With the spaghetti sauce out of the way, all that's left to prepare is the minor stuff, the supporting cast for tomorrow's luncheon. That includes the chocolate panna cotta, the insalata caprese, the garlic bread, and the spaghetti noodles. Oh, and the boss's fuckin' meatballs. The man is obsessed with meatballs, and every time I make spaghetti, he insists on having them. Well, this gives me a chance to use my new griddle. (NB: the boss is no longer our boss; he's in a separate building, now, but I invited him to our luncheon to help celebrate birthdays and to say goodbye to our Canadian coworker.)
I might just boil the noodles right there in the office; that'd save me a bit of work to do at home. The garlic bread will likely be done tomorrow morning; I'm going to take the 1970s-housewife approach to making garlic bread for a large crowd: I'll slice the loaves 95% of the way through, thus leaving them attached at the bottom. I'll mix softened butter with garlic powder and dried herbs (likely parsley, basil, and oregano), then spread the butter on one side of each slice. Next, I'll wrap the loaves in tin foil and bake them whole for about ten minutes—enough time to toast up the bottoms and get the butter melted. The hoi polloi can then have fun ripping slices of garlic bread off each primary loaf (I bought two soft, shitty baguettes whose texture is similar to American-style "Italian bread"*). That leaves the panna cotta, which I'll do tonight, plus the meatballs and caprese. I'll save the caprese for tomorrow morning; veggies need to be prepped fresh, and I don't want sliced tomatoes sitting and dripping in my fridge overnight. So tonight's agenda will be the panna cotta and the goddamn meatballs. Salad, bread, and pasta will all be done sometime tomorrow morning and right before lunch (I'm talking about the pasta, to be prepped sur-le-champ).
Right now, I'm writing this entry while I cool down after having tromped up fourteen floors. That's right: blogging as a form of repose. Le blogging en tant que forme de repos.
*As with "Italian sausage," we must be mindful that "Italian bread" is an American label for what may or may not be one type of bread to come out of Italy which, like all European countries, has a pornographically long litany of breads that it claims as its own.
2 comments:
Never been a huge fan of panna cotta. I generally prefer a custard or a non-alcoholic zabaione. But I suppose if it the panna cotta's chocolate that might help.
I made too many, so I'll be testing one this morning.
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