I'm with the others above who keep menus simple and 90-98% make-ahead. I do some last minute stuff, like add dressing to a salad. But otherwise, everything is done in advance.

I like to set a nice table, using pretty dishes, napkins, serving plates and utensils. But when it comes to food presentation, I don't do individual plating. Everything is serve yourself. My food presentation is done at the serving dish level rather than at the individual plate level, but even that is kept quite simple.

There is a bit of back and forth to the kitchen, mostly at the beginning of the meal, and if I'm serving dessert at the table. I often choose to serve dessert in the living room so that we can sit in what I call "comfy chairs". Someone above mentioned that too.

But other than that, I pretty much sit at the table and eat with everyone else.

John, I notice that your menu is quite ambitious with several courses. The only time I do that is at Passover. And I still make everything ahead as I am participating in the Seder, so when it's time to eat, I just need to grab everything out of the oven where it's been keeping warm. Then it's just grab each dish and bring it to the table for passing.

I think it's great to serve a gourmet meal with lots of courses if you have the ability and inclination, but in the end, I agree that it's the company that's most important.

In my crowd of friends, no one expects anything elaborate. Reasonably nice presentation, delicious food, and limited courses work well for us. And we always retire to the comfy chairs, whether it's for dessert or afterward.

Clean up is for later and I always implore my guests to leave their dishes on the table. The next morning, I spend a bit of time doing all the clean up while lingering over the memory of a nice time the previous evening with my friends.

I use beet root powder and tomato powder for intense color. I have a sous vide thick boneless pork chop from Saturday marinating in such, and fresh ginger, a knob of fresh grated tumeric for tonights noodle bowl ...though swinging towards white bean macha, leek, escarole. maybe kale. Avocado. White miso broth?

My fridge crisper drawer is insanely efficient so I have many choices.

We have zero issues with dinner parties. So well planned and shopped ahead, prepped ahead I might discover I'm out of candles at the last minute, lol. But I set the table 2 days ahead with an array serving bowls to sift through and decide what will be used for what.

kitchen is spotless well head of any guests.

Our parties have a two hour intro. Apps and cocktails, the social catch-up. Some of our close friends we only see once/twice a year. Hour three is maybe a soup, warm salad, sit down or standing. We only have a formal sit for the main course and a couple sides. Dessert/coffee/tea/aperitif/scotch....at the table or wandering. We all have our personal preferences. Up and a stretch out on the deck or couch lounging.

On the other hand daily meals...DH wanted a semi-simple seafood risotto last night...I woke wanting brothy pho and fresh veg and raw greens...risotto would have been a park walk. My simple pho and all my 'tarting' took three hours of prep and dancing.

I do doubt you will sit. Compromise and have your seat/place setting close to the kitchen and plan to zip in and out briefly.

lpink: "I always joke that my meals look like a Jackson Pollack painting. His are more Vermeer. " Interesting, I have never thought of looking at meals this way. I think that concept is worth of its own thread, hint :-)

lowspark, I am simply incapable of going to bed until the dishes are all done and put away! SWMBO and I used to stay up until 2 am waiting for the dishwasher to finish cogitating over the first load so we could start the second load. Then we gave up on using the dishwasher and for years we just hand-washed everything for hours and hours. A few months ago I finally got my dream dishwasher, a used commercial high-temp machine. Now I can wash, dry and put away all the dishware, glassware, silverware from a 15 person dinner - even the over-the-top holiday affairs where every person gets three wine glasses, multiple plates, two spoons and three forks, teacups and dessert settings - in about an hour. Or a little less, if I'm really organized!

Hm... I don't think you can eat peanuts in the art museum, but maybe they have a nice cafe. :) But, heck, you could find a nice view point and just watch the cars go over the bridge. :) The point is some relaxed one on one time. Conviviality is fantastic, but not great for real conversations.

I love soup dumplings! I always burn my mouth on them, but love them. Do you have good instructions? They seem just like magic to me. I'm pretty sure the secret is a high collagen broth reduced to jelly, right? I don't blame you for wanting to perfect them. I love egg drop soup too. Simple doesn't exclude luscious.

