It’s all relative–cooking for 1000 or cooking for 20. It’s doable and a wonderful challenge.
About 20 years ago, when we lived in the Philippines, I had a Thai friend Aw who was manager of a private club that had a small restaurant.
A fabulous cook, Aw taught me Thai cooking. She and I decided to hold a Thai dinner night at the restaurant, catering for 200 diners. We offered a full menu including shrimp roll, rice crackers with peanut sauce, tom yum soup, eggplant salad, Thai beef salad , green curry chicken, fried chicken in pandan leaves, northern pork curry, sticky rice with mango and steamed banana cake.
There was a lot of work and I was thankful that they had a full kitchen staff to do all the cutting and chopping. We calculated all the ingredients needed and showed the Filipino cooks how to make Thai food. It was a great success. In those days, there weren’t many Thai restaurants in Manila.
A month after that we did another for Singapore food. Soon afterwards, when my husband and I were having dinner guests in our home, Aw asked how many I was expecting, I replied, “Only 20.” We laughed. It’s relative.
Yesterday the same thing happened. I have been volunteering for Chef Todd at the cafe he runs. About a month ago, we catered for an event for 1000 people. It was only hors d’oeuvres but still a lot of work.
It was a challenge for me. But I learned that I could get 750 cookies baked in less than one hour. By myself! Granted the kitchen used frozen unbaked cutout cookies and I needed only to place them on large trays and put them in the oven to bake. A commercial stove can hold several trays and Todd turned on four ovens that I could use. I never used all four at once. Before I could fill enough trays–five trays of 30 cookies each–to put in my third oven, the first batch of cookies were done.
So over last weekend, we were catering for 400. Six of us, including Todd, worked on the day before to prep and get some work done–chop fruit and vegetables, skewer fruit and tomato and mozzarella ball on sticks, slice ham and turkey and cheese. When you divide up the work and each person focuses on doing one thing, the kitchen works harmoniously and efficiently.
The work plan is simple. We skewered one lot of grape tomato and mozzarella balls. And a different lot of fruit–melon and honeydew balls, cubed pineapple, strawberry and grape. Each lot was parked in separate metal work trays. When nearing the party, Chef plated them nicely on party plastic trays. For the cheese and tomato, he placed a bunch of basil in the center, and dribbled the cheese skewers with a basil vinaigrette dressing. For the fruit platter, he placed dipping cream cheese in the center.
When the platters were put strategically on the decorated table, the sheer number of the colorful food looked festive and attractive. It was incredible fun to be a part of this and I left the kitchen with such a sense of good work done and accomplishment. As an amateur, I find making food for people super satisfying.
At the end of Saturday, I found out that I might be the only volunteer left to make sliders the next day. When doing a lot, it’s easy to do eight at a time–put spread on bread, put on the folded turkey or ham, fold and add the slice cheese and then top with bread and lay them on the tray. Picks can be poked through slider when tray is filled.
In our first event, we had made enough sliders for 1000 so when I asked how many sandwiches I was going to make on Sunday, Chef said, only 200.
Only 200. We smiled.
