Sunday, January 05, 2003

Lovely moments resultant of the decision to throw an impromptu “Get Over It” party: 1) Reading, while riding the subway to Whole Foods at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning to pick up some organic oranges and chicken livers: “But could any man understand what she meant either? about life?  She could not imagine Peter or Richard taking the trouble to give a party for no reason whatever.” And feeling that I, like Mrs. Dalloway, have a certain small gift to give. (Okay, yes, I am reading “Mrs. Dalloway,” and yes, I’m going to be reading “The Hours” next, yes, I’m a slave to popular culture, so what?  At least the book doesn’t have Nicole Kidman on the cover.  (Though my copy of “The Hours” does.  Drat!)) 2) Sous-chefing for my husband who had jumped into the breach to make the bouillabaisse. 3) Feeding aspic to people I’ve never met before. Moments that I might have had the pleasure of never experiencing had I not thrown an impromptu “Get Over It” party: 1) Desperately whittling the menu down as the day goes by, eventually not using the organic oranges I schlepped to Chelsea at the crack of dawn to buy. 2) Making three kind of aspic 3) The part where my husband looked at me over a pile of shrimp heads and said, “Let’s never do this again, okay?” So it was a deranged assignment, a thing I decided to do because I clearly have a deep psychological need to make myself miserable.  I had made no preparations.  I had mentioned the party to everyone in my office, but had requested no RSVP, so I was expecting somewhere between four and twenty five people.  What’s more, I was deliberately making food that no one would want to eat.  What was the point of this exercise?  I was stressed before I was awake, and Eric was irritated with me before I was out of bed.  First I shopped.  Two trips, one to Whole Foods to get the stuff that had to be high quality, another to the Long Island City stores, to get the stuff that had to be cheap.  Didn’t get cooking until after noon.  This is the menu, as originally conceived:             Bouillabaisse (fish soup)             Amuse-Gueule au Roquefort (Roquefort cheese balls)             Galettes au Fromage (Cheese wafers)             Foies de Volaille en Aspic (Chicken livers in aspic)             Poulet en Gelee a l’Estragon (Chicken Tarragon in Aspic) Supremes de Volaille en Chaud-Froid a l’Ecossaise (Breast of Chicken in Chaud-Froid (aspic with cream) with Diced Vegetables) Supremes et Mousse de Volialle en Chaud-Froid (Breasts of chicken and Mousse of chicken in Chaud-Froid) Mousse a l’Orange (orange mousse) I started, sensibly I thought, by preparing all the meats that go into the various aspics.  At this point I wasn’t too terribly stressed.  I casserole roasted a whole chicken with tarragon.  I sautéed some chicken livers for the aspic.  I poached two batches of chicken breasts in butter.  I am writing here as if all these things happened nearly instantaneously.  In this, I am taking my cue from JC, who is always at her tersest when the going gets tough.  (Why, why, why did I think it was a good idea to buy the chicken breasts with the bones still in them on the day of a party I’m woefully behind preparing for?  What did I save – five bucks?  Is five bucks worth the loss of a critical increment of sanity?  I ask you!) Once all the meats are done they have to cool and then be chilled.  Then they have to be layered into their aspics and chilled again.  What the fuck was I thinking? Staving off pangs of panic, I make the chicken liver mousse destined for one of the aspics.  The recipe for chicken liver mousse is totally simply, especially when you use a blender like I did.  Saute some shallots in butter, then throw in the livers, chopped into chunks, and sauté briefly.  Put them into a blender.  Boil down some Madeira in the pan, and pour that in as well.  Then put in some cream, salt and pepper, allspice and thyme, and a stick of melted butter.  Blend.  Push the puree through a sieve, then put in a bowl, cover with wax paper, and chill.  Too simple to talk about, and very good.  Eric brought some sausage from the communist butcher that his co-worker Kristen recommended to us – Kristen, it turns out, is quite the chowhound, and has given us all sorts of invaluable helpful hints about cooking and eating in Long Island City, including the suggestion that we buy ajvar to go with the communist sausages.  Ajvar is a bright red condiment made of roasted vegetables, garlic, and paprika, and it’s delish.  We had a delicious lunch of that with some good bread.  Everything went down hill after that.  For the four aspic dishes, I had to make three kinds of aspic.  