office-luncheon follies

We're all stuffed here at the office, and we haven't even had a chance to dig into the pie yet. Lunch was, overall, a resounding success, with everyone stuffing himself silly, even my normally picky Korean coworker. Let's start off the photo essay with a disgustingly blurry shot of the macaroni and cheese:

Last night, when I was reducing the heavy cream to make double cream, everything seemingly went well, although I did see some evidence that the cream was separating. I simply kept stirring, and the problem was never more than minor. Today, however, when I reheated the double cream at the office to make the mac and cheese, the cream separated out completely, leaving me with a ton of what looked like clarified butter. I did what I could to drain that off. See a photo of the liquid below:

looks like melted butter or a urine sample

This affected the texture of the mac and cheese, and not in a good way: the mouth-feel was a bit grainy and gritty, although the taste was just fine.*

Next up: a pic of the L.A. galbi, which I didn't bother glazing this time:

I cooked the galbi this morning on my smokeless griddle, and while there was some inevitable burning, the end result was pretty tasty.

There was enough food for me to have to create separate stations. Here's the slider-and-sides station, with an ear of corn brought in by my boss:

And below is the galbi station, with two sides that I'd bought (couldn't be bothered to make my own banchan), plus a whole mess of rice that nobody ate:

Below: a pic of one of my two plates of food:

Lastly, a clearer photo of the mac and cheese:

Once we dig into the pie, I'll post those photos as well.

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*I blame the Maeil brand heavy cream I used. Before, when I made mac and cheese years earlier, I'd used a French heavy cream bought at Costco—some sort of crème supérieure. That one never separated on me the way this one did. Grrr.