Sleevendog's beet + tomato is probably a better shade if you can make it work. I like annatto, but perhaps it's not brilliant enough? Saffron is good for the golden yellow, and if you want color rather than flavor the "cheap" threads work just as well as the good stuff. Because you should have some gold too, right?

What about vegetables?

I haven't thought of anything fun in the vegetable department. Last time I steamed some bok choy with a plummy sauce and it was kind of boring.

Sleevendog's coloring idea sounds like exactly what I need. Granted, the char siu pork I see nowadays is often uncolored, but I'm trying to get the deep red colored pork that was more common when I was little.

The filling on soup dumplings is indeed a tasty and high collagen broth, chilled to jelly. A packet of unflavored gelatin saves the day if you didn't put in enough pigs feet etc. My problem is always the outside. The skin leaks, the pleats untwist, or the dumpling simply looks plump and bouncy right after steaming but is wrinkled and flaccid by the time anyone is ready to eat it. The mayfly is long lived compared to my xiao long bao. This dish is going to be hard to reconcile with my "seated chef" ambition. Maybe I can time it to be ready right when people sit down.

SWMBO and I used to stay up until 2 am waiting for the dishwasher to finish cogitating over the first load so we could start the second load.

Ugh! I would fall asleep if I attempted that! I do clear the table and at least give everything a quick rinse or soak before retiring, but the bulk of the clean up is done in the morning. Particularly because I do wash some things by hand, and I'm simply not going to do that amount of work that late at night. Glad you have the equipment to ease that task now!!

---

Maybe I can time it to be ready right when people sit down.

Good luck with that! I've found that one of the hardest things to do at a dinner party is get people out of the "cocktails and chat" mode and into the "sit at the table for the meal" mode. It's like herding cats sometimes! ;)

I cook it all ahead of time and hold it in the oven. I drag it out and plop it on the counter and we eat buffet style. I haven't had a dinner party. Maybe people have very few of those these days? I'm hoping we'll have something more like that for our supper club. It starts in March. I'll be checking back here often after I get to see how it pans out. Get it? Bit of cooking humor there

;)

Rob , you and I are of the same mind as to entertaining. We were at our best friends house on the weekend for dinner and although everything was prepped ahead, it was all put together at the last minute. I know this is the best possibly way to serve your food, freshly cooked,, my husband and I were left on our own for quite a while. Dinner was great, but I would have felt more comfortable with them sitting down with us.

Looking at some recipes online, seems the red color of traditional char siu pork comes from red fermented bean paste, which I guess is basically red miso?

I think it is red miso but not active/live culture. But if easily available it would also give the 1/4inch deep penetrating color me thinks. If allowed to 'brine' overnight. Using tomato/beet powder does not add all the salt.

Our favorite braised chicken thigh recipe uses a dark brine overnight. Originally it was way too salty so I cut down all that soy. And replaced much of it with tomato/beet. And the usual spices. Then by mistake I bought organic 'boneless' skinless thighs and it turned out even better with more open surface area with the bones removed. I can give them a much longer brine time less salty with gorgeous color. (red miso sesame glaze just out of the oven)....now I really want to try that with pork!

You could slice a big beet thin and dehydrate in your oven on the lowest. A bit soft fine since will go in your marinade/brine. Zip in blender or stick. (your DD wants a mandolin...I insisted a 'no cry' glove is an absolute). ...it will up her game, : ) mandolin makes very thin slices.

Thanks! I will try this and tell everyone it is a secret recipe for "char siu pork New York style."

I have a wonderful mandolin. Sadly, it lives on top of the refrigerator and gets overlooked a lot.

I love it! New York style! Isn't the deep red for the, I don't know what to call it, metaphysics?, of the color? If so, I wouldn't think it would have to be traditional so long as it's attractive and lucky.

Thanks for explaining the dumplings.

I have my family trained. I give them a warning, then an order and they go to the table. :)

The soup dumplings give you an opportunity to combine the two tasks. Tell the guests that they have to sit down now because you're serving soup dumplings as an amuse bouche. If you want to do more you can serve more with the rest of the dinner, but they will at least have seen your fresh and perfect ones and made it to the table as well. :)

Soup dumplings need to be served asap. That lovely firm gelled stock gets sassy fluid so fast. I save that jones for my favorite Mott St dumpling house.

I made them once and had leak issues. if I did it again they would be served pronto.

