Ceremonies: October 2008 Archives

In our war room-esque planning meetings "Event Number 2," what we had unceremoniously anointed the 8 course-tasting menu for 60 people, was all about timing. At a predetermined time half of our 10 person crew and one of us would sever from the casual nuptial party, jet to the second location, and establish the scene for much more cooking than seemed possible in just shy of two hours.

Where we left off, Evan and Team Number Two (Lake, Jessie, Jennifer, and Matthew) were en route from closing down the Zen center while Team Number One (Molly, Madeline, Max and Meagan) set up the dining room. Alex and Michael had managed to negotiate all the heating that needing doing onto one of the Kosher Kitchen's two combo stoves. Huge bubbling pots of beans, blanching water, sauces and searing Seitan filled all six burners, giant pans of roasting squash cramped the oven, and the four pans of foccatia that had been in the making since six am were getting an extra blast of warm air resting on shelves atop the stoves.

Then the stove fell down.

The ensuing chaos lasted for fifteen minutes but it seemed like hours. We Knives dove screaming under the pans of bread that literally flew through the air, managing to save all four but severely deflating each one. Michael managed to block the huge pots of boiling water from scalding your dear writers, and we all nervously tried to communicate with the man in charge of kitchen maintenance. Discovering that our Spanish really is that bad we convinced the dude to focus on the stove that wasn't lighting instead of vainly trying to lift the fallen soldier back onto its jury rigged support: a greasy board.

With the heat back on, everything fell into place at a breakneck pace. With Michael gone, our kitchen mercenary Aubrey was fabricating tomatoes, when we made another startling discovery that the refrigerator we had stored all our greens in was a tad on the cold side. Lake and Max jumped into weeding out the frozen herbs and lettuces, while we pureed this and sautéed that, all the while going over our prep list out loud like freaked out monks speeding through their mantras.

At 6:30 all the mania was under our thumbs, and we went over the menu and service with the crew one last time. We opted to shave a server and take on another kitchen aid and Max, pictured below, rounded out the daunting task of making 480 perfect plates.

After the Tomato spoons went out the synergy of our machine was palpable. Heirloom tomato carpaccio looked like moist gems and the faint pillow of grated Reggiano made our diners swoon. "Mixed Green Soup," a hearty puree of arugala confused a few members of a particularly picky table but totally wowed the rest of the room. The bread turned out perfectly and the loaves that nearly fell to their deaths actually ended up with a superior crust due to their (terrifying) degassing. Smoked chevre infused butter had drunken diners bursting into the kitchen demanding seconds.

The evening pushed on, and the dishes got more complex. As the plates got bigger, we had to do second and third platings of courses, which kept us on the razors edge of having incorrect numbers...We had a brief meltdown in the salad course when we ran dangerously low on the Stuffing Succotash with one table of 8 still needing plates. Luckily they were the aforementioned picky eaters, and were glad to get a refill of foccatia to augment their slightly smaller portions of salad.

When it came time to plate the entrée the need for perfect timing was reified double-time. The plate had the most components: a mascarpone enriched white bean purée, soy and apple cider braised squash, seared seitan, a mulled wine reduction, and a slice of tarragon butter. More importantly the plate had to arrive hot. This required all four of us in the kitchen to work very quick and clean, and for the servers to whisk plates away as quickly as possible so we'd have room to mount the second and third waves. It went flawlessly. Barring one or two of the inevitable "where's the beef" comments, the food was lustily received and Seitan (the dark lord of the underbelly) pushed all our diners to the limits of their waistlines.

The entrée was out; out came the booze. Madeline had apparently bought some Tequila on the way to the hotel and the bartenders supplied us with cold beers. We leisurely plated the cheese course and gladly turned the reins over to the waiters for the final plating: a Chocolate Avocado pudding served parfait style in a coffee cup with fresh berries and mocha truffles. Between the onslaught of lactic oblivion and sugar overload, Tom and Andy called us out to the dining room to toast our labor. We put on the clean chef's coats we were too busy to think about when the evening began and humbly received the grooms' thanks.

Back in the kitchen we polished off bottles, patted each other on the back and took stock of the evening. We broke a few plates, and set a towel on fire. Lively renditions of Les Miserables (seriously) started up, and we trudged through the clean up that signaled the end of another triumph; our cookery on the largest scale we've ever attempted, with the unwavering and flawless help of our best and finest friends.

Here's to (back to right, top, down): Molly, Meagan, Lake, Max, Madeline, Jennifer, Jessie, Aubrey, Matthew, and Michael. We could not have done it without you!

Tom met Andy nearly 20 years ago. They're both vegetarians and practicing Buddhists. Both sweet guys with good taste. Tom and Andy met the Hot Knives blog about 2 months ago when they wrote to us about catering their wedding. We sat down for wine and menu chit-chat when they dropped the bomb, "It's not one event, but two... back-to-back... at two different locations."

Well, we lived to retell that unfunny punch line. Last weekend's festivities went off like a sometimes-terrifying, often beautiful, sweaty 12-hour dream thanks to the 10-deep crew of blank-clad darlings we hired for help. We'll tell it you in 2 parts using camera flashes from Molly and Aubrey.

There's a rolling green grass knoll behind their Zen Center where Tom and Andrew got married. Lady priests waved incense and robed friends hammered copper gongs. The weather was 75 degrees in the sun. Under white tents, Madeline and Jennifer mixed handmade ginger-syrup tonics with lime zest and poured spiced cider. Lake and Jess served oozey sheep and cow cheese from cold marble slabs. Evan and Alex, and our hired thug/sous-chef/lucky charm Mike D. put the finishing touches on the reception goodies in the zen ladies' full-service kitchen that sat not ten feet behind the raised platform where the guys were to wed. With the kitchen windows open we could hear them prepping for the ceremony while we rolled chevre in nutmeg and formed risotto-sage balls for frying. Ball jokes ensued. Right before the service, one of the buddhists told us, "Your big problem is going to be that we can hear everything you say in there."

When the last gong landed, we flung open the screen doors and shot out platters of Nicoise tapenade in potato cups, smokey Muhammara piped on lavash points garnished with pomegranate seeds, cider-rubbed goat cheese on apple slices and, of course, the infamous Risotto Arancini with molten fontina centers (every wedding has to have one dish that the waiters get assaulted in a corner over). Little angel-kids ran around the grass while middle-aged ladies in hats slurped ginger soda and older guys gorged on cocktail nuts. They cut the cake. That was our cue, so we started cleaning in a mad frenzy, flinging half-prepared pots of food into our cars along with 4, still-rising pans of perfect sourdough- herb Focaccia. It took 10 minutes, a cigarette and 2 pieces of wintermint gum, to burn down Wilshire to the Park Plaza near McArthur Park where the champagne was supposed to pop in two hours for the sit-down 8-course vegetarian tasting menu.

The first event had gone an hour longer than we expected. Our sous chef Mike needed to jet for a play production in which he stars as Frank Zappa. One of the hotel's ovens was kaput. For a while - just a second there - we looked in each others eyes and knew shit was close to going horribly wrong...