Kitsmas Dinner: Cooking for 23
Dec. 25th, 2013 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuftearsAs some of you might know, I hosted a family potluck for Thanksgiving which went reasonably well. Some of the relatives couldn't make it though, so I decided to host another potluck for Christmas.
... 23 people RSVP'd.
Okay. Um. Eek.
Fortunately my brother had bought another folding table, so all I needed were some more folding chairs to go with it, and we had just barely enough chairs to seat everyone. I thought on what to make-- as usual, I make veggies to ensure that someone is bringing the nutrition, but I wanted an appetizer as well, for people who got here early.
Last time, I'd made Annie Chung's potstickers (from Whole Food) which was straightforward enough, but this time I wanted to do something a bit special.
Well... That may have been a bit ambitious.
Keep in mind 23 people is a lot of people, and wontons are pretty small. I decided that I should make at least 69, to ensure that each person would be able to nibble on three. Some people might eat more, some less, since we had kids attending as well as adults.
... It didn't quite work out that way. 2 pounds of spinach and 1 pound of ground pork, plus half a cup of chopped onions makes a lot of filling. I was able to fill 108 wonton wrappers -- 54 per Nasoya wrappers package.
Here's half of the uncooked wontons. The other half were still in the refrigerator, staying chilled from when I made them the previous night. All told, after I cooked spinach and pork for the filling (which smelled so, so good) it took two hours or so to fold all 108 wontons I made, and another two or three hours to fry them in batches of 6-8. That's the big problem with frying these, as opposed to baking them, but baking can in no way duplicate the taste sensation of frying. I'm exhausted from all that standing around; my legs were actually hurting midway through the frying. You can't leave the wok alone for long though.
Here're the wontons, freshly made! It turns out I actually overestimated how many people would eat, and had about half of them left, so next time I do this, I can just halve the amount of spinach and ground pork I used.
On the other paw, when I made it clear I was cool with people taking the wontons home with their leftovers, I had none left at the end, so I guess they were really quite popular!
You can see this is a lot of people!
Each family brought at least one dish; most brought several. We had a ton of food. Well okay, not a literal ton, but still, most dishes only got half eaten; only some dishes like the roast beef got pretty much devoured by the end of the night. People divvied up leftovers and took them home; I wound up with just most of the the mix of brown/wild rice I had made.
Well, people got fed but what was I going to do for breakfast today?...
Yeah. Pancakes.
Well, one pancake. One big one though! In place of milk, I used some of the leftover eggnog that my brother left behind. Lord knows I'm not going to do anything with it otherwise; I don't drink the stuff. (it's the store-bought kind, not homemade) That's actually half of a chicken-apple sausage, and the mixed veggies provide a fig leaf of nutritive value to the whole thing.
And that's my Kitsmas Eve and morning!
... 23 people RSVP'd.
Okay. Um. Eek.
Fortunately my brother had bought another folding table, so all I needed were some more folding chairs to go with it, and we had just barely enough chairs to seat everyone. I thought on what to make-- as usual, I make veggies to ensure that someone is bringing the nutrition, but I wanted an appetizer as well, for people who got here early.
Last time, I'd made Annie Chung's potstickers (from Whole Food) which was straightforward enough, but this time I wanted to do something a bit special.
Well... That may have been a bit ambitious.
Keep in mind 23 people is a lot of people, and wontons are pretty small. I decided that I should make at least 69, to ensure that each person would be able to nibble on three. Some people might eat more, some less, since we had kids attending as well as adults.
... It didn't quite work out that way. 2 pounds of spinach and 1 pound of ground pork, plus half a cup of chopped onions makes a lot of filling. I was able to fill 108 wonton wrappers -- 54 per Nasoya wrappers package.
Here's half of the uncooked wontons. The other half were still in the refrigerator, staying chilled from when I made them the previous night. All told, after I cooked spinach and pork for the filling (which smelled so, so good) it took two hours or so to fold all 108 wontons I made, and another two or three hours to fry them in batches of 6-8. That's the big problem with frying these, as opposed to baking them, but baking can in no way duplicate the taste sensation of frying. I'm exhausted from all that standing around; my legs were actually hurting midway through the frying. You can't leave the wok alone for long though.
