7 med carrots (I bought a 2 lb bag and used most of them, as they were smaller than I'd think of as medium)

2 red peppers

2 cucumbers

7 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 lbs extra firm tofu

sesame oil

Cooked the spaghetti, rinsed with cold water, set aside. Toasted the sesame seeds, then pureed in the blender with the rest of the sauce ingredients (through brown sugar) - did this in 3 batches. Grated the carrots in the food processor. Sliced the red peppers and the cucumbers (peeled and seeded). Broiled the chicken, let it cool, then shredded it into bite size pieces. Cubed and pan fried the tofu to crisp. Once everything was ready, I tossed the spaghetti with sesame oil, mixed in the sauce, then mixed in the scallions, carrots and chicken for the meat eaters, and scallions, carrots, red peppers, cucumbers and tofu for the vegetarians. Sprinkled with some reserved sesame seeds, and it was done.

I added extra vegetables for the veggies after coming across a meatless version on the Cook's Illustrated website that called for the peppers and cucumbers. Around here, it's essential to have an actual veggie protein source, so they also got tofu. Chicken has a lot of it's own flavor and texture, but tofu is just sorta there. So I figured this would bump up the flavors for the vegetarians, and it did - they really raved, and some of the meat eaters who tried it even commented that it had more flavors going on.

Next up, the soup. My co-cook had suggested we make this, but didn't actually have a recipe or anything. So I went to the Internet, and found a couple I liked. Then I had to cross my fingers and hope I'd be able to find the ingredients I needed.

Tom Kha Gai

35 cups water

4 bunches lemongrass (about 8 stalks)

2 lbs of limes (couldn't find lime leaves)

1 pkg galangal (frozen)

1 bunch cilantro

7 cans coconut milk

7 cans straw mushrooms

salt

red curry paste

brown sugar

Brought the water to a boil. Chopped up the lemongrass into 2 inch pieces, smashing to bruise and release the oils. Zested 7 of the limes. Added the lemongrass, lime zest, stems from the cilantro and the galangal to the stock pot, and let the herbs steep for about 15 minutes. Then added the coconut milk and salt. The salt should have been fish sauce, but I was making a vegetarian version. I followed the recipes suggestion for substituting salt, but since I was mutiplying it by 7, ended up adding too much - I tasted the soup, and all I could taste was salt. Oh no! But I knew I had additional flavors to add, and just crossed my fingers that it would balance out. Drained and rinsed the mushrooms and cut them in half because they were large, and added them to the pot. Then much tinkering adding lime juice, brown sugar and curry paste. I ended up using all of the juice for the 2 lb bag of limes, and more of the curry paste than I intended to, as it came out a little hotter than I'd hoped. But, fortunately, somewhere in the last addition of curry paste and lime juice, I actually succeeded in balancing out the salt, and by the time we served the soup it wasn't oversalted anymore. Phew!

Part of the problem with salt, of course, is that it only adds salty flavor and nothing else. Next time I might substitute soy sauce to provide some depth of flavor. Or just tell the vegetarians to suck it up and eat their noodles, and put the fish sauce in anyway. Probably about half of our vegetarians do eat fish, anyway.

To add something green to the meal, we cooked up the florets from 7 bunches of broccoli. If I'd had more time I would have tried to find something interesting to do with the stems. Serving a side of vegetables is a challenge at common meal - something like broccoli always seems to overcooked, cold, or both. So I got a big pot of water boiling, and waited until about 6:12 to add the broccoli, cooked it for a scant 5 minutes, then drained it and rushed it out to the tables. I'm pleased to say it was bright green, tender, and hot (for a couple minutes anyway).

After all that we had no energy for making dessert, so I just served storebought cookies. But I didn't buy enough, apparently, as by the time I went up to get some for myself, they were gone. :-(

Another good meal. Lots of compliments. Definitely one for the rotation.

[tammylc]

Cookin' Common Meal - "A Trio of Summer Salads"

A light summery meal for a hot sweltering day. Attendance was about 38 adults and 10 kids. I didn't expect ot have quite so many, but there was a mix-up with Sunward and I didn't know a bunch of them were coming. I was worried about not having enough food, but ended up fine. More potato salad would have been eaten, I'm sure, although there was a tiny bit left at the end of the night (which got scooped up for leftovers).

Curried Rice and Broccoli Salad with Mango Chutney Vinaigrette

This is a beautiful and tasty salad. I made 5 times the recipe, which was about the right amount for this number of people. Onions and ginger are sauteed with curry powder and rice, then cooked (I transferred it to the rice cooker instead of doing it in the same pot). This gets mixed with broccoli florets and diced stems that have been briefly blanched, as well as diced red pepper and shredded unsweetened coconut. The dressing is made from mango chutney, honey, lemon juice, cilantro and mint and gets added just before serving. Lovely.

