Well, some friends, here, are relatively newly arrived missionaries from the Pittsburgh area, and a medical group from their church visited a local clinic, so my friends (who know how I like to cook) asked if I would be interested in making a little extra support money by cooking a dinner for the group (total attendance, including myself, 24 people).
Initially, they had thought my individual pizzas would be good, but it just would have been too difficult to coordinate keeping that many of the pizzas hot, with the venue's small kitchen, to be served at the same time.
Thus, I offered some ideas for some chicken dishes, especially since chicken is good, plentiful, and inexpensive here. They liked the suggestions, and chose Chicken Paprikas, allowing me to come up with the rest of the menu, (of course, making sure it stayed within the budget they had set for the event).
Of course, if one serves Chicken Paprikas, one must serve it with Galuska (essentially the same thing as Spätzle) for all that wonderful gravy, so that was a given, instead of using store-bought noodles.
Since those steps were already leading in an obvious direction, I decided to make the rest of the meal Hungarian, as well, so I made broccoli with buttered bread crumbs for the side, and Kremes (essentially a Hungarian version of a Napoleon) for dessert.
My biggest difficulty was in using Musicmaker's Ten-Minute Puff Pastry recipe for the first time, in that it didn't stay as puffy as I would have hoped. Even so, it was still VERY good, and the finished dessert was delicious. In fact, even after the Kremes had been out of the fridge for a while, and the filling had become looser, one of the guests mentioned how much she loved it, and that, "whatever that filling is, I could just put a whole bunch of that into a big glass and just drink it, it's so good." LOL!
The Chicken Paprikas, Galuska, and Broccoli were also very well received, and some of the people from the group still commented about it when I saw them today.
Definitely, this choice of menu proved MUCH easier to handle and serve in a timely manner, and contributed to the success of this event.
Although I have worked in a restaurant and for a caterer, and have made SOME of my own things for sale, this was the first time for me to make cater a complete meal for a group of this size, and only the second time, overall (the first was for 12 friends back in Florida, almost ten years ago). It was certainly a lot of work, but it was very satisfying, and I enjoyed it. I'm not sure that I could do this VERY frequently without any helpers, but once a month would be nice, if I could get big-enough groups of clients for that.
Initially, they had thought my individual pizzas would be good, but it just would have been too difficult to coordinate keeping that many of the pizzas hot, with the venue's small kitchen, to be served at the same time.
Thus, I offered some ideas for some chicken dishes, especially since chicken is good, plentiful, and inexpensive here. They liked the suggestions, and chose Chicken Paprikas, allowing me to come up with the rest of the menu, (of course, making sure it stayed within the budget they had set for the event).
Of course, if one serves Chicken Paprikas, one must serve it with Galuska (essentially the same thing as Spätzle) for all that wonderful gravy, so that was a given, instead of using store-bought noodles.
Since those steps were already leading in an obvious direction, I decided to make the rest of the meal Hungarian, as well, so I made broccoli with buttered bread crumbs for the side, and Kremes (essentially a Hungarian version of a Napoleon) for dessert.
My biggest difficulty was in using Musicmaker's Ten-Minute Puff Pastry recipe for the first time, in that it didn't stay as puffy as I would have hoped. Even so, it was still VERY good, and the finished dessert was delicious. In fact, even after the Kremes had been out of the fridge for a while, and the filling had become looser, one of the guests mentioned how much she loved it, and that, "whatever that filling is, I could just put a whole bunch of that into a big glass and just drink it, it's so good." LOL!
The Chicken Paprikas, Galuska, and Broccoli were also very well received, and some of the people from the group still commented about it when I saw them today.
Definitely, this choice of menu proved MUCH easier to handle and serve in a timely manner, and contributed to the success of this event.
Although I have worked in a restaurant and for a caterer, and have made SOME of my own things for sale, this was the first time for me to make cater a complete meal for a group of this size, and only the second time, overall (the first was for 12 friends back in Florida, almost ten years ago). It was certainly a lot of work, but it was very satisfying, and I enjoyed it. I'm not sure that I could do this VERY frequently without any helpers, but once a month would be nice, if I could get big-enough groups of clients for that.
If blueberry muffins have blueberries in them, what do vegan muffins have?
You did what every professional does by keeping open minded, knowing the limitations and directing the client to a menu that works and tastes fantasic without making you totally insane.
