Poubelle Winter Feed
I've mentioned the Poubelle Feeds before: the amazing semi-annual food-centric parties thrown by our friends Tom and Carol. We've been to a few of the winter and summer feeds, and for the last summer feed I got to work in the kitchen. I guess I did an okay job, since I got to work the winter feed this time around.
The summer party is a lot of work, but the winter feed is a different beast altogether. It's a smaller crowd (around 40 to 50), but there are more dishes (fourteen, this year) and everything is homemade. If you want a guest-eye view of the party, check out Tom's archives (the link takes you to the appetizers page, from which you can progress) and Carol's pictures.
I want to talk about the backstage view. It's probably not a surprise to learn that making fourteen fairly involved dishes requires a lot of planning and effort. I went down a week early to help with the gnocchi, the foie gras terrine, and the crab bisque; William and Tom were there all day Friday doing yet more prep work. And all three of us non-Toms got to his house early in the morning to slice and dice our way to the big event. (Tom, of course, had been there all night).
Working with this crew is fascinating, especially as the new guy on board. I so rarely get to just hang out and cook with three other food-obsessed types that I didn't notice the hours go by. The day is mostly spent prepping. I scooped out carrots and turnips for the "Vegetables Round & Pointy", fried beignets, toasted pain de mie, stuff like that. Everyone else did pretty much the same, dealing with all the tasks that needed to be done before dinner.
Sound boring? It's not. The crew cracks jokes (with a pop-culture lexicon that I, possibly the youngest person there, sadly don't possess), chats about food stuff, catches up, tastes various things as they get made, and jokes good-naturedly while chopping, prepping, and cooking. We're all focused on our tasks, but we all are comfortable enough in the kitchen that we can talk about other things at the same time. It really is just a pleasant way to pass the day. It wasn't even incredibly hectic, though Tom correctly predicted that we'd be coasting our way to a frenzy at service time.
The coasting comes in large part from Tom's planning. I've been to a few winter parties; I've seen the lists. But seeing the lists and living by them for a day are different levels of appreciation. When Tom makes up the lists, he draws up detailed to-do lists for each of the fourteen dishes. Once that's done, he re-sorts them by time. But since the to-do list might simply say "prep mirepoix, small dice" each item has a number attached to it that refers back to a legend which maps numbers to dishes. And the list, incidentally two pages of small type, only covers the day of and the day before. It doesn't mention the items made a week or more in advance, like all the stocks that got used, which Tom made well in advance and froze. Or the foie gras terrine I helped make the week before.
Organization is also important. Each dish has a tray associated with it, and prepped ingredients in various containers are put into the right tray for the dish, so that when any work needs to happen, all the ingredients are right at hand. Items are labelled so there's no confusion. It's a simple set of techniques, but it works marvelously.
The only downside to being on the kitchen staff is that you don't get as much to eat. The kitchen team missed out completely on one of the dishes, scallops in a saffron-vanilla sauce on a bed of wilted greens. But we got bites of everything else, which we ate in between assembling the next set of dishes. Only when the desserts were served did we get a chance to sit out with our friends and loved ones and enjoy the festivities.
But in the grand scheme of things, I'd take the kitchen position any day.
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