That's a scary title - considering I am driving up to Berkeley on Wednesday and will have to prep a series of things before I leave so I have time to the rest of the prepping on Thursday morning. There will be 7 people at this year's dinner. One of them is a vegan, the other a vegetarian, 2 are extremely picky. Only 3 of us will eat anything.
The plan is to make the vegetarian shepherd's pie from the very last issue of Gourmet magazine. It involves making a deep and rich vegetable stock and roasting enormous amounts of vegetables and peeling pearl onions etc. It will also involve two baking dishes since the recipe calls for cream and butter in the mashed potato&celery root puree, which I will leave out of the vegan version.
Then there will be chicken instead of turkey, and my fingers are crossed that this increases to probability that the picky eaters will have some of it this year.
I am quite sure they won't care for the acorn squash stuffed with bulgur, pine nuts and cranberries, or the fennel& radicchio salad, or the scarlet carrot soup (again from the last Gourmet RIP). But maybe they'll have some of the mashed potatoes I'll save from the shepherd's pie before I mix in the celery root. And there'll be lots of bread for them to nibble on (thank you Acme).
This w-e I will make the rich vegetable stock and freeze it. On Tuesday evening I'll make the scarlet carrot soup (beets give it the color) and the vats of frozen stock will keep it cool on the way up. I need to find a cooler that'll keep all this stuff safe from the hound, who like 3 of the 7 dinner guests, is a complete and uncontrolled omnivore.
Come to think of it, what I actually need is a locked safe...
No comments:
Post a Comment