Weddings, Parties and Bar Mitzvahs - further adventures in food

Recently I had my first ever cooking commission!  Since my arrival here I have been discovering the joy of cooking (or it may just be an obsession with eating) and have often used friends as human guinea pigs for my kitchen endeavours.  While nothing has been a real disaster I am far from considering myself a good cook so it was a surprise to receive an email from GM requesting my services for his pre dinner drinks.  He would inflict my cooking on his friends? Either my abilities are better than I give myself credit for or I’m a novelty.

Having accepted the commission I was immediately thrown into a panic, it’s all very well dreaming up dinner ideas and inviting people over to sample the experiment but this event demanded success and I was to have an audience of Italians to impress.  From my experience the Italians are very discerning food critics.  If they like your food they’ll tell you and if they don’t like it or think you got something wrong they’ll tell you (none of this “It’s really delicious but I’m just not hungry” sparing of feelings.)  In his email GM had mentioned that there would be some experienced cooks among the guests – suddenly the pressure was on.  So panicked was I at the thought that I mistook GMs compliment about my abilities as an insult (it was only on rereading the email today that I got the complementary nature – thanks so nice of you to say.) 

Now I had to decide on the food.  My guidelines were for something light, tasty and good with beer.  There was also the expectation that it would be “ethnic” – a table laden with olives, salami and cheeses would not have gone down well.  A quick consult with some foodie friends back in Melbourne I settled on a largely middle eastern/Jewish themed spread (with a bit of South East Asian to take advantage of a fresh batch of Ts home grown chillies.) 

Friday evening and once again my apartment was filled with the aromas of roasting spices and the whole place fell into chaos as I simultaneously tried to make an abundance of food and prepare the next day’s lessons.  By the time I cracked a beer and gave up for the night most of the food was done and the lessons largely unplanned. 

The next day after work and a bit more preparation it was over to GMs apartment where all was being readied for the event.  By the time guests started to arrive (late, just to confirm the Italian stereotype) dips and dukkah were on the table, the spinach and cheese triangles in the oven and I was about to start making the larb.  A steady stream of guests made their way into the kitchen to check out the activities.  Joining the festivities after a quick ten minute kitchen tidy I was surprised to see most of the food gone.  Had I under catered? No, it seems the food was a success!  There followed some very technical questions about the cooking and I almost burst with pride when I overheard a guest comment that despite the fact we were heading to an agritourismo (a restaurant that serves food grown on site or sourced locally) for dinner after he couldn’t resist eating more.  For my part having cooked the food I really had no interest in eating it!  At the agritourismo there were yet more delights to taste although the owner was perplexed and vaguely insulted that no one was eating very much.

I think we can conclude that the evening was a success.  Next time (should there be one) I hope I’ll be less nervous at the prospect.  It was quite fun but as ever you always wish you had more time to make something more elaborate (or that you had access to more ingredients.)  So, if I ever decide to move on from teaching maybe there is a future in cooking – Rajis’ catering service: weddings, parties and Bar Mitzvahs.