Well, something about being wrist-deep in garlic will do that to you, I suppose. Last night’s kitchen adventures included preparing the Asian peanut dressing for the grilled zucchini (easy enough – dump a bunch of stuff into the food processor and puree). I also made the rosemary-garlic oil for the potatoes grilled in foil, which consisted of 50 garlic cloves and 30 sprigs of fresh rosemary pureed with three cups of olive oil. Let me tell you, it’s a pain in the ass to peel 50 cloves of garlic. Still, I’m happy with the results.
Then came the main event: dinner rolls. Very exciting, no? Well, baking 96 yeast dinner rolls is a bit of a challenge. takaza was kind enough to borrow a number of muffin pans from his cow-orkers (some of which were best described as “vintage”). I made the rolls in two batches of 48 (actually 45 in the first batch and 40 in the second due to vagaries of portioning). Blessings upon Dan for reminding me that our square Cambro containers are awesome for holding rising dough and perfect for determining when the dough volume has doubled. I’ll post the recipes after this weekend, but everything came out reasonably well with only a couple of rolls getting a bit overdone and having to be eaten/discarded (most of them from one of the “vintage” pans). They’re all nicely bagged up in one-gallon Ziplock bags and ready to go; the plan is to put them into foil and briefly throw them on the grill (maybe with a quick spray of water to moisten them) so they can be served hot.
Tonight’s entertainment? A run to the butcher immediately after work to pick up 20+ pounds of New York strip steaks, then an evening spent making apple slab pies (mmm, 20 pounds of apples to be peeled and cored. What fun!).
Incidentally, if anyone is going to be at the game on Saturday, isn’t going to be playing, and would like to lend a hand, we will probably be able to put a few folks to work as we prepare dinner. Dan and I will probably be on site and setting up between noon and 1 PM. Also, note that if I understand things correctly (and I hope steviemaxwell corrects me if I am wrong), although we will still be in Madison Meadow Park in Lombard, we won’t be at the usual field (the ones at Madison and Ahrens) but at the ones near Harding and Fairfield. Here’s a map to make things a bit clearer.
Duncan, if it’s a pain in the arse to peel garlic, you’re not doing it right.
You should be able to peel 50 cloves in just a few minutes, this way. Good luck! And may the garlic be with you.
Heh. Actually, I used one of these for the first 25-30 cloves and it went fine. Then the interior started to get slick with garlic juice and didn’t produce enough friction to pull the peels off. At that point I just started putting the cloves in the peeler and whacking them with the heel of my hand, which accomplishes pretty much the same thing you described. Your method is actually what I learned from my father and it works well, but when the peeler is working properly it’s faster and less mess (and less sharp bits to cut hands on!).
Thus I love the canisters of pre-peeled garlic from Costco. I’ve not noticed any loss of flavor when using them to cook with (unlike with pre-minced garlic.)I suspect for that puree they’d have worked fine.
Why not just smash the garlic and then pick out the paper? 🙂 Duncan, I think a few of us won’t be playing and would be happy to help out. Too bad you’re on the opposite of of the field from Cheetah’s.
Since I missed giving you a meat order (it’s okay i don’t eat steak anyway but the partner does), I hope you don’t mind us bringing out own?
Actually, we have one unclaimed steak left (though I expect some number of people won’t show, maybe 4-5), so I will go ahead and assign that to Nitro. Good to go! Since I’m willing to make allowances for non-red-meat eaters, I think we could make a bit of space on the grill if you need it (though we’re going to have to strike the grill soon after we’re done; we need to get it cooled down so we can put it back in my car without melting anything!)
I spent some time today mapping out the tasks (because I’m anal retentive that way 🙂 and I think I’ve got it figured where we can get a couple of tasks going at once, and the help will be quite welcome!
Oh, and as near as I can tell, I think we’ll be a couple of hundred yards walk from Cheetah’s place, but a 4-block drive (!). We’ll be asking him and Calla for the use of their water supplies, I suspect.
Most stores (like Meijer) sell jars of chopped garlic….works great, smells as good as fresh, no mess, no lingering smell, and especially no more specialty tools to jam into your already crowded specialty items drawer 🙂