Cooking for crowds is a practice in self-restraint

I realise that if you outsource half of the food for a Christmas party (or any other party, for that matter), you can still have fresh, home-prepared food on the table and with minimum hassle. Traditionally, out of sheer laziness, my parents order turkeys and assorted roasts, usually lamb and beef, from Cold Storage- they arrive cold, and we simply heat them up in the oven. Opposed as I am to reheating cooked roast, and the usually inferior quality of such preparations, laziness works, because no one, I've realised, actually gives a damn about lamb being medium-rare and turkey being moist and tender by the time they survey the spread of food. Singaporean buffet instincts take over and it's quantity over quality anytime. Even if the meat were to be impeccably prepared, I wager people would just ho-hum and offer some compliments in a very non life-changing way. So for a couple of ho-hums and compliments (more likely, nobody will notice), one would have to go through at least a week's hoary preparation and countless hours of mad worrying (is the turkey DONE, is the lamb undercooked?) and, on top of that, negotiate oven and fridge space between large, irritatingly septic cuts of meat. So yes, I happen to think that ordering roasts is a perfectly noble thing to do when catering Christmas dinner for a crowd. 

It saves the host crazymad work, freeing up time to walk around and make everyone feel comfy, serve drinks (alcohol, I think, is often more important than perfect food at large parties) and generally get into a state of mind that isn't, for lack of a better word, militant. It also leaves the host-cook lots of time to do other interesting things in the kitchen- apart from meats, sure winners and requisites at any decent buffet are soups, salads, casseroles and dessert. My family has come to a consensus about this- there is no point focusing energy on anything other than some fantabulous accoutrements, all of which we have become mini-specialists in- mushroom soup, potato salad, vegetable casserole, some random dessert, raw vegetables with dips; cushy, easy, pseudo-gourmet and reliable. No frills, no stress.

Last year, I tried my hand at making all sorts of fabulous gravies and sauces to go with the meal- I turned out a wonderful bread-sauce, made cranberry-orange sauce, a caramelised onion relish, parsley sauce and cheese sauce, most of which were untouched at the end of dinner, not because they weren't tasty (I spent several hours on Christmas afternoon making sure they were), but because no one bothers with sauces. So this year, I've decided not to bother. Except for a caramelised onion gravy, which itself is a by-product of the mushroom soup, I'm really not bothering much about over-furnishing the table. It has saved us all a great deal of money, time and energy. As my mum intones, put in more effort for smaller groups, big groups don't notice small details. 

As and when I do host an intimate gathering of friends around the table, no more than 6, I have the following menu in mind-

Appetiser

1. Bread basket with assorted cheeses, olives and patê

The bread, of course, will be a medley of my favourite beer bread and a 10-grain laof, both spectacular with sliced parmesan, or gorgonzola or bresse de bleu; certainly olive oil will not be out of the question (I have a bottle of Olio Bello kalamata olive oil, it is excellent), though I am very partial to bread and (unsalted) butter. 

2. Cocktails

Entree

1. Mesclun salad with red wine and walnut vinaigrette, dressed with a mollet egg and bacon

or 

2. Salad of prosciutto and baby rocket with honey and balsamic vinaigrette 

or

3. French Onion Soup or Cream of Mushroom

Main

1. A roast, likely leg of lamb, served with creamed potatoes and dressed with its juices in a red wine reduction. Maybe fish, probably salmon, but I had a very bad experience with fish for dinner once, so it's not one of my favourite things to cook. 

or

2. Risotto- I love risotto and how versatile it is, perhaps my personal favourite is mentaiko and parmesan risotto, it is really GAH wonderful. 

 

or 

3. Pasta- probably carbonara because it is such a reliable dish, though I really do wish to serve spaghetti puttanesca, that intensely flavoured sauce of tomato, capers, anchovies and kalamata olives. 

or

4. If it's a very, very intimate bunch of friends, I will make beef stew, perfumed with orange and allspice, throw in a couple of home-made sausage by the side and serve it all atop mash or apricot-studded rice. My favourite meal in the world for a bunch of my favourite people, why not?

Dessert

Depending on what goes before, it might be anything from a couple of macarons to chocolate cake or pudding, or simply some sorbet or ice cream, cut fruit etc, but dessert will always be tasty and the perfect way to collapse into a satisfied heap on the couch. 

Anyway, to the few people who read this blog, I hope you get great food and drinks this Christmas, I know I will!

