Board Dinner: After Action Report

I've made basically the same mistake every time I cater the annual board dinner of my wife's non-profit. What I try to do is branch out. I cook some things that I've only made one or two times, or worse, things I've never made. Even if the recipe is followed bang on it often turns out that you just don't like the result. This year, my fifth of catering this event, I resolved to make food that I not only knew mostly by beart but also loved eating.


Appetizers were goi cuon (Vietnamese salad rolls), samosas, and chicken satay.

For the goi cuon, I was warned about the difficulty of working with rice paper, but in actual use the stuff was surprisingly easy to work with: dip a sheet in hot water, put down ingredients, roll tight. I filled the rolls with red leaf lettuce, thin slices of tofu, thai basil, mint leaves, and shrimps sliced in half lengthwise. Goi cuon are one of those rare foods that are both nutritionally perfect and completely delicious. Dip in some chili and some nuoc mam and you've got one of the finer tasting foods on the planet.

Samosas, well, when you're cooking for 24 people you choose your battles. I got some frozen samosas from India Bazaar, the Indian market (dot not feather) in Bradenton. One box of spinach and paneer and another box of potato and pea. This was only the first of many dishes to get deep fried- by the end of the cooking process I had completely fouled 1.5 gallons of peanut oil.

Chicken satay was actually the first thing made, mostly because a) it was marinated, and b) I wanted to get any grilling over with early. The night before, 3 lbs of chicken breast were sliced into thin strips lengthwise, then set into a giant ziplock with .5 cup soy sauce, .5 cup sesame oil, .5 cup rice wine vinegar, 4 tbsp sugar, 4 tbsp minced garlic, 4 tbsp red pepper flakes, and 4 tbsp chopped cilantro. Next morning the marinated strips were then skewered and grilled over a hot hot hot fire for 2 minutes per side. The peanut sauce was a bit of natural peanut butter with sesame, brown sugar, rice vinegar, and some nuoc mam.

Some of the entrees on the menu have appeared in these pages before. The Pad Thai was covered in Pad, Thai, and Tempting (http://philoculture.blogspot.com/2009/01/pad-thai-and-tempting.html), and the green curry was was more or less the Curry from Story (http://philoculture.blogspot.com/2009/02/curry-of-story.html). Both dishes got a bit of a makeover for the big event, mostly in the form of ingredients I don't usually splurge on when cooking informally. The pad thai sauce got a hit of paprika for more redness and a couple of handfuls of pulverized dried shrimp (AKA tam kho thuong) from the oriental market, as well as the addition of 2 tbsp of rice wine vinegar. The green curry got a handful each of kaffir lime leaves, chopped lemongrass, thai basil, and cilantro. Both additions added an incredibly amount of flavor to the respective dishes. I can finally hold up my pad thai and compare it with the better thai restaurants, which is something I've been trying to do for the better part of a decade.

Both pad thai and the green curry got tofu, but I deep fried the tofu before adding to each dish, adding to the general squalor of the oil pot.

The third main dish was kari kari, a Filipino dish written for chuck but which I modified to use beef short ribs. I love both cuts, but for a formal event I felt short ribs were a bit more exotic and prettier in presentation in two-rib portions. I also learned from my experience cooking this for my friends, and omitted some of the more obnoxious ingredients. Slice 4 lbs of beef short ribs into 2 rib portions. Short ribs were browned in batches in a large Dutch oven and reserved. 4 chopped onions and 4 tbsp minced garlic were sweated in the fat rendered from the meat. Once the onions were sweated, 2 tbsp nuoc mam, 4 tbsp tamarind extract, 4 tsp brown sugar, 2 bay leaves, 4 thyme springs, 2 tbsp tumeric and 2 tbsp paprika were added. Once this mixture is incorporated, insert the ribs, pushing each portion into the onion mixture. Lid the dutch oven and put into a 250 degree oven for five hours. At the end of cooking time, remove the ribs and put on a platter. Skim the fat from the top of the braising liquid, then add 2 tbsp peanut butter and 2 tbsp rice vinegar to the reserved braise liquid. Boil until concentrated and thick. Spoon over the rib portions and scatter some deep fried scallions over each portion. Serve.

Deep fried scallions are basically like those fried onions in a can your Aunt Bessie puts over her string bean casserole at Thanksgiving.

Dessert was pretty simple, coconut ice cream and fried bananas with honey. For coconut ice cream, whisk 2 cans full-fat coconut milk with .75 cup sugar and 1 tbsp vanilla until sugar is dissolved. Put in ice cream maker and run until you get ice cream. The fried bananas were just banana portions wrapped in rice paper and deep fried.

The great thing about this menu is that I hardly needed to consult my recipes for most of it. Even the kari kari is cooked pretty much like any meat braise you might put together. So I was relaxed, which helps a day of cooking go by a lot better. Also, I couldn't keep my hands off the lettuce wraps or the pad thai. I'm pretty sure I only served three quarters of the lettuce wraps I actually made.