Shopping/Ingredient list:

5 lbs rice (recipe uses 10 cups)

5 lbs broccoli (organic)

5 red pepper

2 onions (organic)

1 pkg unsweetened shredded coconut

curry powder

3 jars mango chutney

4 lemons

honey

1 bunch cilantro (organic)

mint from Common House herb garden

Potato Salad with Gouda, Eggs (with crumbled bacon on the side)

This is the American potato salad recipe from Cook's Illustrated, which I have made before and which is fabulous. The secret ingredient is celery seed, which totally kicks it up a notch.

Also 5 times the recipe, but in this case that probably wasn't quite enough. I jazzed it up with a 1 Year Boerenkaas Gouda from Zingerman's, as well as Nueske's Applewood Smoked bacon. I figured this would be a relatively inexpensive meal, so I could add a couple of luxury items. That turned out not to be quite true, although all those extra people brought the cost back down to my usual $4-$5 range. I should have had more cheese, though - I only bought a pound, and two would have been better. There was bacon left over. It also should have had more eggs - I had 10 boiled eggs that I had saved from Amy's meal last night, but decided I should leave some of them for the kids, so only used half in the salad - I should have used them all.

Shopping/Ingredient List

10 lbs potatoes (Side note on organic potatoes - they really tend to suck. But they also suck up lots of pesticides and are thus on the "dirty dozen" list of things that it's really good to buy organic. But I must remember to buy extras, because there will always be more wastage than with conventional potatoes.)

distilled white vinegar

1 bunch celery

1 red onion (organic)

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley (organic)

celery seed

mustard powder

1 jar sweet pickle relish (organic)

1 jar mayonaise (Hellman's, because sometimes you have to prioritize taste over nasty health food store mayonaise)

Green Salad with Sauteed Criminis, Pecans, Granny Smith Apples and Garlic Croutons

Weird combination of stuff, but I thought it worked well. I'd been inspired to the mushrooms and bread by a salad I had at the spring feast a Zingerman's a few weeks ago, and then felt compelled to add nuts for more protein. And then it seemed like it really needed something to add brightness and flavor, thus the apples. It needed its own salad dressing - probably a red wine vinaigrette - but I was too lazy and too short on time to do that, so we just put out the bottled dressings and let people roll their own.

4 big bags of organic salad mix was one bag too many. And I bought three loaves of day old Zing bread for making croutons, but only used two (and that made a lot). The croutons were exactly what I wanted them to be. Some crunch, some chew, and intensely garlicky. 3 packages of mushrooms, 3 apples. Only a pound of pecans, because they're so damn expensive this year.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp with Ice Cream

Got a great deal on organic strawberries, and harvested rhubarb from Scott and Sue's house. I made the crisp at the request of a neighbor who ended up not even being able to attend. Crisps are a popular dessert for GO diners, but I'd forgotten how time consuming they are to make. My assistant cook started making them at 4 pm, and they didn't get into the oven until 5:30. I'd asked my other assistant cook ([info]shadowriderhope) to pick up a couple things at Meijer, so it was 4:45 before she arrived. Even though I'd started cooking around 3:20, these two factors made for a real time crunch, and we ended up having to recruit a couple of people to set the tables for us. And left the kitchen in a shambles for the cleaners.

Shopping/Ingredient List

6 lbs organic strawberries (another on the dirty dozen list, it was nice to find reasonably priced organic strawberries)

8-10 stalks of rhubarb

1 lb butter

oats, flour, sugar, etc from the pantry

3 gallon pail of cheap vanilla ice cream

This was another popular meal. I'd definitely do it again, with some variations as noted above, but I'd find a way to manage the time better. Like make part or all of one of the salads the night before. Do a different dessert so 90 minutes of my assistant cook time wouldn't be taken up by it.

But it sure was tasty.

[megwoo]

I always make Chicken Mirabella when I'm cooking for a crowd. It's ridiculously easy, can be made ahead, can be served warm or at room temp and it's so delicious that people always rave about it.

http://www.iheartbacon.com/recipes/recipe.php?recID=29

[tammylc]

I always make Chicken Mirabella when I'm cooking for a crowd.  It's ridiculously easy, can be made ahead, can be served warm or at room temp and it's so delicious that people always rave about it.

http://www.iheartbacon.com/recipes/recipe.php?recID=29

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For the kind of cooking I'm doing, "can be made ahead" isn't actually a selling point. And things with ten hour marinating times can be tricky, as fridge space can be a challenge. But the recipe does look interesting, so maybe I'll think about how I could manage it.

[megwoo]

Hmmm. Sometimes I use those giant Ziplocks for marinating, as they can be stacked... maybe that would help? It really is a flavorful and easy prep recipe. I hope you can try it sometime!

