Family Style
Originally published at BlackTabi Blog. You can comment here or there.
One of the things many of the chefs talked about at Alex’s graduation was how being a chef meant committing to a lifestyle where you miss a lot of family holidays - while everyone else is rubbing the sleep out of their eyes and greeting Santa’s gifts on Christmas morning, chefs are already at work preparing to greet patrons with Christmas dinner. We got to test this lifestyle out pretty quickly. Once the celebratory lunch with the graduate was over, Alex headed to his job at a Japanese steakhouse and we were left to continue celebrating without him.
A few weeks before graduation, my mom emailed everyone who was to attend with a suggestion for a fitting meal for our family. She reasoned that while Alex is the undisputed chef in the family, the rest of us are reasonably handy in the kitchen. With a nod to this, she requested that we all choose something to bring to a potluck, send her a shopping list the week before, and then many hands would make light the job of feeding the nine of us who wouldn’t be working that evening.
I will confess, on first reading this plan I had a few skeptical thoughts. Nine people vying for space in one kitchen? What if everyone brought dessert? (Ok, that wouldn’t be so disastrous…Matt would be in heaven.) Would it really be possible to pull this off without people getting frustrated, hungry, and irritable with each other?
As it turns out, my family is capable of just about anything with a bit of planning. Matt and I chose to make a “festival of Tex-Mex dips”: guacamole, a no-cook salsa, and a queso that can be prepared in a crock pot so that we could leave the stove and oven for other people, and everyone else was equally strategic in their planning.
Dad baked pretzels earlier in the day, which turned out to be great because we all nibbled them to stave off hunger while the rest of the meal was being prepared. Mom made a yummy chilled spinach dip that improved with marination, so it was done well in advance as well.
My aunt and uncle picked up some local Fredericksburg peaches, and went to work on a peachy galette for dessert - once it was ready, it could bake while we enjoyed dinner.
Although, once we saw it start to take form, we almost couldn’t wait!
Despite the fact that cooking is relatively far down on the list of Isaac’s personal interests, he stepped up to the challenge and produced a fruit salad “like they make in the dorm cafeteria,” giving us all a literal taste of his life at school. Those pineapples and cherries really hit the spot!
Grandma took to the stove, producing a hot bean dish with panache.
As people finished up their contributions, they stepped aside to stay out of the way and watch those who were still racing around the kitchen. Isaac and Grandpa (both sporting their UT orange) considered this a most entertaining way to pass the minutes before dinner.
Pompeii wasn’t about to be left out of the action. She appeared in the kitchen around dinner time and made known her feelings about whether the cat would be eating with the family.
Finally, the moment was upon us. We lined up buffet-style and loaded our plates. As everyone went through the line, we heard exclamations over each dish as people noticed details in other people’s contributions that had been missed in the hustle and bustle of preparing the meal. Every dish was praised, recipes were discussed and exchanged, and we all felt that bigger plates would be needed to adequately handle the feast in front of us.
Not wanting to break up the party, we gathered around Mom and Dad’s dining room table, balancing a plate here, squeezing in a glass there so that we could all pull up a chair. We drank wine, told (and re-told) favorite family stories, and laughed a lot. I snapped a few photos, but it’s hard to capture the warmth and joy that filled the room as we ate. Grandma summed it up well as she looked around the table and said, “We have a really great family.”
We sat back, already reminiscing about our favorite parts of the meal and then remembered: But wait! There’s more! My Aunt, Terri, checked on the galette in the oven and pronounced it not quite as attractive as she’d hoped, but ready. We assured her that it was plenty attractive to us, and rushed to clear the dinner dishes to make room for dessert. Cleaning up from a big dinner definitely goes faster with nine pairs of hands!
Dishes cleared, kitchen clean, we sat down again to enjoy dessert. Pandora also thought that perhaps SHE should sit down and enjoy dessert as well. As we set the table with plates full of delicious flavors, Pandora looked up from where she had been sleeping and seemed to grow longer and longer as she stretched out in an effort to get as close to the table as possible without actually going so far as to hop on the table.
I don’t blame her a bit. The warm sticky peaches, flaky crust, and creamy ice cream were the perfect end to one of the best meals I’ve had.
It might spell disaster for some families to crowd into a kitchen, trying to simultaneously prepare a dozen dishes while bumping into each other, reaching for the same equipment at the same time and wondering whether the food processor was actually free of salsa before starting the crust for dessert. It turns out that for us, it just makes for a wildly entertaining, loving and joyful meal. My compliments to the cooks.