food from Saturday's party

Yesterday's get-together at the boss's new, spacious apartment was meant to serve several purposes. It was a sort of pre-birthday party for me, plus a chance for the boss to get some of his expat buddies and their families over for a gathering. The boss had been talking about the get-together for almost a month; he said he was going to have it catered, but that I was free to make and bring whatever I wanted. I chose to make my boeuf bourguignon plus a batch of chocolate-chip cookies (Toll House style, of course).

The boss had originally said he was going out to a wedding earlier in the day on Saturday, and that he'd swing by to pick me up after the wedding, which was set to take place around 12:30 in the afternoon. Because this is Korea, though, plans went awry, and the boss suddenly had some errands to do, including swinging by Jamshil to pick up his Korean accountant, another invitee. The original idea was for us to arrive at the boss's palatial home around 3 p.m., with the party starting at 5. By the time we pulled up to the boss's place, though, it was a few minutes after 5. This didn't matter too much, though, because no one else had arrived yet.

Let's back up for a sec. I had gotten up early yesterday morning so I could finish prepping the beef. The sauce needed to be thickened, and I used a different strategy, this time, to avoid getting bizarre clumps of cornstarch in the mix: I strained the beef "soup" to separate from the solids, then I boiled the soup by itself, added a mess of cornstarch, and stirred like a madman to distribute the cornstarch evenly and avoid clumping. I then strained the now-thickened soup (more of a gravy now) back into the beef/mushroom/bacon mixture to be doubly sure there were no ugly clumps, et voilà—the boeuf bourguignon was complete. I then had to make the Toll House cookies. Assembling the batter was no problem, although I ended up melting the butter instead of just softening it in the microwave. This ended up not mattering much for the final results. But dolloping the batter onto many cookie sheets took time, and so did baking the cookies. I had managed to get 34 cookies from the batter, but 4 cookies—the very first batch—ended up being way overbaked. The good thing, though, was that this allowed me to adjust oven temperature and my timing, and every batch after that first one came out perfect. The only problem was that baking several batches took a lot of time—and the cookies also needed time to cool—so I was happy when the boss called me several times in the early afternoon to say he'd be late in picking me up. The boss eventually got to my place around 3:45 or so, and traffic slowed to a crawl as we made our way out of Seoul to Yongin.

Back to the party. The boss's wife, who is actually a very good cook, asked me for tips on how to reheat the beef and prep the fusilli pasta. She did fine with both tasks; I don't think she really needed my advice. The meal we ate ended up being an amalgam of catered food, the Missus's cooking, my food, and some some dessert contributions from other guests. One dessert was a pineapple upside-down cake. It tasted great, but it was very dark and caramelized. (See here for what the cake is supposed to look like.) My Korean coworker contributed another apple pie, but he hadn't learned any lessons from when I last critiqued his pie: still too much crust (which wasn't buttery enough), and nowhere hear enough filling (like last time, his pie looked as thin as a pizza). Everybody chowed down and enjoyed the food, but there was still a ton of leftovers. I'd made a lot of beef Burgundy, so we had wisely chosen to put out only half of what I'd brought. That half, though, sold out. Everyone loved the beef, which got a lot of compliments.

The boss is familiar with my introversion, and I think he feared I might leave the party too soon, but I stuck around long enough for him and his helpers to turn off the lights, bring out a birthday cake, and sing "Happy Birthday" to me. Once that embarrassing moment was over and the post-song applause had faded, the lights came back on, and the boss performed a martial-arts trick called 장풍/jang-poong. Basically, he struck an open-hand blow at the cake's lit candles, "using his ki" to snuff them out. He'd plucked out most of the candles, leaving a row of five. Upon his blow, four of the candles went out. He struck again and snuffed the final candle, then he relit the candles and told me it was my turn to try. As you can imagine, I had no desire to further embarrass myself, but I struck weakly at the cake, and as I knew would happen, none of the candles went out. I tried again—same result. That was enough. Along with the cake, a set of nine little, square ice-cream cakes appeared, each decorated with some cutesy, cartoonish design. These were for the kids who'd come to the party. I, as the birthday boy, was tasked with cutting the cake, which I tried to do with geometric precision. (You'll see the results in the final photo of this photo essay.)

So here are some shots of the food (click on the images, then right-click and select "open image in new tab," to see at full size):

part of the spread

a closeup

closeup

cheese and crudités (and a tilted container of Krab)

a different angle that includes sushi

baked sausage and vegetables

The above sausage-and-vegetable dish caught my eye: it had been made by the Missus. It looks to have been baked, but the baking had been timed perfectly such that the veggies came out somewhat softened but still robustly crunchy. And despite the presence of small bits of onion here and there, this dish was, I think, my favorite of the night. The Missus somehow managed to solve the riddle of assembling ingredients with different baking times and baking them all to perfection. Blows my mind.

Below—the food I brought:

Lastly, the birthday cake (sliced by yours truly) and the cute little ice-cream cakes:

My boss has two cats, a white and a gray. The gray cat, introverted like me, remained hidden for most of the party. The white cat, named Barney (originally named Bonnie when the family thought the cat was a female), was an extroverted people cat who liked rubbing himself against the guests' legs, leaving tons of hair on people's pants. Barney was also a very starey cat, looking me in the eyes whenever he could.

I lasted as long as I could at the party, but at 9 p.m., I called it quits and told the boss he could keep the rest of the beef Burgundy and the cookies (which I hope he distributed to the guests: there were so many other desserts competing that night that I saw the cookies had been shoved off to the side, becoming an afterthought). The boss tried to persuade/badger me to stay longer, but he knew it was no use. My Korean coworker said he could drive me into Gangnam if I could only wait another twenty minutes to allow his daughter to play a little more, but once I'd made the decision to leave, I wasn't going to wait for anyone. It was nice meeting so many new people, but it was also draining, and I was still exhausted from having gotten up so early in the morning. I walked out into the quiet night, using good old Naver Map to find my way to the nearby bus stop that would take me to the closest subway station. I found the bus stop and waited only five minutes for the 38-1 bus to arrive. As it turned out, though, that bus stop is the terminus/beginning of the 38-1 route, so when the bus arrived, all of its passengers got out, and I was initially the only one to get in at that time of night. The bus driver left the bus to have a smoke; one or two other passengers got on board while we waited; the bus driver climbed back aboard, and we were off. I knew I needed to stay awake to hear when my stop was coming up; I drifted off a couple times, but I did manage to be awake when it was time to get off. The subway ride was long and involved one transfer, which is always a pain in the ass. Still, I got to my building a bit before 11 p.m., leaving me time to grab some stuff at the basement grocery before heading up to my apartment. All in all, a good-but-tiring day. Today, I'm doing not much of anything.

As God intended.