Wednesday, December 9, 2009

All your cakes are belong to us

Tis the season for mouth-watering dishes.

So folks, I need your help. Not this weekend, but next, I'm going to a potluck Christmas dinner slash party, and as part of the festivities, I need to bring a dish. It will be mostly high school and college friends at the event, and mostly people that I know pretty well. As a result, I'm trying to avoid bringing, say, just a bag of chips or a 30-pack or store-mix brownies.

When it comes to my skill cooking, I think I'm an adequate chef. While I will say straight-up that I'm not looking to hand knead 50 pounds of day to individually make a big batch of cookies, I'm willing to put some effort into something I cook. My past "good" cooking moments are mostly with big cuts of meat (that's what she said). I've done well making things like a rosemary roast leg of lame and corned beef with potatoes, and I am good at following a recipe on the back of a box or off an online sheet of directions.

As a practical thing, ideally, I should be able to make it the night before, or the day of in a couple of hours. Because my hours are so weird from reporting a lot of the time, there isn't a guarantee that I'll have time the day of to make something piping hot, although that is what I'm shooting for. Also, because I imagine other people will be bringing mostly baked goods / desserts, something more savory would go over better, I believe. My spending range is between $20 and $60.

Anyway. If you have any good suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments to this post, or to e-mail me (sgre6768@gmail.com) or to IM me on AIM - ChemBros15. I must get back to watching television and napping, which is why this post is unfortunately about two hours late. It is a ridiculous television night, with the season finales of Top Chef and Glee tonight, and a new episode of Modern Family. Woohoo! I'm glad this is the one night this week that I don't have to work. Tomorrow is football picks day, but I will probably post some reflections on all three shows either Friday or Sunday night.

Prime rib picture from here.

3 comments:

  1. As you well know I am crazy Sicillian and it's just not Christmas without baccala. This is REALLY easy and REALLY good. Mario Batali does a great job with it:

    http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/christmas/batalisevenfishes/recipes/food/views/Salt-Cod-with-Tomatoes-and-Capers-em-Baccala-alla-Vesuviana-em-350700

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  2. mmm, That does sound good... But one issue is that I'm going to have to drive about 60 minutes in a car to my destination. So I'm not sure if seafood is the best thing to be transporting.

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  3. Chili is a crowdpleaser and easy to make. I can send you my recipe if you want but really you just need to go with meat-peppers-beans-tomatoes-chili powder-beer, in roughly that order in whatever portions you want. The only problem is you will need to be in a room with those people for a few hours after you feed them chili.

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