I also don't care for the buns.

My crowd of friends are such raw fruit/veg lovers a fresh spring roll is a meal for most of them. And growing a forest of greens all winter now I can bang them out without shopping,

Are those being grown under artificial light, or do you have good light somewhere indoors? I used to watch a cooking show where the chef had herbs and greens growing in his kitchen, and he just grabbed a handful when the recipe called for it. Of course that was TV . . . but I'd love something like that.

The leaking is part of the problem with soup dumplings. If you make the wrappers thick enough, they don't leak. The other problem is deflation. If you look at xiao long bao pictures online, some are plump and round and others are limp and flat. I think thicker wrappers tend to hold their shape a little better. So all this points to making the wrappers thicker than, say, for potstickers - but then they become doughy bun things. I haven't found the magical middle ground yet.

The other Chinese comfort food I like is the long fried crullers called you tiao. I have never made these but am tempted to try. https://thewoksoflife.com/2015/08/youtiao-recipe/  I might even pull the deep fryer out of storage.

The only soup dumplings I've had were in a thick wrapper, and kind of bowl shaped. The wrapper was thicker than ravioli, let alone potstickers. I'm sure there must be experts who do them really thin and super magical, but keeping them filling in is more important!

I applaud the idea of getting out the deep fryer and trying the "cruller" recipe--for the family. For the company, it's anti-sitting down with the crowd and not to be contemplated. Make some New Year's colored macarons a couple days ahead of time. All the almond flavor with a multinational flair, for dessert. :)

>>The mayfly is long lived compared to my xiao long bao. >>

XLB are really difficult to pull off, even for pros. Down here in the SFBA we get more bad ones than good ones. I probably wouldn't even try making them at home (but 99Ranch has them frozen anyway, although I've never bought any).

How about the Sheng Jian Bao instead? Sturdier and more filling, but easier to manage. I don't like them quite as much as XLB, but they are very tasty when done well and served hot. They're actually a bigger deal than XLB here, as they're much harder to find.

Serious Eats: Sheng Jian Bao (Pan-Fried Pork Soup Dumplings) Recipe)

BTW - how would you serve the you tiao? My DH (Chinese-Portuguese from HK) only eats them with jook. Would you just treat it as a side for the entrees?

If I made you tiao, they would join the xiao long bao and other fussy stuff as the first course. To avoid all the running around with one's hair on fire *during* the meal. I've always eaten you tiao plain, nothing on them. I think they can be made ahead and re-crisped in the oven. Actually, I could even buy them take-out but that wouldn't be any fun, so if I can't fit them into the prep then we simply won't have any you tiao.

These make every top 5 list, and often the top. Tender and not at all doughy as they appear. I failed even with a nice thick broth I could cut with a knife using duck and chicken paws...

Easier and no-fail (for me) are thinner ginger/pork dumplings I serve on the side with a miso soup dropping a dumpling in or a dunk.

The macro greens are growing on one of my seed starting shelves. Under a 4ft LED shoplight from Costco. A downstairs workroom that has our freezer and bulk pantry. I do have a suspended kitchen shelf in a sunny south window but many grey days this time of year. They thrive having both options. Still do fine with just LED. Or just a sunny window.

Most of my 'students', (friends and co-workers), us a sunny window and/or a bookshelf cleared off and a Ikea/lowes LED strip light. Only a 9inch deep shelf about 2-3ft long is needed to keep an endless supply going. Start harvesting about ten days from sowing and continues for 12-15days...start a new 'stack' every 5-7days keeps and endless supply available at all times. I got ahead of myself recently with all the holiday festivities so I had to actually bag up for the crisper drawer rather than cut fresh....

I think we are up to 15 co-workers growing now. Some in tiny NYC apartments.

My harvest last Sunday we have been eating all week. I needed the room for the next row that is about 6 days old.

When work slows down next week I want to send DD a starter 'kit'. I think she would be good at it if even if just a testing grow.

OK guys and gals (and I include myself in this group) I think it is time for some "tough love" here. Maybe John you can't have it all, the plethora of elaborate fun-to-try dishes and the insistence on clean-up right after, and the languid time at the table with friends and no hired or arm-twisted help. I don't know much about Chinese culture, but in a lot of scenarios that I am envisioning in my mind, there are SOME folks relaxing and sitting at the table, but behind the scenes there are others making the food and bringing it to the table. Maybe servants, maybe the women of the household, etc. Or there's a rotation.

