I threw my first dinner party last night. According to "Stuff White People Like," the dinner party is definitely an adult milestone. And although I put everyone to work making their own dinner, it was still a substantial amount of preparation. Music was played, sake was swigged, and Trivial Pursuit was broken out (see SWPL post, paragraph 6).
Over the last few months, I've been learning to roll my own sushi and bringing it in for lunch. It's quite simple (and much cheaper) to do it yourself, so to demonstrate the process, I invited people over for a sushi-rolling gathering. Miso soup and salad with ginger dressing were provided. Then, I set out bowls of rice, sushi filling ingredients, nori sheets and bamboo mats, and put people to work. Everyone had a great time, and more or less successfully made their own sushi.
My first planning dilemma was figuring out what to do with the vegetarians. After all, isn't the point of sushi is to showcase fresh seafood? I ended up soaking wedges of fried tofu in a soy and orange juice marinade, then slicing them thinly. At this point, they almost looked like slices of mushroom, and tasted quite meaty as well. My second dilemma was trying to predict how much rice we would need. Depending on how much of the soup and salad everyone consumed, we would need an inversely proportional amount of rice. I prepared a large bowl of sushi rice, but sure enough, the rice disappeared much faster than predicted. (People were using too much rice in their rolls, a common novice mistake.) In the end, I made about 12 cups of rice, and this was enough to make leftover sushi for Monday.
Cleaning the sushi mats was the most painstaking part of the night. Rather than spending 20 minutes scraping off chunks of dried rice, next time I plan to wrap the entire mat in saran wrap.
Post-sushi-rolling, we trekked out to the 'burbs for Phil's birthday party. Now, I consider myself a pretty good cook, but this party was the most impressive food feat I've seen in years. As we know, Phil is a huge gamer, and Amber (Phil's wife) had made sure that all the food was video-game-themed. Zomg! There were red mushroom cupcakes, green ice cream cone pipes, a Pac-man cheddar cheese wheel, a fire flower made of red and yellow peppers with a cucumber and broccoli stem, a Zelda Triforce cheesecake, and finally, a Katamari ball rice crispie cake, with all kinds of candies (lego sweet tarts, gummy worms) stuck on the surface. It was probably the leetest party I've ever been to, and proof that we should all rest easy; clearly there is someone out there for everyone.
It's too bad we couldn't get the entire table in one panoramic shot, but these pictures convey the general idea.
Over the last few months, I've been learning to roll my own sushi and bringing it in for lunch. It's quite simple (and much cheaper) to do it yourself, so to demonstrate the process, I invited people over for a sushi-rolling gathering. Miso soup and salad with ginger dressing were provided. Then, I set out bowls of rice, sushi filling ingredients, nori sheets and bamboo mats, and put people to work. Everyone had a great time, and more or less successfully made their own sushi.
My first planning dilemma was figuring out what to do with the vegetarians. After all, isn't the point of sushi is to showcase fresh seafood? I ended up soaking wedges of fried tofu in a soy and orange juice marinade, then slicing them thinly. At this point, they almost looked like slices of mushroom, and tasted quite meaty as well. My second dilemma was trying to predict how much rice we would need. Depending on how much of the soup and salad everyone consumed, we would need an inversely proportional amount of rice. I prepared a large bowl of sushi rice, but sure enough, the rice disappeared much faster than predicted. (People were using too much rice in their rolls, a common novice mistake.) In the end, I made about 12 cups of rice, and this was enough to make leftover sushi for Monday.
Cleaning the sushi mats was the most painstaking part of the night. Rather than spending 20 minutes scraping off chunks of dried rice, next time I plan to wrap the entire mat in saran wrap.
Post-sushi-rolling, we trekked out to the 'burbs for Phil's birthday party. Now, I consider myself a pretty good cook, but this party was the most impressive food feat I've seen in years. As we know, Phil is a huge gamer, and Amber (Phil's wife) had made sure that all the food was video-game-themed. Zomg! There were red mushroom cupcakes, green ice cream cone pipes, a Pac-man cheddar cheese wheel, a fire flower made of red and yellow peppers with a cucumber and broccoli stem, a Zelda Triforce cheesecake, and finally, a Katamari ball rice crispie cake, with all kinds of candies (lego sweet tarts, gummy worms) stuck on the surface. It was probably the leetest party I've ever been to, and proof that we should all rest easy; clearly there is someone out there for everyone.
It's too bad we couldn't get the entire table in one panoramic shot, but these pictures convey the general idea.
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