Why Chefs Need Assistants: Holiday Dinner Service

After lugging some heavy groceries after work on Wednesday, my true work had begun. I had already mailed out my holiday cards the week before and created a menu two months earlier. I was going to be in charge of Christmas dinner this year. Last year I shared half my work with my parents, but this year I would be in charge of everything. I thought I was fully prepared only to find out in the last minute that some things couldn't be done. Nonetheless it was a very good Christmas despite there being no snow. A friend walked over to my house to deliver my Christmas gift in person and became my Santa this year.

Even though work ended earlier than usual on Christmas Eve, I was tired as hell. It was pouring outside and I had a long way to walk home. All I remember that day is looking forward to going to sleep. At around 10:00PM, I prepped and made the dough for panettone. The recipe for this was difficult because it required a fermentation process of 12-15 hours and there was a huge risk of it not rising. Being that it was the first time I made it, there was a huge chance that it wouldn't rise. I also had to modify the recipe because I didn't have candied citron and a stand mixer. I had to mix everything by hand and this dough was a hard dough to mix. As I put in the butter, the dough slower became softer and gradually easier to mix. It was 11:11PM and the dough was done. I left it in the kitchen hoping that the temperature would be alright. The next day around 1:00PM I took a look at my dough and saw that it had not risen at all. A successful fermentation would mean a dough that has doubled in size. The kitchen was too cold so I had to make the dough rise in a second attempt for another 4-5 hours as the recipe indicated. Unfortunately, even as I put it near the warm stove, the dough had barely risen. If it hadn't risen in the night before, it would remain that way. So at 4:34PM, the panettone was ready to bake. Starting off with 375 degrees, I decreased the temperatures to 275 degrees. Since some of the mixture was in a muffin tin and the rest was placed in individual sized tins, they had different cooking times. In the end, it took more than 40 minutes to bake and by 6:10PM they were all done.

While the panettone was baking, I prepped my other ingredients for the rest of the dinner service. I started with the Italian meatballs by seasoning the ground pork and cutting up the fennel. I had to increase the amount of spices used because no matter how much I mixed the meat, it just didn't smell right. I cheated and used some Chinese cooking wine and a little dash of cumin. While I mixed the meat, I would check on the oven. By 6:45PM I had the daikon peeled and cut into matchsticks for a salad. I salted the thinly cut strips and let it sit for about and hour and a half. I cooked the lasagna noodles and set it aside and blanched the broccoli for two minutes. First I would quickly stir fry the broccoli florets and finish it off with a bit of sesame oil. Then I would start cooking the onions, celery, mushrooms, and zucchini for my lasagna filling. Since there was so much going on, I asked my brother who almost never works to make mashed potatoes for me. I'm glad that he at least contribute a bit.

It was 7:00PM and there was no food coming out of the kitchen. I knew I was running late and I should have prepped things at 3:00PM instead of at 5:00PM. I was desperately looking for the flat baking dish only to find out that it was in the fridge already occupied. I resorted to a higher glass baking pan. I started by cutting the noodles into the correct length and layered the ingredients. A layer of noodles, a layer of vegetables, a layer of sauce, and then sliced cheese. I would have used ricotta except my mom did not eat ricotta. As I layered the lasagna, my pan was getting hot enough to cook the meatballs. I added more peanut oil than usual to cook my meatballs. They sizzled when they hit the pan, but that was also when I realized they were not holding up well. There was not enough starch used as glue to hold the meat together and I had not mixed it long enough by hand to create elasticity. I could only pray that they would cook well.

By 8:10PM the lasagna was in the oven baking at 350 degrees. I squeezed the water from the salted daikon and mixed the shredded daikon salad. I should have seasoned it more that night to rid the daikon of its raw flavor. Experience can only make my skills grow. I plated the daikon salad and was still deciding whether or not to do a shredded purple cabbage one as well. I already didn't have enough time to make a tofu dish so that was crossed off my list. So to make it up, I quickly grabbed the purple cabbage from my fridge and shredded it. Because there were two salads going on, I made sure that they both had distinct flavors. The daikon would be paired with Chinese rice vinegar and sesame oil while the purple cabbage had Everday Seasoning, olive oil, and Chinese mature vinegar with a dollop of cream cheese to act as an emulsifier. The meatballs were cooking well and the smell did indeed have the Italian influence. I cut one open to check on the rawness and saw that it was fully cooked. I was dismayed by the texture however. Because there was not enough starch to hold the meat together, it also resulted in the loss of juices. There wasn't enough salt in the meat itself and the texture was more dry than moist. So on second thought, I went with a wine sauce I thought up a few hours earlier. I poured in almost a cup of dry red wine, a teaspoon of sugar, and few tablespoons of soy sauce and let the meatballs simmer. As a result, the sauce absorbed all the meat renderings that stuck on the pan making it very easy to clean up in the end. The lasagna was done at 8:35PM and I was plating everything.

We had a late dinner that Christmas night, but I was very full and there were leftovers. I thought I had calculated everything right, but I guess it's easier to cook a lot than very little. We all had a panettone to ourselves and I saw that my baking project failed only halfway. The orange zest lent a very wonderful aroma that made it taste very much like panettone. The only failure was that mine was not light and airy. It was more compact like a muffin and not much crumb. When I sat down at that dinner table, I was relieved. I had been standing for four hours at least. I poured myself some homemade rice wine and soju.