Advice …
… for those attempting to cook an end to end meal for 10+ guests.
(And fulfilling the follow criteria:
1. You must lack a basic understanding of how much people eat given the courses and drinks you offer.
2. You believe in cooking the most utterly easy-to-cook dishes (that doesn’t sound grammatically correct but it says it best) to ensure minimal time is spent cooking.)
Background:
Last week, I must have hosted what I believe is one of the highest profile dinners of all time in our history of hosting dinners. A’s boss and senior colleagues were on a farewell-dinner-crawl. No, I mean it. They were literally hopping from one farewell dinner to another through the week and ours was the last stop. (No, that does not mean that we invited them last, as an after thought almost because everyone had already invited them over. It means that we invited them last, as an after thought almost. Anyway.) Contrast this with my usual dinner invitations to friends and family – ‘Pot luck kar lein? Sab ke liye easy hoga.’ or ‘Let’s do a sandwich party. Everyone MYOS (make your own sandwich – c’mon guys!)’– and you just might understand why this was a high profile dinner.
So as would be expected if 11 adults and 7 children were to come over for dinner, I was nervous. We lined up the menu - A, who was exceptionally eager to help, and I. It included about 3 veg starters and 1 non-veg starter, and superb dessert. And enough main course to feed Britannia’s entire field sales team!! That’s why this post.
So here’s the advice:
1. If you are investing sweat and brains in planning starters (and you are 80% sure that they will fire), assume 0.5X (X = number of actual invitees) for planning quantity of main course. Otherwise you will be doing what I was doing, almost embarrassing A, towards the end of the party. ‘Can I pack some kadhi for you? I would be delighted to … really.’ ‘Would you like to take some paneer? No? Sure??’
2. Choose the main course dishes carefully. It is better to invest in cooking 1-2 really good, universally liked dishes. Don’t choose kadhi unless you know that the guests really like it the way you make it. Kadhi, as I learnt the hard way, is cooked differently in each family and most people like it best their way. It’s a terrible option for a large gathering, even if it is the easiest to cook. That might explain why I have never ever seen kadhi on the menu when my mother hosts dinners.
Also, if north-indians are coming over, don’t choose a dish with coconut milk. You just don’t know whether it’ll work. My paneer dish (recipe here) saw a depletion rate that was close to negative, though it has received rave reviews in various other forums.
3. And of course, check the veggie:non-veggie ratio really well before deciding on quantity of veg dishes. Non-vegetarians will hardly even touch vegetarian food when faced with restaurant ordered non-vegetarian food. This is not a single data point inference.
4. Finally, unless you have lots of time, serve the starters and main course almost simultaneously. This holds especially true in cases where families with kids are over. In the terribly short time between arrival and ‘baby is sleepy, we should go’ (and given the way the baby will be behaving you’ll want them to go), a heavy starter menu ensures that most people eat lots of starters (they are usually hungry by the time they arrive), skim the main course and do a decent amount of dessert. So the main course ends up feeling short-changed … but such is life.
So this is it. All the advice you need to plan that large party. It might be easier to order in the entire meal. Just saying.
(And fulfilling the follow criteria:
1. You must lack a basic understanding of how much people eat given the courses and drinks you offer.
2. You believe in cooking the most utterly easy-to-cook dishes (that doesn’t sound grammatically correct but it says it best) to ensure minimal time is spent cooking.)
Background:
Last week, I must have hosted what I believe is one of the highest profile dinners of all time in our history of hosting dinners. A’s boss and senior colleagues were on a farewell-dinner-crawl. No, I mean it. They were literally hopping from one farewell dinner to another through the week and ours was the last stop. (No, that does not mean that we invited them last, as an after thought almost because everyone had already invited them over. It means that we invited them last, as an after thought almost. Anyway.) Contrast this with my usual dinner invitations to friends and family – ‘Pot luck kar lein? Sab ke liye easy hoga.’ or ‘Let’s do a sandwich party. Everyone MYOS (make your own sandwich – c’mon guys!)’– and you just might understand why this was a high profile dinner.
So as would be expected if 11 adults and 7 children were to come over for dinner, I was nervous. We lined up the menu - A, who was exceptionally eager to help, and I. It included about 3 veg starters and 1 non-veg starter, and superb dessert. And enough main course to feed Britannia’s entire field sales team!! That’s why this post.
So here’s the advice:
1. If you are investing sweat and brains in planning starters (and you are 80% sure that they will fire), assume 0.5X (X = number of actual invitees) for planning quantity of main course. Otherwise you will be doing what I was doing, almost embarrassing A, towards the end of the party. ‘Can I pack some kadhi for you? I would be delighted to … really.’ ‘Would you like to take some paneer? No? Sure??’
2. Choose the main course dishes carefully. It is better to invest in cooking 1-2 really good, universally liked dishes. Don’t choose kadhi unless you know that the guests really like it the way you make it. Kadhi, as I learnt the hard way, is cooked differently in each family and most people like it best their way. It’s a terrible option for a large gathering, even if it is the easiest to cook. That might explain why I have never ever seen kadhi on the menu when my mother hosts dinners.
Also, if north-indians are coming over, don’t choose a dish with coconut milk. You just don’t know whether it’ll work. My paneer dish (recipe here) saw a depletion rate that was close to negative, though it has received rave reviews in various other forums.
3. And of course, check the veggie:non-veggie ratio really well before deciding on quantity of veg dishes. Non-vegetarians will hardly even touch vegetarian food when faced with restaurant ordered non-vegetarian food. This is not a single data point inference.
4. Finally, unless you have lots of time, serve the starters and main course almost simultaneously. This holds especially true in cases where families with kids are over. In the terribly short time between arrival and ‘baby is sleepy, we should go’ (and given the way the baby will be behaving you’ll want them to go), a heavy starter menu ensures that most people eat lots of starters (they are usually hungry by the time they arrive), skim the main course and do a decent amount of dessert. So the main course ends up feeling short-changed … but such is life.
So this is it. All the advice you need to plan that large party. It might be easier to order in the entire meal. Just saying.
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