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Except I have and Im getting help. I dont even get why its relevant to openly doubt that I can cook...

Jerom wrote:Except I have and Im getting help. I dont even get why its relevant to openly doubt that I can cook...

ye i think you have understood it a bit wrong. I think he iddnt doubt your cooking skills but merely pointed out the challenge to make a fancy meal for 20 persons. From a quantity pov he didnt imply that you cannot cook.

Ah well it feels like thats the underlying message or sth.

-- deleted post --

I guess it depends on what you're planning to cook. If you're going for classy stuff, then quantity doesn't matter. It could be just a lump of meat with a few sprinkles of sauce on top and a slice of fruit on the side.

If you want to serve a plate full of food, then yeah, doing that for 20 goobers will take a lot of time and cost some.

Not to mention you really need to know your shit. You need to know the recipe well to get a good result. If you're doing it for the first time..

I had a simple recipe from an ex-gf, she knew it from a pro chef: shrimps with bacon and rice. Very easy to cook and very tasty. And it probably won't cost that much even for 20 people.

Basically you need to buy like 5 bags of frozen white shrimp, maybe 10 packs of bacon strips, 20 satchels of basmati rice. The shrimp should be peeled and cleaned, medium-sized, and only have the tail on. One bag should have enough shrimp to feed 4 people, imo, or you could make your own estimation. Then you need to defrost them, cut their tails and wrap them up in bacon strips. The bacon strips need to be raw/uncooked and contain more meat than fat.

Example:
[spoiler=spoiler][/spoiler]

You need to calculate how many bacon strips you need very carefully, because each cooked shrimp needs to have some bacon on it, otherwise it won't have any taste.

Then heat up a frying pan, melt some butter in it and cook the shrimps at moderate temperature. It needs to have enough time for the bacon fat to melt and the meat taste to impregnate the shrimp. Once the bacon on top gets a slightly golden colour and the shrimp inside looks opaque white, you can take them out.

In the meantime, make sure you boil the basmati rice.

Once you finished cooking both, you can choose whether to let your guests get their own servings from a few big bowls of rice and shrimp or to make the servings yourself. You might need to think about how you time having these cooked, so that they don't get too cold until your guests are ready to sink their teeth in them.

The final dish should look something like this:
[spoiler=spoiler][/spoiler]
This can be accompanied by a good red or white wine, depending on taste. Beer can also work, as well as whiskey. Your guests will be impressed by how tasty this recipe is, if it's done well.

[spoiler=spoiler][img]cheers.gif[/img][/spoiler]

I'm guessing Jerom can't cook, why else would he ask for advice? Case closed!

fightinfrenchman wrote:I'm guessing Jerom can't cook, why else would he ask for advice? Case closed!

The ability to cook food and deciding what to cook are two very different things. If all you have to say is negative, just dont post.

-- deleted post --

Garja wrote:I'm not saying it's less expensive. I'm just of the opinion you cannot cook for 20 people from scratch.

Why not? My mom does it every year, multiple times :/. You need help from 2-3 competent people and make sure you have everything you need the day before and prepare little things already 1-2 days before. Its not building a nasa rocket

gibson wrote:

Jerom wrote:I dont get why I would not be able to? Cooking is easy, starter and dessert are easy, Ill just have to prepare the main course and practise once or twice. I think anyone can do that np

you clearly have never cooked a fancy meal....... Me my dad and my brother spent almost 4 hours cooking a fancy meal for my mom and my grandparents on mother's day.... Neither is cooking fancy food easy unless you are a professional chef. There's a reason why fancy food is fancy food and it's not because it objectively tastes better

What bs... Ive worked in hotel/restaurant kitchens and its not like theyre magicians. Obviously their training makes everything go faster, and they know how to add special things to a standard recipe to make it excellent, but its not like anyone whos cooked cant do it. My wife and I always cook fancy dinners on christmass eve, and the food is often better than what youd get for the same price in a restaurant. Obviously you can dish out 80€ Per person for a 5 course meal and drinks, and it will be prepared by a top chef, and it will be amazing, but its a totally different experience. They dont even compare.

Really what you think is easy depends on your own experience. Imo, cooking fancy meals is alot of effort, in that sense its hard, but other than that, its easy in the sense that for anyone used to cooking its mostly routine things and following a recipe + some own personalisation. An amateur mechanic would say fixing a car is easy, i would say its fkin hard.

Another thing that can help is to pick a theme for your fancy meal - focus on a handful of tastes/flavors - what do you think your guests will like?
Sweet? Spicy? Salted? Marinated(tangy)?

