Epic Meal Time

One of the many reasons I was in East Hampton was to celebrate the 90th birthday of my Nana S. Again. A few months ago I made the trip to Great Neck to celebrate in person closer to the actual day. But this belated celebration gave my California cousins the chance to join in on the party.

So we made a little bit of food.

And we includes my aunt’s friend who happens to be a James Beard award winning chef, who actually was given her award by the man himself. Cooking with her is both an incredible pleasure and an extraordinary ordeal. Usually, I carry a little bit of stress as I hover over pots and pans in the kitchen, but yesterday that got kicked up to eleven. Luckily I think I hide it pretty well.

Sixteen people were coming for dinner. In the end there was easily enough food for 36. Really probably more. Here’s how the meal went down.

Chef W had a vision of what she wanted to make for the party. Somehow I never have visions of pulled pork sliders, but she did. Carolina style ones with a tart slaw, and a black pepper sauce, on demure sweet soft rolls. Holy cow those were good. It only took two days to make all the components of the dish.

The rest of the menu was a little bit of a hodge podge with different members of the family taking responsibility for different foods. Remarkably in the end, it all ended up coming together into a cohesive meal.

First I had to go out shopping with Aunt S for ingredients in East Hampton. Fancy.

The gathering was divided between Round Swamp Farm, Citarella, the local IGA, and a local butcher. Like me, Aunt S knows that you have to shop at a variety of stores to get all the things on your list. For example, the chocolate cake couldn’t come from anywhere else but Citarella. And the corn had to come from Round Swamp Farm, but that’s not the place to stop for prosciutto.

I was actually surprised that Citarella, which in some respects is a crazy fancy market, didn’t have a better selection of cured pork products. Yes, they had the usual suspects, and I got some Prosciutto San Daniele, which was delicious. But I was really hoping they would have some La Quercia so I could show my family just how good pork can be. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to stop by Lucy’s Whey to see if they could satisfy my hunger for rich and unctuous pork fat.

When we got home the cooking began in earnest.

Yukon gold potatoes were chunked and boiled for a creamy tomato salad. French green beans were blanched, to be dressed with an olive oil, lemon juice and fennel fronds. Balsamic was reduced. Ricotta was blended with lemon zest to fill figs that would then be wrapped in proscuitto. A fennel bulb was shaved to be made into a slaw for the steak. Flank steak was marinated in garlic, lime, basil, olive oil and chili flakes before it was grilled over direct high heat. Salmon was seasoned and broiled. Tabouli and baba ganoush were paired with pita. A curried white bean and green vegetable dip was the centerpiece of crudite. Whole zucchini were blistered on the grill.

And then there was the corn, which I only mention because chef W went back for seconds.

The corn was my idea, riffing off of something my Cousin S had in mind. She wanted a summertime corn and tomato salad. And that sounded great, but there was a guest who was anti-tomato. So I suggested a corn and bacon sauté. That seemed to capture people’s imaginations, so we went with it.

Have you ever seen what 26 ears of corn look like when they’ve been sliced from the cob into a giant mixing bowl? Let me tell you, that’s a lot of corn.

Only probably a third of it went into this dish which I still had to do in batches. Six strips of bacon were fried into lardons, with the bacon put aside and half of the rendered fat spooned off into a dish. Into the pan with half of the bacon fat, I put a knob of butter. Then an avalanche of corn. Then salt and pepper. That was then turned out into a serving bowl.

I repeated the process with the reserved bacon fat, another knob of butter, salt, pepper, and another avalanche of corn. Except this time, I added the crisped bacon to the blend. And when it was cooked through (with minimal stirring) I dumped it into the serving bowl.

On some level this was the simplest dish of the night, yet it got a ton of praise. The best probably came from cousin W, who said that the bacon made the corn taste more like corn. I loved that because it really summed up what it means to provide contrast in a dish.

But I take no credit for making this dish great. This dish was all about taking great ingredients and not screwing them up. It was also about a shit ton of labor. The Fussy Little Children bussied themselves on the porch shucking the corn for the better part of an hour, if not longer. And then cousin S and uncle S, dutifully shaved off the kernels with knives.

I just applied the oldest trick to making food taste great. Plenty of salt and plenty of fat. Plus it never hurts to get everyone drunk on Mai Tai’s before dinner.

Just know this, finding orgeat is not nearly as easy as I had expected in East Hampton. As sophisticated as the summer tourists may be, this is still the sticks. It’s beautiful, and there is great food to be sure. But in some ways it’s like going camping, and some things you just have to make sure to bring from home.