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!