Dolan wrote:I guess it depends on what you're planning to cook. If you're going for classy stuff, then quantity doesn't matter. It could be just a lump of meat with a few sprinkles of sauce on top and a slice of fruit on the side.

If you want to serve a plate full of food, then yeah, doing that for 20 goobers will take a lot of time and cost some.

Not to mention you really need to know your shit. You need to know the recipe well to get a good result. If you're doing it for the first time..

I had a simple recipe from an ex-gf, she knew it from a pro chef: shrimps with bacon and rice. Very easy to cook and very tasty. And it probably won't cost that much even for 20 people.

Basically you need to buy like 5 bags of frozen white shrimp, maybe 10 packs of bacon strips, 20 satchels of basmati rice. The shrimp should be peeled and cleaned, medium-sized, and only have the tail on. One bag should have enough shrimp to feed 4 people, imo, or you could make your own estimation. Then you need to defrost them, cut their tails and wrap them up in bacon strips. The bacon strips need to be raw/uncooked and contain more meat than fat.

Example:
[spoiler=spoiler][/spoiler]

You need to calculate how many bacon strips you need very carefully, because each cooked shrimp needs to have some bacon on it, otherwise it won't have any taste.

Then heat up a frying pan, melt some butter in it and cook the shrimps at moderate temperature. It needs to have enough time for the bacon fat to melt and the meat taste to impregnate the shrimp. Once the bacon on top gets a slightly golden colour and the shrimp inside looks opaque white, you can take them out.

In the meantime, make sure you boil the basmati rice.

Once you finished cooking both, you can choose whether to let your guests get their own servings from a few big bowls of rice and shrimp or to make the servings yourself. You might need to think about how you time having these cooked, so that they don't get too cold until your guests are ready to sink their teeth in them.

The final dish should look something like this:
[spoiler=spoiler][/spoiler]
This can be accompanied by a good red or white wine, depending on taste. Beer can also work, as well as whiskey. Your guests will be impressed by how tasty this recipe is, if it's done well.

[spoiler=spoiler][img]cheers.gif[/img][/spoiler]

You can do a similar dish with scallops, would probs cost more money, but less time, as there is no need to peel and clean. I would recommend buying quality bacon or even pancetta tbh, a local deli should have it. Fish or seafood in general makes for good fancy food that should be easy to make. With an average size oven you can prepare 20 salmon steaks without a problem, and because its ready so quickly, its not a disaster if you need two rounds to cook.

A wild meat stew would also be easy to make in large quantities. You can get good fish and meat in large quantities at wholesale stores, all restaurants buy there as well

umeu wrote:

gibson wrote:

Jerom wrote:I dont get why I would not be able to? Cooking is easy, starter and dessert are easy, Ill just have to prepare the main course and practise once or twice. I think anyone can do that np

you clearly have never cooked a fancy meal....... Me my dad and my brother spent almost 4 hours cooking a fancy meal for my mom and my grandparents on mother's day.... Neither is cooking fancy food easy unless you are a professional chef. There's a reason why fancy food is fancy food and it's not because it objectively tastes better

What bs... Ive worked in hotel/restaurant kitchens and its not like theyre magicians. Obviously their training makes everything go faster, and they know how to add special things to a standard recipe to make it excellent, but its not like anyone whos cooked cant do it. My wife and I always cook fancy dinners on christmass eve, and the food is often better than what youd get for the same price in a restaurant. Obviously you can dish out 80€ Per person for a 5 course meal and drinks, and it will be prepared by a top chef, and it will be amazing, but its a totally different experience. They dont even compare.

Really what you think is easy depends on your own experience. Imo, cooking fancy meals is alot of effort, in that sense its hard, but other than that, its easy in the sense that for anyone used to cooking its mostly routine things and following a recipe + some own personalisation. An amateur mechanic would say fixing a car is easy, i would say its fkin hard.

I agree lol, all I'm saying is if you're making a fancy meal it's not the kind of thing a single person can start 2 hours before and finish. When I say hard I mean mostly in terms of time commitment, particularly if you're preparing nice meat it takes forever cause the average person's pan is only gonna be able to fit like 3 or 4 pieces of meat. Than you gotta add it chopping up lettuce, tomato, peppers etc, dicing garlic, buttering bread before you put it in the oven, cutting up fruit. I guess you can do like fish or fried chicken you can put it on a bigger pan and stick it in the oven but if you're doing nicer meat like steak or lamb or even just sauted chicken you gotta do it in a pan on the stove. Its easy in the sense that the vast majority of cooking is just following a recipe that doesn't require much specialization but cooking for a large amount of people is hard just because of the time commitment.