Here're the wontons, freshly made! It turns out I actually overestimated how many people would eat, and had about half of them left, so next time I do this, I can just halve the amount of spinach and ground pork I used.
On the other paw, when I made it clear I was cool with people taking the wontons home with their leftovers, I had none left at the end, so I guess they were really quite popular!
You can see this is a lot of people!
Each family brought at least one dish; most brought several. We had a ton of food. Well okay, not a literal ton, but still, most dishes only got half eaten; only some dishes like the roast beef got pretty much devoured by the end of the night. People divvied up leftovers and took them home; I wound up with just most of the the mix of brown/wild rice I had made.
Well, people got fed but what was I going to do for breakfast today?...
Yeah. Pancakes.
Well, one pancake. One big one though! In place of milk, I used some of the leftover eggnog that my brother left behind. Lord knows I'm not going to do anything with it otherwise; I don't drink the stuff. (it's the store-bought kind, not homemade) That's actually half of a chicken-apple sausage, and the mixed veggies provide a fig leaf of nutritive value to the whole thing.
And that's my Kitsmas Eve and morning!
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no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 03:29 am (UTC)I hope you got a lot of good REST today!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:05 am (UTC)It was restful, I watched the 8 episodes of Log Horizon that are out on Hulu. I want to be Nyanta when I grow up.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 03:34 am (UTC)Congratulations on successfully hosting so many people! I am impressed. And glad you didn't have to make ALL the food for them, yikes!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:09 am (UTC)People pull a face when I tell them about the spinach/ground pork filling and grumble about veggies, but they really are delicious. I used soy sauce, ground ginger and garlic and a bit of crushed red pepper to marinade the ground pork, and cooked some chopped onions until they were just crisping up. Mm, savory.
Having to use a lot of oil to fry is annoying though. And it's not worth getting a deep fat fryer for the very few times I'd use it.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:31 am (UTC)If I used less filling per wonton wrapper, I could probably roll them which would make them easier to handle. Triangle shapes just want to sprawl all over the place and get caught on other triangle wontons. Round ones might be more likely to bump off each other like bumper cars. But I like having a higher filling to skin ratio.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 11:07 am (UTC)(Actually, I'd be curious about the exact recipe you used for the filling, as it sounds delicious.)
We ended up with a vast amount of chocolate, up here, which you're welcome to if you can teleport it through catspace =^.^=. I can't eat the stuff, my brother prefers light chocolate over dark chocolate, and my parents try to moderate their intake (with varying degrees of success).
no subject
Date: 2013-12-27 02:50 am (UTC)0.5 pound ground pork
1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon garlic
Dash of white pepper
I stir the ground pork marinade in all that stuff and let it marinade for half an hour, then sautee it, which involves splatting it into the wok with some oil on high heat, letting it cook a bit, flipping it over, cooking that side, then breaking it up into nuggets and stirring it around until it's completely cooked. Then I pour the ground pork out into a clean bowl and set that aside, pouring the juice back into the wok to help deglaze the pork bits left in the wok.
1 pound baby spinach
1/4 cup chicken stock
Two dashes of garlic
After that, I put the spinach in, adding one dash of garlic halfway through, then the other dash on top, pour in the chicken stock, cover the wok, and let it steam for about 10 minutes. The spinach will be wilted by then. Open the wok up, stir it around.
For wonton filling, I drain the spinach, disposing of the liquid since it plays no further role in the recipe, then dice the spinach up into small pieces and mix it in with the ground pork. Otherwise, you could add egg and steam it with the spinach and ground pork to make an excellent Chinese steamed egg dish.
Otherwise, put a small teaspoon of filling into each wonton wrapper, then dip a finger into a cup of water and use that to seal the edges, folding them up and putting them onto an oiled or corn starch dusted surface (baking pan, tray, whatever). I used an oiled pan for half of them but I don't think that did the wrappers any good.
Then, fry those wontons! 1-2 minutes on each side, pay attention so they don't burn, and give each wonton about 3-4 inches of space (diameter) from the other wontons. Or brush oil on both sides and bake them at 350 degrees for about 10-20 minutes until they turn golden. Either way works.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-27 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-27 03:16 am (UTC)