So at long last, I am fully returned from my weekend travels and travails, and y’all have been busy in here! Loving the sous vide discussion. It’s one of those gadgets I’m trying to hold off on until we’ve got a bigger kitchen, but you guys are making it very hard to do. Lovely pictures from @Skipper, @Tman, @Eric_Majkut, and the rest :-D
So, as I mentioned upthread, I did food prep for about 20 friends and acquaintances this weekend. I got pictures (not very good ones, sadly) of a lot of it, and will attempt to convey the madness to you all.
These are the groceries I purchased or had and brought with me. In addition to this, the hostess bought 5.5lbs of thinly sliced beef, 3.5 lbs each of chicken breast tenderloins and chicken wings (not pre-divided, so I got to learn how to divvy up a wing really fast this weekend! hah), 6lbs of bacon, 4lbs of sausage links, 48 eggs, half a gallon of buttermilk, and 48oz of kimchi :-D
Over the course of about 4 whirlwind hours I (with the desperately appreciated help of a couple of friends) produced:
- Beef Bulgogi (with sliced onions, carrots, and scallions)
- Korean Fried Chicken Wings
- Korean Fried Chicken Tenders
- Seasoned Spicy Bean Sprouts
- Seasoned Spicy Spinach
- “Ssamjang” BBQ Dipping Sauce
- Spicy Cucumber-and-Onion Salad
- Sweet-and-Salty Glazed Baby Potatoes
- Honey-Butter-Soy Sauce for the chicken
- Spicy-Sweet Glaze for the chicken
- Zesty Asian Slaw
- White Rice (about 3lbs of worth, lol)
- Spicy Rice and Fish Cake Stew (not pictured, d’oh)
Despite some big setbacks–I was two hours delayed due to horrible traffic between Raleigh and Gatlinburg, TN, and thus had to rush the cooking; and I also managed to HORRIBLY burn the first batch of rice, necessitating a friend driving down the mountain we were cabin partying it up on top of to get more and totally wasting the extremely fancy Korean rice I bought–it all came together nearly perfectly at the end and people ate damn near all of it. We wound up throwing out about 1/4 of the sprouts and a cup or two of the stew, but the rest was either devoured or taken home by folks!
The next morning, three of us got up early and made a huge breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, omelets (with toppings like onions, bell peppers, Spam–leftover from the Korean, since I didn’t have time to make Kimchi Fried Rice–hot peppers, mushrooms, and cheese), scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. Sadly I “lost” my bag of chocolate chips, nuts, and cranberries, so the pancakes were fairly plain, apart from honey, butter, and syrup (in truth, the bag wound up stuck in my car and all the chocolate melted. fuck).
No pics of breakfast, since it was basically served ad-hoc.
Finally, the second night, my buddy prepared a huge Greek feast, which I helped out on several elements of (including the grilled kebabs and the chicken gyro).
All told, we had a big make-your-own Greek salad bar with lettuce, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, parmesan and feta, and sliced olives. He also made these amazing puff pastry-based spanakopita turnovers full of feta, spinach, and caramelized onions, plus some dolmas-from-a-can, the aforementioned grilled kebabs and chicken, pitas, roasted mixed-tubers (sweet and regular potatoes and three colors of carrots), and then yogurt sauce and minced veggies for the pitas. Later on, he made “Greek doughnuts”–yeast dough flavored with cinnamon and crushed walnuts, deep fried in balls an then drizzled with honey.
Of course, to say nothing of the enormous keg of beer and something like 40L of liquor and a dozen or so 6 packs of ciders and fancy beers. . .
It was a glorious weekend of food, friends, and fun :-D. Sadly I didn’t wind up running my RPG session as planned, but everything else was great!