Joyeux Noël à tous et avez-vous une bonne nouvelle anée!

  

Things we learn by cooking for others

I learned many things about cooking these past few days, and all hinging on the basic principle of expectation versus result, assumptions versus reality. 

For instance, you'd assume that turkey is a formidable thing to prepare because it is so huge in relation to most other roasts, and because so many people in books, the internet and TV make, as Nigella writes, such a song and dance about timings, stuffings (or not stuffings), brining, storing and other turkey folklore, mainly descended from American craziness in the kitchen. You'd expect that turkey, because it is so unfamiliar to most Singaporean kitchens, would be strange and difficult, hard to manage, hard to predict. Yet, when I actually got down to doing it this year, it wasn't quite as problematic as I (perhaps) wanted it to be- it really is essentially roasting a giant chicken. It roasts reliably and, if brined, turns out fabulously moist. No two words about it- it is not a bitch to prepare. Many props to the recipes that informed me along the way, Jamie Oliver's basic roast turkey from 'Cooking With Jamie' and Nigella Lawson's turkey from 'How to Eat', both of which, I think, are excellent recipes, though brining the bird before roasting seems to me an important step which neither mention; plenty of information on the Net, no point waxing culinary here.

So if you ask me if I will attempt turkey again, I'm really quite sure I will. The turkey I prepared for Juling's wonderful MJCAB Christmas gathering was moist and cooked through, flavourful and tender from the brining and really quite unlike the delivered turkeys we've had for family Christmas. I loved the stuffing, and many people at the table did so too. So yes, against all expectations, turkey is really quite worth the effort involved in cooking it yourself.

Apart from the turkey, preparing for tonight's dinner also taught me to count on the inveterate late-coming of people to dinner parties. Having nearly ripped my hair out in frustration to make sure the turkey came out at exactly 5.10pm, in time to be served hot for a 6.00pm++ dinner, I was most shocked to find that Rickson, who drove me, and I, were the first to arrive at Juling's house and we had to sit around for about an hour and a half before mostly everyone arrived and we could start eating. I don't mean to gripe, but in order to make a 2pm meeting in school (I was late, regardless), I had to take a cab after shoving the turkey into the oven at 1.30, and cabbed home to make it in time to fuss around the completed roast. That's a total of almost $20 on taxis. 

If anything, this has taught me to simply let go and stop micro-managing cooking, things tend to take care of themselves and more so if you have a level-head atop your shoulders; panic, as my mum loves to intone, only leads to the unnecessary spending of money and you screw things up that needn't have screwed up. Patience and a loving tolerance of people's propensity to be tardy make cooking for others an infinitely less screwy activity. It is a hard lesson to learn, and one that has taken way too many freaky-Joel dinner parties to internalise.

But fussing aside, I really enjoyed tonight's gathering, fraught as it was, initially, with panic and irritation surrounding hot turkey (it turns out hot turkey can be kept reasonably warm in a recently used oven if covered in foil); and I'm happy to have contributed something which I personally thought was good and sincerely made to that table, and basically to have been with everyone tonight. I count it one of my happiest blessings to be surrounded with such reliably fun and charitable friends who value as much as I do the times we've spent together. You realise as you age and get bogged down by things like school and the future, that anchoring yourself in a group of old friends is perhaps one of the best ways to stay healthy in spirit; throw in lots of food and beer and you have, I think, a good game.

Anyway, I now have leftover turkey and stuffing EARLY this year, and shall make quick work of the good stuff even before the major eats on the 24th. Yes, happy days. 

Things doodubbledoowop

This is looking set to be a most hair-raising weekend. Juling's party is on tomorrow night, and Itotally forgot about the DnD meeting at school I have to attend in the afternoon, which equals madhatter tumbling about for a taxi from NUS to Pasir Ris as soon as the meeting's over to remove, rinse, drain, dry and roast the turkey in time for dinner AND then transporting the damned thing to Juling's house. I think I might use a big cardboard box for the purpose. In addition to that, my brother wants me to make potato salad for some gathering of his tomorrow, and I haven't gone grocery-shopping for both the turkey and other miscellanies yet. It is hair-brained and BAD PLANNING at its best. 

GAH. I sometimes wish I could trust other people to do the cooking for me and, indeed, my family is more than capable of rising to the occasion, but I'm just too much of an attention-whore. 