Catering, Jerom.

umeu wrote:

gibson wrote:

Jerom wrote:I dont get why I would not be able to? Cooking is easy, starter and dessert are easy, Ill just have to prepare the main course and practise once or twice. I think anyone can do that np

you clearly have never cooked a fancy meal....... Me my dad and my brother spent almost 4 hours cooking a fancy meal for my mom and my grandparents on mother's day.... Neither is cooking fancy food easy unless you are a professional chef. There's a reason why fancy food is fancy food and it's not because it objectively tastes better

What bs... Ive worked in hotel/restaurant kitchens and its not like theyre magicians. Obviously their training makes everything go faster, and they know how to add special things to a standard recipe to make it excellent, but its not like anyone whos cooked cant do it. My wife and I always cook fancy dinners on christmass eve, and the food is often better than what youd get for the same price in a restaurant. Obviously you can dish out 80€ Per person for a 5 course meal and drinks, and it will be prepared by a top chef, and it will be amazing, but its a totally different experience. They dont even compare.

Really what you think is easy depends on your own experience. Imo, cooking fancy meals is alot of effort, in that sense its hard, but other than that, its easy in the sense that for anyone used to cooking its mostly routine things and following a recipe + some own personalisation. An amateur mechanic would say fixing a car is easy, i would say its fkin hard.

Laurence Drake wrote:

umeu wrote:

Garja wrote:I'm not saying it's less expensive. I'm just of the opinion you cannot cook for 20 people from scratch.

Why not? My mom does it every year, multiple times :/. You need help from 2-3 competent people and make sure you have everything you need the day before and prepare little things already 1-2 days before. Its not building a nasa rocket

Aaand that's not from scratch in fact

Not sure what you mean by from scratch, its typically garjlish where you randomly use a phrase in a way it's not supposed to be used. Considering thats she uses basic raw goods whenever she cooks for such occasions, its what we call cooking from scratch. She doesnt use any prefab packages which only require you to add water and flavor to be done. So what do you mean?

He is a student with little to no experience wanting to cook proper food for a number of people that would be problematic even for an italian grandma.
And maybe he has to do that soon. It's just unrealistic.
You mentioned you mum with help of others preparing days in advance and you never referred to 20 people.

Garja wrote:He is a student with little to no experience wanting to cook proper food for a number of people that would be problematic even for an italian grandma.
And maybe he has to do that soon. It's just unrealistic.
You mentioned you mum with help of others preparing days in advance and you never referred to 20 people.

she cooks for more than 20 people actually. and it's not that many days in advance, depending on what you make, for example if you want to properly marinade meat, you need to do it one day in advance. Preparation is key, so you can all do it on one day, but if you want to do it properly, it's better to start doing it the day before, atleast, anything that you can already do, as some ingredients need to be prepared fresh. But for example something such as cleaning the shrimp can easily be done one day before. Obviously you need help for so many people, a chef also doesn't run his restaurant alone either. He's already said he's got help, so it's not really an issue.

GL

umeu wrote:as there is no need to peel and clean.

I think what I said was maybe unclear. Usually shrimp comes already peeled and cleaned, there's no need for you to do that. I was just making sure he understands what kind of shrimps are needed for this recipe. I haven't used fresh, unpeeled shrimp, so I've no idea how that works.

doesn't really matter tbh, i just used it as an example of things you might want to do in advance. for example, if you want to make felafel, you need to start the day before, to cook and then dry the chickpeas. if you do that on the same day, it's going to be a disaster. do it before, it's a breeze. it's just about prep. the reason why restaurants can turn out dishes at the pace and scale they do is in large due to having their mis-en-place in tip top order. Everything that needs to be cut is already cut, everything that needs to be diced is diced, etc. they just do the details at the end from unprepared goods, but otherwise it's already prepared that morning, the day before or even earlier

Yeah, that's true. Lots of ingredients in restaurants are already chopped and prepared if the recipe they're needed for is a popular one.

Garja wrote:He is a student with little to no experience wanting to cook proper food for a number of people that would be problematic even for an italian grandma.
And maybe he has to do that soon. It's just unrealistic.
You mentioned you mum with help of others preparing days in advance and you never referred to 20 people.

I still dont get what this type of negative comment is supposed to achieve. Its full of incorrect assumptions and just comes off as an insult.