There’s the tarragon chicken stock aspic, the aspic of chicken stock simmered with vegetables, then strained and combined with cream and vermouth, and the beef aspic.  I had decided to do this the “sane” way (talk about an oxymoron) and use store bought broths with gelatin.  Which nicely dispensed with the “hoof problem” of my last aspic experiment.  But let me tell you, making multiple kinds of aspic at once is not a wise thing to do.  I had to mix them all in pots on the stove, test them all in dishes put in the refrigerator (the freezer, as we got closer to time), then once I’d gotten the consistency right, start building the dishes – pour a thin layer of the aspic into the serving dishes, chill.  Lay the meat in, pour over another layer of aspic, chill.  Lay stupid mother-fucking boiled tarragon in stupid mother-fucking X shapes over the meat.  Pour on another layer of aspic, promptly destroying stupid mother-fucking Xes.  Chill. Dessert was clearly not happening.  I hadn’t made enough chaud-froid for both of the chaud-froid dishes, so we were only having one, and the chicken liver mousse was just going to be served on crackers.  Until half an hour before the guests were set to arrive I still had fantasies of making the Roquefort balls and cheese wafers.  The bouillabaisse would not have happened if my sainted husband had not a) gone out to the fish store to pick up more flounder, shrimp and eel when I realized I didn’t have enough; b) started on the chopping of the vegetables and fish for the bouillabaisse; c) beheaded and cleaned the shrimp for the bouillabaisse; d) just gone ahead and made the goddamed bouillabaisse himself. Fifteen minutes before blastoff, we realized that one of the few people we actually knew was coming, Bekkah, has a fish phobia.  This is the beleaguered faithful dinner guest to whom I served whole lobster on her last visit.  Sorry, Bekkah.  There’s still lots of aspic to choose from. We wound up with the following attendees: Bekkah and husband Jeff; Pinky -- as the J/J Project readers know her – who I was meeting for the first time in the flesh, and whom I still owe a T-shirt, and her Shakespearean boy-toy Matt; the faithful and lovely Emily AW; work friend Ben and his companion, the delightful Erica.  A wonderful time was had by all, or at least by me.  People were very tolerant of the extremely non-user-friendly meal, and the strange-o buffet set-up.  Some people even ate the aspic.  The aspic was sort of surprising.  Turns out, the chicken livers in aspic was actually the best one out there.  Somehow the creamy richness of the chicken liver made a good match with the aspic.  And the aspic itself came out right – very solid without being rubbery.  I mean, I wouldn’t sit around and eat chicken livers and aspic all day or anything, but it wasn’t bad.  I have Matt’s support on this – he was doing his first chicken liver and his first aspic, a double whammy, and was kind enough to at least claim he liked it a little, for which I am eternally grateful.  The chicken tarragon aspic was not a success.  The aspic didn’t set right, and even if it had, it was like eating leftover chicken out of the fridge without heating it up.  The chaud-froid was alright, the creaminess certainly easier to take than the savory-jello thing going on with the other dishes.  But again, it was kind of like eating a chicken breast with congealed cream sauce.  You couldn’t help thinking it would be better hot. The bouillabaisse was pretty good.  Well-executed by my dear husband.  But it lacked oomph – I guess it’s the Cajun-by-regional-association in me, but I want my fish stew-y things more intensely flavored.  We were supposed to make rouille – a condiment of red peppers, potato, and olive oil – to stir into it, but we didn’t have time.  So I brought out the jar of ajvar (yeah, ajvar!), which did nicely in a pinch, and was pretty besides. The liver mousse was a hit.  At least, I pigged out on it.  And I also put out some cream cheese covered with the roasted raspberry-chipotle sauce my mom gave everyone she knows for Christmas, which is fantastic and which I also pigged out on. We sat around for hours and hours talking about Shakespeare conspiracy theorists and the future of lower Manhattan and the mysterious love lives of our various employers, and I smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much wine, and after everybody else went home, Eric washed the dishes because he’s the best man in the entire world while Emily AW and I danced and listened to “Papa Was a Rodeo” about a half dozen times before falling into peaceful slumber. The single very best thing about throwing an impromptu "Get Over It" party: When it's over. 3:55:09 PM    comment []