Anyway, below is the song I wrote for Chelsea, who left for Vancouver a few days ago to read psychology. It is a most ridiculous song. Wanting to be original, I intended to simply write some lyrics and ham up some music on Finale to paste a score in her goodbye scrapbook, but I found myself actually writing a melody to go with the lyrics in an attempted homage to Bernstein and Sondheim's strange and fluctuating tunes. It turned out to be pretty singable, too, despite the augmented 2nds, 4ths and 5ths splattered about very gratuitously. It is a song that warns against the liberal excesses of Western society in music that is decidedly grounded in 20th century Western styles, it is a silly, stupid song. The piano part is absolute rubbish, but given how fond I have become of the whole thing, I might rework it into something marginally decent sometime.

I really have become explicitly fond of this song, and it's inspired me to embark on a grand and ambitious scheme to write a musical called "Singapore!" which sets into music (less chirpy, patriotic and squeaky-clean than Dick Lee's) songs about frustration, migration, love, joy, money, sex and homosex that so paint our country its delightful shade of red and white. Yes, it is already frothing in my mind.  

Me is emcee

It is the third Wednesday of my hitherto tepid December vacation, and I am spending most of it sitting at the VCH backstage watching flame-haired people walking around adjusting poorly-knotted neckties in the mirror; the smell of hairspray, gel and cheap perfume is heavy in the air and I feel I could be doing so much better for myself. Like, I have a turkey defrosting in the fridge which needs some attention, and there are raspberry macarons I'm supposed to be turning out for Christmas that are still stuck in my mind's to-do list. There's also the foregone prospect of lying in bed finishing the 800+ more pages I have left of 'A Suitable Boy', Vikram Seth's exercise in waxing excessive. Instead, I am here, waiting to emcee for SP's band concert, feeling generally morose and grumpy that all I received in payment was a packet of vinegary fried noodles which I quietly put back on the table. 

This is the 3rd Leonard Tan concert I am emceeing for this month, which is kinda cool cause I feel like a part of his entourage or something- $500 for the Leonard Tan package, emcee included. This is definitely going on my resumé when I apply to NUS Centre for the Arts to be the official CFA Emcee du jour. I don't suppose I might earn quite a tidy sum from standing in front of bored audiences every week going "(insert acronym) will now play Random Overture by Obscure American Composer" in my best TV announcer voice, but it is tremendous fun picking shirts to wear and thinking of ways to inflect "good evening Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to (insert Italian musical term)!" 

2 weeks ago, I emceed for the Philwinds concert, also conducted by the amazing Leonard Tan, though the reception I got was kinda stinky. People gave me judgy "who the hell are you" looks while, in the grand tradition of that indefatigably standoffish ensemble, treating me like the little nyonya. A colder bunch never I conceived, I swear I heard sniggers coming from behind me when I took my position on stage, tried inflection #4 of "good evening (see above)" and the mic wasn't on. I tried my double-dimpled smile at the audience, and must have stood there for the most hot-collared 30 seconds of my life before the bumbling backstage guy came out with another mic.  

People should be nicer to emcees. It's not easy to stand in front of a crowd and talk, simmering in full knowledge that everyone just wants you to get it over with and let the performance go on. Sometimes I wonder why all these groups insist on having emcees when no one really listens to us anyway, and most of the time, most emcees are either terribly bad or, especially if they come in pairs, lame, uninspiring and badly scripted. I consider myself quite the sterling example of a good emcee, being not too unattractive and capable of a great Singapore-good-English accent. It's all swoopy bass and dramatic pauses, it's like playing Scheherazade with a microphone. My genius, I believe, stems from years of writing scripts for hopeless emcees and listening to good emcees reading shitty scripts, and I am, of course, being a little turd.

-Intermission-

Anyway, random SP band people have been walking up to thank me, which is such a pleasant gesture, though some moolah would be nice, considering the expensive lunch I ate to prep myself emotionally for the ritual stoning of the emcee. 

It's now the intermission, and the concert's been pretty good, though there was the typical audience-mumble and occasional mocking titter at something I pronounced impeccably (people find it amusing how simple words like 'familiar' sound when enunciated as they should be).   

Anyway, fun as this has been, I really can't wait to skidadle out of here, and now there's a huge 30-40 minute lull before I go out to send the audience of ingrates off to their happy suppers and margaritas while I plod on home, lonesome as a bee. 

Self-pity looks so good on me, I should really make it a trademark.