I did some prep-cooking last night: the cornbread stuffing is going to have sausage in it, so I cooked up a kilo of my own breakfast sausage, which is a variation of a recipe I'd found online long ago (basically, I amp up the sage). I've never done the sausage the way I'd like to, i.e., with way more fat content. To do that, I'd need to grind up a bunch of bacon, the same way I did for my new-and-improved andouille sausage (50% fat content, bitches!). True: you lose a lot in the cooking, but the flavor goes through the roof. That said, even though this batch of sausages lacked bacon fat, the meat tasted great when I was done with it and had drizzled a bit of maple syrup onto a half-cup of crumbled sausage to taste my handiwork.
Tonight, the actual cooking begins. I'll be working on mashed potatoes and corn pudding because those can withstand refrigeration/freezing for a few days. From Thursday to Saturday, I'll be working on progressively more perishable menu items, so the schedule looks like this:
Wednesday (today): mashed potatoes, corn pudding
Thursday: stuffing 2 ways,* pumpkin pie
Friday: ham, apple pie, pecan pie
Saturday morning: chicken roulade, peas & carrots, gravy
I have only one small oven, so keeping all the menu items hot for the meal service will be impossible. We may have to do a "plate up and microwave it" style of dinner, which isn't ideal. I wish I had some chafing dishes, warming plates, and a steamer contraption that I could put inside my giant, 15-liter pot; those would ensure that everything stayed warm. But maybe next time. What I'd really like is a larger apartment with a full kitchen that includes a breakfast-bar setup, cuisine island, tons of easily accessible storage space, acres of counter space, and plenty of seating. This is the sort of thought that makes me think I need to move back to the States, where property values—if you're in the right place—are far more reasonable.
*One of our number doesn't eat vegetables, so I have to purée the veggies for him.
And so it begins!
ReplyDeleteI won't complain about less fat in the sausage. I'm sure it's awesome.