Complex, yet simple 2

Dinner and guests

3 parts: The invite, The planning, The doing.

Part 1: The invite.

I find it is easy to invite people over. It just takes a single moment of inspiration. It’s done before I really think about it. Polenta party! Come on over. I Send it to a bunch of people! Only a few will reply. I’ll get a nice cozy group. Easy. Simple.

And then the responses come. “I love polenta! I’ll be there!” “I’ll be there!” “Count me in” “See you there!” “What a great idea, can’t wait!” and the number grows and grows.

I have a small apartment. I may not have enough chairs. I don’t have enough dishes. I don’t have enough pans. I’ve got a lot of stuff going on the four days prior. Oh my. Suddenly a simple invite has become quite complex.

Part 2: The planning.

There will be many tiny polentas. Eating will be a constant grazing so people can sit on couches and chairs and not need a table or much silverware. How many courses?.. well here’s the problem. I’m not able to just think of three flavors and stick to those. My brain is working and thinking and the creative juices are flowing so… I start with the following mini polentas: 1. Bacon, Kale, Tomato. 2. Chile relleno. 3. Fig, walnut, blue cheese. I then add, because it’s somehow not hard enough… 4. Chicken Bulgogi. 5. Roasted Cauliflower and Chorizo. 6. Eggplant lasagna. and then 7. Chocolate and Butterscotch pudding with pie crust dippers.

The serving has to come in waves because I can only make 24 at a time. I really need to make 12 each of the mini polentas so that means 2.5 batches for the mini polentas and 1/2 batch for the lasagna. The toppings all have to be cooked separately so that’s all got to be figured in. They arrive at 5:00 so the first ones need to be ready at about 5:15. Then the next batches need to come out at about 10 minute intervals. In the meantime I better be somewhat social so there’s talking too.

Part 3: The doing.

So I clean Saturday and make the puddings and start the pie crust. Sunday I start at about 10:00 making toppings. I start with the vegetarian ones so there’s no cross contamination. I make the first 23 polentas and set them aside (they will be warmed later). I make the lasagna next (it will also be warmed later). Below is the roasted cauliflower and vegetarian chorizo.

I go for a run. I roll out the pie crust, cut it and pop it in the freezer. I make the meat toppings. and set them up for baking. Above you can see the chicken bulgogi and BKT polentas all ready to be popped in the oven. I then crank the oven up for pie crust and pop that in with a little sugar topping. Ahh. Ready.

And it feels like chaos. The kitchen looks like chaos. (STAY OUT OF MY KITCHEN!) There is so much going on yet I am at home. I am just chillin’, doing one thing after the other. Listening to Wet Leg and Venus Hum and Lexie Liu. Keep the train rolling forward making one thing at a time. Do be do.

Each moment is simple. No single recipe is complex. All together it becomes about as close as I can come to creating a masterpiece. Everyone loves it. They feel spoiled. I love it because I can see they love it. It feels good to create something that seems so complex and complicated and hard to do and know that in reality it’s just a bunch of simple things in a row.

Now. The cleaning. Well, that’s not done yet.