Feast 15 constituted a wild departure from all previous events. For one, I cooked for 90 mouths. For another, this was a professional engagement—a paid position as cook for a Christmas party. As such I attacked it with more seriousness and ferocity than other feasts. I was not just playing now; I was planning, scheming, and strategizing. I wrote ingredient lists for the hostess, penned a timetable for the order of food prep, and swept my schedule clean for the job at hand.
When cooking for a sizeable crowd, the task takes on the nature of a ballet production. The first step is choreography: the planning of a balanced, harmonious, and exciting menu. Then you proceed to auditions: shopping for ingredients, gathering together the makings of a great event. Next there are rehearsals, which for me consist of mentally reviewing the order of food preparation. What can be made ahead? How far ahead? What can be peeled, grated, chopped or minced?
I was thinking of this as I stood in my kitchen on the morning of the party. Around me lay the poised elements of a feast. The pates and terrines were chilling in the fridge. The pork was quietly brining in a pan; its stuffing ready to roll. My fridge was heavy with the makings of four quiches: jars of eggy-cream mixture alongside bowls of wine-cooked mushrooms, buttery leeks, grated gruyere, and blanched arugula. Four blind baked quiche shells lay on the counter awaiting their respective contents as I leaned over a batch of white sauce for the final quiche (arugula and toasted pine nut). Not to beat this metaphor to death, but it was kind of like the actors poised silently behind stage curtains before a show.
For once I seemed to have planned everything well and there were no last minute disasters. The nearest I came to panic was after an overly animated flourish of salt into my white sauce. I whined, tasted, and pouted at the offending mixture to no effect. And so grumblingly I made another one. A whole five minutes down the drain.
Despite the absence of catastrophe, the customary adrenaline rush took hold of me as the event approached. When this happens I become a fractious force in the kitchen. Mother was attempting to bake mince pies. Unfortunately for her I had monopolized the ovens for my four quiches and a massive loin of pork. “Couldn’t I just pop these in too?” she plaintively asked. Her hand was on the oven door. I let out an incomprehensible protest and dove in front of it to protect my rising creations.
What followed was not an idyllic picture of a familial domestic scene. I barricaded the oven, animatedly suggesting that she use mine over in the studio. She responded huffily, prickling at this state of affairs—banned from her own kitchen. She stomped through the house and out to the garden, grumbling about the shoddy nature of my oven and the raindrops that were marring her pies as they journeyed to my little cottage next door. “What is going on?” my dad boomed. “It’s like a bloody mad house in here.” Mother and I ignored him, dashing between the two kitchens with baking trays and tea towels, like two petulant beetles scuttling across the garden. And yet, notwithstanding this minor spat, all the dishes where completed and withdrawn from the oven with no further crisis and emotion.
Later, in the wee hour of the morning, I woke with a cantankerous, grumbling stomach. I lay in bed cradling a hot water bottle and wondering miserably if I had poisoned all ninety guests with my food. Perhaps it was the pate or the pork? And then I remembered the mulled wine, and how enthusiastically I had enjoyed glass after glass of the steaming brew. Relaxing after the heat of cooking, I had let the festivities get the better of my normally impeccable sense of moderation. Ah, well. It was a relief, I decided, snuggling back down into bed. I could be consoled by the fact that I would be the only sufferer, and had not inadvertently wreaked havoc with the innards of half our small town’s population. And so, tired and content, I declared victory and drifted back to sleep.
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