For example, we spend a lot of holidays with some close family friends and the meals go like this: cooks put out some pre-made appetizer stuff on the counter between the family room and the kitchen, with little plates. Whomever is not cooking sit around nibbling and watching TV, usually sports, sometimes a rented movie, but could also be playing a parlor game or just conversing. Cooks can also nibble as they work in the kitchen. Big family so the cooking is usually a rotating group affair of two or three and that means that someone can leave for a bit if they want to join into whatever is happening in the family room. Then everyone sits down to the dinner the cooks have been slaving over all afternoon. After dinner all the folks who did not cook clear the table and clean the dishes, while the cooks sit around and chat. Then everyone gathers for pre-made dessert time. Guests often bring the desserts. The key there is a mix of pre-made and cooked food, a team approach and delegation of duties, plus a home set-up that is amenable to informal socializing.

I'm also reminded of a wonderful dim sum that I went to in my youth in NYC Chinatown. The place was huge and loaded with families, all enjoying each other's company for a long stretch. No one was rushing you to leave and half the time you couldn't even find a person to wait on you. But there were insanely busy waiters and people rolling around the carts full of a variety of wonderful, elaborate little dishes. They were not at the table enjoying the company. Spanish tappas bars are similar I imagine. Or I'm thinking of the Chinese restaurants with the lazy susan in the middle of the table and everyone can try a little of everything. Wonderful for socializing BUT, the folks at the table are not the ones cooking the dishes!

You could recreate that feel by prepping some food that could be held for a while, like velvet corn soup, for example (I say that because it was at the dim sum restaurant I first had that memorable dish) and a cold marinated seafood salad, and then you could bring out THREE dim sum appetizers, maybe one or two that had been prepped in advance and frozen. Or one tricky memorable dumpling and the rest prepped in advance. Some dishes, like marinated things and soups and some casseroles, actually benefit from advance prep.

The key here is to simplify, simplify, simplify. You don't need five amazing dishes, just ONE. You have to balance your love of the process of making the dishes and orchestrating the whole thing, (and the acclaim that comes with it) with your desire to languish at the table. You know, yin and yang. Your meals may be too yang. One could languish over an ordered pizza or Chinese takeout, and one could marvel over a gourmet meal where they only saw glimpses of the chef, but to find the balance you may need to elicit some help and then relinquish some control by cutting some corners and truly delegating. I often tell my students, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I see this with them all the time. They conceive of a elaborate amazing project and then they crash and burn trying to execute it. Then what they deliver is not good because they are stressed and the parts are all rough because they have been rushed. I am often guilty of this myself.

And stop your overactive mind when it comes to menu planning. Having that one truly delicious thing will make the strongest food memory. With five things the whole thing might become a blur. Plus, simple food is a whole other way to experience pleasure. One of the best Christmas parties I went to just had a great gourmet cheese and cracker spread, a nice punch in a fancy bowl, and some wonderful thick nicely decorated cutout cookies. That was it, but not having too much allowed me to really appreciate the beauty of each thing. A whole plate of many cookie types and a plethora of mediocre cheeses and crackers and dips would not have had the same effect, and the decorations on the one type of cookie and the beauty of the punch bowl and flavors of the three cheeses and high end crackers were much more appreciated when they weren't vying for attention with too many other highly stylized foods.

Sleevendog, where did you get the seeds to start? And what is the growing medium?

She'd love that! I'll go down and set up a little LED growlight for her.

Macros love cooler temps . Portland should be perfect. My temps downstairs are 62-68 year round.

I have a shelf in my pantry with this Ikea strip.

Have not used it yet this winter but worked great the past few years. Grey days I tossed my trays under these. Cheap and super cheap to run. Super night light. A salad forest is very zen in all this cold.

A seed has its embryo and a surrounding 'food bank' for germination once it is awakened via water. Not until its second set of true leaves does it need food via good soil or our added nutrients. LED is perfect for the early stages of germination. (not for growing to full fruit like a tomato).