Edited June 10, 2005 by megwoo (log)

[tammylc]

What makes cooking common meal nice, and manageable, is that I have 2 assistant cooks and - most importantly - an entire crew of cleaners. So the problem with doing things the night before is that I have to do all the prep and cleaning myself - blech! But sometimes worth it. To get 10 hours of marinating it would make the most sense for me to do the prep in the morning, and if I did that I could leave the dishes for that night's cleaners...

Ziplocks - good idea!

[CaliPoutine]

Hi Tammy,

I know you're a big fan of CI( as I am). Have you tried any of their other recipes? Specifically the chicken enchilada's or the chicken with 40 cloves of garlic?

[tammylc]

Hi Tammy,

I know you're a big fan of CI( as I am).  Have you tried any of their other recipes?  Specifically the chicken enchilada's or the chicken with 40 cloves of garlic?

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I haven't tried those particular recipes. But many of the meals I make come from CI. The beef burgundy and tortilla soup are both CI. This week I made the grill-roasted pork loin from the most recent issue, and it was fantastic. Speaking of which...

The menu - grill-roasted pork loin with chili-mustard spice rub, dilled potatoes and steamed broccoli. Plus portobellos stuffed with spinach, feta, pinenuts and sundried tomatoes for the vegetarians.

Pork

2 5-lb pork loins

cumin

chili powder

dry mustard

cayenne

kosher salt

Mmm, mmm, good. The pork loin came out absolutely perfectly. You only put coals on one side of the grill, creating a hot side and a cold side. You brown the pork loin for just 2 minutes on a side directly over the coals, then move the whole thing over to the cold side, throw some wood chips on the coals to add smoke and flavor, and put the lid on. Turn it 180 degrees after 20 minutes, then cook it until it reaches 140. Tent it with some foil and let it rest, and the temperature comes up to a perfect 155 or so. Done, but delightfully juicy and flavorful.

The recipe calls for brining it unless you have "enhanced" pork loin, which is what i ended up buying. I just didnt' have time to drive across town to my regular pork loin source, and just went to Meijer. Still, can't complain about the results.

Stuffed Mushrooms

23 portobello mushrooms

4 packages frozen spinach (organic)

2 jars sundried tomatoes (organic)

1.5 lbs crumbled feta cheese

1/4 c pine nuts (brought these from home, since I would have had to buy a whole pound at the store and I didn't want to pay $10)

This had to be the highest return veggie entree I've ever made - super easy, and people really liked it. Thaw and drain the spinach, mix it with the feta, chopped sundried tomatoes and toasted pinenuts. Distribute on top of the mushrooms, bake them in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Ta-da!

On the side

20 lbs red potatoes (organic)

5 sticks butter (organic)

2 bunches dill

salt

pepper

garlic powder

10 heads broccoli (organic)

Boiled the potatoes until tender. Took some out for the kids to have plain, then tossed the rest with the butter, minced dill, salt, pepper and a smidge of garlic powder. This is my stepmom's classic preparation for new potatoes in the summertime (although she used dried dill instead of fresh). It's one of my favorite comfort foods.

As for the broccoli, let's just say that my assistant cook and I have very different ideas about when broccoli is done. Not overdone, as you'd expect - this was just on the warm side of raw. I was busy carving the pork and since he's an experienced cook, when I saw him portioning out the broccoli I didn't even bother to check it, so I didn't realize it until I'd already sat down to eat and it was too late.

Dessert was watermelon left over from the previous night's meal, and some store bought cookies.

I brought over a bottle of wine that I'd picked up while shopping for my wine club the other day, and shared it around with people at dinner. It was a 2003 Kuentz-Bas Alsatian Riesling, and a mighty nice wine.

This was a great low-stress meal from the prep end of things. The most labor intensive/time consuming thing was cleaning and chopping 20 lbs of potatoes. After some initial prep on the pork and a few minutes of standing over the grill browning it, it just required periodic temperature checks. A nice relaxed couple of hours. I'll do this one again later this summer.

[Marmish]

Your meals all sound delicious!

What else is on the "dirty dozen" list besides strawberries and potatoes?

[tammylc]

Your meals all sound delicious!

What else is on the "dirty dozen" list besides strawberries and potatoes?

←

Thanks - I do my best!

You can get your own "dirty dozen" wallet card (and more information) here: http://www.foodnews.org/reportcard.php

The dirty dozen are:

apples

bell peppers

celery

cherries

imported grapes

nectarines

peaches

pears

potatoes

red raspberries

spinach

strawberries

The twelve least contaminated are:

asparagus

avocados

bananas

broccoli

cauliflower

corn (sweet)

kiwi

mango

onions

papaya

pineapples

peas (sweet)