feast |fēst|
noun: a large meal, typically one in celebration of something
verb [ intrans. ]: eat and drink sumptuously
The importance of cooking for those that you love (or just like a whole bunch) is the perfect reason for a feast. Planning, scheming, and turning out food for a large crowd is thrilling, vexing, exhausting and supremely satisfying. The latter half of 2009 started and ended with large scale feasts, one in Los Angeles and one in San Jose. The next two posts will cover those events in detail.
(photo by wm. christman)
The usual modus operandi when I go to Los Angeles is to get together with Les, who is my one of my best friends down there, and proceed to spend two and a half days visiting as many interesting restaurants, food trucks, farmer's markets and bars as our stomachs can handle. Usual (dietary) caution is thrown to the wind as we exist for one thing during those times: feasting.
In June of 2009, as we were planning another weekend of sheer gluttony, we decided to take one of those days and cook for handful of our LA friends. Since it was in the middle of a sweltering LA summer, it seemed natural to do a Mediterranean-themed summer grill.
And as most of our feasts go, we over-planned with the expectation that we'd scale back anyway. The initial menu had items like fig and prosciutto flatbread and beer-can chicken but as we planned shopping and judged time those seemed to over-complicate the theme. So we settled on a majority of cold apps, some excellent locally baked bread from the Village Bakery in Silverlake, two or three different kinds of marinated and grilled beef and chicken with potatoes and herbed grilled vegetables. Wine, bread pudding, ice cream and fine bourbon rounded out the deal.
Instead of the usual Friday afternoon fly-in start, I drove down to LA on Thursday morning with a trunk full of cooking gear, nearly all of the dry ingredients we'd need, and a challah and hangerdried cherry bread pudding (on ice, 'natch) that I had cooked the night before. That allowed us to fully flesh out our menu that evening over a selection of sushi and afterwards, several glasses of bourbon. Friday morning was allocated to shopping and Friday afternoon was prep. We already knew that early Saturday afternoon was going to be hectic.
On Saturday, a morning diversion to 2009's Erotica LA convention (the "other" reason for being in LA that weekend) preceded our actual kitchen blitz, but by 2pm we were in full-on work mode. Meats got our first attention. We spatchcocked four whole chickens and dunked two of them into some flavored brine and dry-rubbed the others with a garlic-lime mix.
fresh habañero rubbed hanger steak (photo by wm. christman)
For the beef, we bought two beautiful looking hanger steaks and two skirt steaks. The day before, we picked up some nice looking habañeros at a local supermarket and those got diced up and mixed into olive oil with a bit of salt and then spread on one of the hanger steaks. One of the skirt steaks received a soy-garlic paste marinade. The other two pieces of beef got a simple dusting of coarse salt and cracked black pepper.
a lesson in knife skills...the Mediterranean salad (photo by wm. christman)
Getting the meats done led to the next mountain of work: chopping, dicing and assembling a multi-multi-multi ingredient Mediterranean salad, then putting together a tomato and garlic dip, plus a bowl of hummus The salad was problematic and it was clear that there were way too many vegetables for the bowl. I think the knife work and assembly took nearly an hour and we started to lose track of time. The end result was worth it but we nearly blew our entire schedule on that one dish. The tomato and garlic dip was a straightforward puréed production as was the hummus.
colourful smashed potaoes, ready to grill (photo by wm. christman)
Once we were clear of nearly everything that went into the cold dishes, we got to the outdoor grills. We fueled and lit all three in succession and checked on the next door neighbours, who took on the cheese plate, potatoes and grilled vegetables. They were in much better shape than we were. They had everything done: sliced and oiled crooknecks and giant zucchini, purple and golden pre-smashed potatoes, and lightly sugared wedges of pineapple. All ready for fire.
Parmesan and thyme pâte à choux...soon to be gougères (photo by wm. christman)
The last bit of business were cooking off some Parmesan and thyme gougères which are always a hit and fun to do. Since they're best fresh from the oven, baking them off was planned for just after the meat went on the grills - chicken first then beef 15 minutes later. That way, the 20-30 minutes of baking they required timed out the chicken to be close to done and beef to about medium rare.
cheesy and puffy... (photo by wm. christman)
A quick, five-minute prep of butter, water, flour and egg (with cheese and thyme) for the pâte à choux was completed and the gougères were piped for baking. We got all the apps out when the gougère production hit the oven so they'd arrive as a high note to the apps. The meat was well on its way, and the veg was in full grill mode. Within 30 minutes meat was rested, sliced and plated along with the potatoes and veg, bread was sliced, wine poured, and the main event was on. We had achieved our summer grill...ah, feasting.
the finished grilled habañero hanger steak (photo by wm. christman)
For dessert, the challah bread pudding was a pretty standard production with egg-rich challah, reconstituted dried tart cherries, eggs, cream, sugar and butter. We just put it into the switched-off oven just before all of the mains hit the table. By the time it was just heated through, the group had plowed through a good portion of what we prepared and just needed something sweet to push them into the bliss of a food-coma nap. The bread pudding with vanilla ice cream filled that niche nicely.
The end result? A bunch of full, happy, and sated folks enjoying a comfortably warm Los Angeles evening. And that continued to stoke the fire for the rest of the evening which was filled with tipsy after-dinner bourbon, European herbal aperitif, and single malt boozing and extra snacking on the leftovers; the perfect end to another LA feasting weekend.