I grow larger to macro, not tiny micro. Better flavor and fuller leaf true shape. Much more like baby greens. I use clean coconut coir medium.

Thank you for the information, Sleevendog.

Oof, I am a day behind schedule. My dad was visiting, my son was dancing (professionally, sort of: he's an "apprentice" with a company but actually getting paid a little bit), and other things got in the way of prepping.

So I am frantically defrosting ducks, soaking lotus leaves, and marinating pork belly.

Lpink, your words are wise. But to some extent I can't help myself!

I know John, and I rarely even follow my own advice . . . I love hearing about your dinner parties, come what may!

Duck hanging, drying with fan, coated with honey-wine-vinegar mixture.

Going to make a seaweed salad with deep fried brussel sprout, beet. Supposed to have long stuff for long life. So there will be long noodles and long string beans as well.

Also thinking about some spare rib nibbles.

Looks delicious. Well, except the duck torture, but I'm sure it'll look lovely by dinnertime. :)

Reminds me of Alice In Wonderland:

“ She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!" “

This dinner is getting out of control. We have 25 coming, as DD and DS invited friends. We can't easily seat that many, so we've given up on a proper table setting sort of dinner. We are going to serve food buffet style and let people take plates and sit wherever, at either dining table, couch, armchairs, family room, eat standing up. So my vow to remain seated throughout dinner is looking postponed or at least modified.

I'm slightly concerned we won't have enough food.

DD made and steamed the lo mai gai tonight. We will re-steam them for the meal. Her theory is this will allow the rice to absorb more lotus leaf flavor.

My tea eggs are simmering. I followed a recipe I found here on gardenweb. Apparently I posted it in 2010!

Filling for shao mai and jelly for xiao long bao are done and waiting in the fridge for tomorrow. DD is probably not making bao, but she is making fried dumplings aka gyoza.

Spareribs have been pressure cooked, they will marinate in black bean sauce overnight and then be stirfried or maybe deepfried. Pork belly has been marinating in beet juice and red miso, getting ready to be roasted with honey, sugar and salt.

DD is making daikon cakes. She says I've had these before but I don't recall.

I've given up on my seaweed salad idea. I don't have the right kind of kombu. It tastes like, well, if you chowed down on a clump of seaweed at the beach. I don't expect to have time tomorrow to run around and find the right kind of seaweed.

Instead, we will get our long life from long beans and long noodles. The beans will be dry cooked with garlic and red pepper flakes. The noodles will be dressed with sesame oil etc.

My stock for the egg drop tastes like dishwater, eww. I added most of a chicken and will keep simmering.

A friend is going to bring some fish for steaming. His sister owns the best Chinese seafood store in town, so this might be pretty good.

As for the duck, they continue to hang and dry. Tomorrow morning I'm going at them with the air compressor and a needle!

DD, our friend Zach (5th year architecture student and DD's former roommate, living with us for his last year of college) have been cooking, listening to jazz, and inventing drinks with a bottle of vodka and various juices found in the fridge. Yikes. It's only Monday.

It sounds chaotic but fun!

My advice, hire someone to clean up afterwards so you can visit with guests that whole time. You need to find a neighborhood high school kid who is looking to pick up a few bucks here and there. Does your son know someone like that? My aunt and uncle used to throw parties and hire a friend's kids to serve and bar tend.

Jealous. My kind of party. Chaos Muppets.

I'm making spring rolls, miso-ish type soup, and dumplings.

Ducks were brought into the garage, inflated with needle and air compressor - so much easier than the traditional bicycle pump - and are hanging awaiting roasting. The inflation, besides making them deliciously plump like a starlet's lips after dermal filler, separates the skin from the flesh, allowing the skin to roast crisp and dry with the fat rendering off.

We are breaking out the paper plates. Giving up on any attempt at elegance. This will simply be a festive feed.

It feels festive today. We have snow in Portland - not much, but enough to lift spirits and signal the new year.

>>turnip cakes.. - oooh, is that the lo bak ko? If it is, fried or steamed?

Sounds like a wild crazy delicious time!

I dunno because DD is making them. Daikon radish, rice flour, baked in mini cupcake tray, then fried. We don't have rice flour so she is using some weird gluten free flour, which may have been a mistake, that stuff is nasty.

The char sui pork was indeed red.

