Cooking for company

Four-layer polenta casserole.

Choosing dishes for a company dinner is, for me, a fine balance between creating delicious food, and not having to be stressed out with last minute cooking. I choose recipes that can be made ahead, and I do a lot of planning, so I know exactly what will go into each dish, and when it needs to be made. For example, the four-layer polenta casserole I served this past weekend only looks and tastes complicated — each part is super easy, and all but the last topping can be prepared ahead of time. And even that can be prepped ahead. The basic polenta recipe is from Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. It's baked in the oven and requires almost no effort. I made a double recipe, and added extra water so my polenta would be soft and creamy, and stand up to being made ahead, spending time on the counter, and being baked again to cook the crema. I also added a small amount of nutritional yeast for extra flavor. While the polenta was baking, I made pine nut crema from Viva Vegan by Terry Hope Romero, and stashed it away in the fridge for later. For my take on a recipe inspired by spinach with pine nuts and raisins from Urban Vegan by Dynise Balcavage, I sliced mushrooms and washed spinach, then put them away until needed. I minced garlic and zested lemon. About 45 minutes before dinner, the crema was spread onto the polenta and the dish was placed back into the oven to bake until the crema was firm and lightly golden. At that point, about 3/4 of a jar of Trader Joe's organic no-salt marinara was spread on top of the crema. While the sauce heated in the oven, I sautéed the mushrooms with garlic, added the spinach, dried cranberries and lemon zest, (no pine nuts since they were already in the crema), then spread it over the top of the casserole and called everyone to dinner.

Red and green cabbage salad.

A salad of shredded red and green cabbage, shredded carrots and a boatload of greed onions, tossed with a dressing inspired by a recipe for gentrified coleslaw from Celebrate Vegan by Dynise Balcavage, had been made early in the day and allowed to marinate in the refrigerator. The salad completely disappeared, leading my husband to say it was exactly the right amount, but making me  worry I hadn't made enough. Do you think like my husband or like me?

Tourlou tourlou.

A Greek baked vegetable dish, tourlou tourlou (pronounced toodloo toodloo) is an easy side dish. Once all the veggies are cut, it just cooks itself in the oven. Layers of sliced potatoes, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onions, garlic and tomato bake until the eggplant is creamy and the potatoes are soft. I used a five-quart enameled cast iron dutch oven to hold the veggies, which came to the top before they were baked. It was baked early, then reheated in the oven while the crema was firming up. The original recipe called for — take a deep breath — one cup of olive oil! That makes me kind of shudder. I'm not used to such a generous amount of oil in my food. I drizzled olive oil on the bottom of the pot, and over the top of the veggies, and it seemed perfect. The vegetables only get better the next day, by the way, if you have leftovers. You can find the recipe here.

We also had a platter of stuffed grape leaves bought from PCC co-op, and an excellent hors d'oeuvre of tapenade and rice crackers made by a guest.

Caramel apple tart.

For dessert I made an apple tart. The sponge crust had a layer of caramel under the apples, made from the recipe for caramel filling in homemade yolos from The Oh She Glows Cookbook by Angela Liddon. The apples are drizzled with bee-free honee.

One of our guests made wonderful chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, but unfortunately they didn't get photographed.

Because so much of the dinner was cooked leisurely earlier in the day, and because I kept the menu limited, I didn't feel stressed, and was able to enjoy my company. What do you do to minimize stress when cooking for a crowd?




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brunch

We've had house guests since June 24 so I haven't had time to focus on the blog. One guest, my brother, has left, but the others will be here until July 5. My oldest son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter are here for nine days. How will I manage when they leave? On Sunday, we had about 40 guests at a brunch in their honor, and since I cooked food mainly from this blog and a couple of others, I thought I'd describe what we served.

Actually, my plan was to photograph the table just before the guests arrived. The camera was out and ready but somehow, people were here and socializing and eating and the whole thing was over before I remembered about the pictures. So I can only describe what we had - and how long it took to make it, and post a picture of the table AFTER the event was over. This is a blog about easy cooking, so it was kind of a test to see just how easy it was. You know that preparing food for a party takes time, and when you have house guests and one of them is four months old, it's not easy to cook for an additional 35 people! We used a combination of store-bought and homemade dishes, and three friends brought food, because I possess the gene that causes me to believe there won't be enough. Duh. (Of course there was way too much, but this meant we could take it easy and not have to cook much the next day.)

First, the purchased food. We ordered five varieties of bagels from Gotham Bagel, a real New York bagel shop here in the Midwest. They also make amazing tofu cream cheese in THREE varieties so we got that, too. I had a plate of cucumber and tomato slices and small bowls of olives, muffaletto, raw cashews, grape tomatoes, kumquats, wasabi roasted almonds and who knows what else. I assembled a large platter of hummus, tabouli, bean salad and dolmas from Trader Joe's, accompanied by raw carrots and cucumbers, a basket of mini-pita bread and two kinds of crackers. Judy brought sweet potato salad and strawberries and Claire brought a mock tuna salad made from soaked sunflower seeds and cashews.

The day before the party, we did some baking. I made lemon syrup soaked hazelnut cake (substituting Brazil nuts), carrot bread and ginger bars and my husband made oatmeal chocolate chip and chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies. (The chocolate chocolates were the hit of the dessert table) My friend Ann brought brownies. I also made sweet and tart carrots and marinated them overnight. In the middle of all this baking, we went on a garden tour.

I hit the kitchen at 6 a.m. the day of the brunch and started cooking. I was very organized and had a list of what to do and a pile of recipes. The only slowdown was that the refrigerator was so packed I couldn't find any of the ingredients. What with one eggplant up here and another down there, I had to keep calling my husband to find the things he had stuffed in. First I made tourlou tourlou from Mama's Taverna. I made so much - nearly a double recipe in two enameled cast iron pans - that I thought we'd be eating it all week, but that didn't happen. It was so popular that most of it disappeared. I made it with half the oil from the recipe and it still turned out great. (When I make it again for just us, I'll probably reduce the oil by half again.) I also made yummy Greek cabbage salad from the same blog.

Next I made bread pudding from Veganomicon, substituting frozen blueberries for the chocolate chips. My daughter-in-law said it tasted like french toast only better. (The blueberry idea came from Diet Dessert and Dogs.) Then, I threw together a pot of Nava Atlas' amazing coconut corn soup. (I had also cooked a bunch of chick peas the day before with the intention of making Norman's chick pea snack, but when I saw how much food there was, I decided to save them for another day.) My husband put together a fresh fruit salad. By 9:30 a.m. I was finished cooking. By 10 a.m. I had assembled the middle-eastern platter, filled the various bowls and was ready to relax until the guests arrived at 11. Now I'll have to do it all again so I can photograph it! (insert smiley face here...)