The duck was very tasty but crispness was lacking, because I basted the skin with honey. I had to press a guest into service with a torch to crisp the skin.

The initial rush for food. We had about 20 adults, 4-5 kids, and a dog.

So the menu changed. We had:

- Roast duck, finished a la propane torch

- Spare ribs in black bean sauce, the usual pressure cook-refrigerate-deep fry-stir fry process

- Steamed cod with ginger, scallions and sake, there were NO live fish to be had as seemingly everyone was celebrating Chinese New Year, even my friend whose sister owns a seafood store had to buy packaged fillets at Costco - but they steamed very nicely, on a bed of lotus leaves with ginger, scallions, soy sauce and ShaoXing wine.

- Baked bao with pork filling, DD made these

- Deep fried veggie dumplings, DD's and DS' work

- Shao mai with pork and shrimp, also DD's doing - you get the picture, I managed to not do a lot of the cooking!

- Red rice with beets, someone brought

- Long beans, stir fried with sesame, rice wine and red pepper, it is a long food = long life thing

- Long noodles, served cold with a sesame-vinegar-soy-sake dressing, more symobolic longevity

- Tofu with snow peas, DD made

- Char sui pork, very red indeed

- Lo mai gai, sticky rice with Chinese sausage, chicken and shrimp, steamed in lotus leaves, rested overnight, then re-steamed, which didn't actually add much extra lotus leaf flavor

- Daikon cakes, baked then fried, DD made these with the nasty gluten-free flour and she whined about it a lot

- Gai lan, or Chinese broccoli, we needed token veggies

- Chinese tea eggs, which turned out much worse than previous attempts, they always taste the same but I didn't get as much of the pretty marble veining

We did not have:

- Egg drop soup, my stock was too cloudy and I didn't have time to clarify it, so I had a hissy fit and abandoned the effort - if the stock isn't clear, the egg drop doesn't look good

- Soup dumplings, we had everything made but DS took so long to pleat the fried dumplings that I didn't have time to make the soup dumplings (we only have one station for dumpling assembly), so I will make these during the week

- Seaweed salad, it was going to be gross so I pitched it.

And a friend of DS came and made us all espresso and lattes. He is on indefinite hiatus from college, working as a barista, and is going to give me lessons in latte art.

No, I didn't sit down much, so the evening was in that sense a failure. But everyone had a good time so it's not all bad!

It looked wonderful . I'm sure that getting to be "sitting" host will take time.....step by step......back to the table.

It looks fantastic, John! I'm sure everyone had a wonderful time, even if you didn't get to sit down much.

John Liu, it looks wonderful!!! and it's great that you have so many friends to enjoy it. I hope you were able to get away from the kitchen long enough to actually eat this time. lol! I suspect that this is how it will always be with you and everyone loves you for it. :)

A MA ZING!

I need to do something with two duck carcasses. There is the 1933 Marx brothers movie "Duck Soup". Apparently that term is, or was, slang:

"duck soup. An easily accomplished task or assignment, a cinch to succeed, as in Fixing this car is going to be duck soup . This expression gained currency as the title of a hilarious popular movie by the Marx Brothers (1933). The original allusion has been lost."

This suggests that making duck soup should be a cinch. So I am off to find recipes. Only the ones marked "easy".

I only do duck once a year...we like all the goodies they provide. Always two on the wood fired rotis.

I rip off the skin and crack up the carcas in fist sized bony bits. Lay the bones on top of a big chunked/sliced Spanish onion, celery, a full head garlic cloves. In my turkey roaster...in the oven 325-350 to roast for an hour or so. (add a half left-over rich beer or water/stock if dry-ish.). Then into a simmering stock pot. Any veg in the crisper additions. The usual carrot, parsnip, celeriac, leek tops, ...I don't do the long boiled stocks most do. Just a low simmer for 2-3 hours for chicken/duck. Duck skin I simmer back burner for an hour or so until it looks yummy/rendered.

Freeze in pints-/1/2 pints for future duck stock broth...pho/noodle bowl/stew/bone broth miso...

It all looks fab! Did you at least get to talk to someone?

Yes, more than usual! It helped that food was buffet service - no courses - and we used paper plates. Also I wasn't making gelato during dinner. All in all, I was content.