Sunday morning I had to get up early anyway, since I was cooking. Not just cooking myself and Marilyn some Sunday breakfast. No, I was cooking Sunday Supper for the entire fraternity! I was confident of my abilities in preparing a nice intimate meal for two, or a delicious family sized meal, but this was the first time in either life that I would cook a professional meal for a large group of people on a budget. I was a little nervous.
Normally we had a cook who came in at about 11:00 and worked until 6:00, Monday through Friday. She made a simple lunch, sandwiches and soup, that sort of thing, and then made dinner. The Kitchen Steward was in charge of ordering everything needed, overseeing the budget, and running the assigned labor. All the brothers acted as waiters and dishwashers in rotation. Saturday we did the same, but Mrs. Clarity simply prepped the meal ahead of time. We simply warmed it up.
Breakfasts were usually cereal or toast or eggs, which were free, or you could do yogurt, which had a signing sheet on the fridge, where you marked down what you took and it was added to your bar bill at the end of the month. That's how I learned to do omelets, studying under Ricky in the middle of the night when we had the munchies.
Sunday was different. We only had one meal, a big deal meal, at 1:00. You scrounged for yourself Sunday night. This was usually a big roast of some sort, veggies, potatoes, dessert, etc. We had these things at other meals, but Sunday was definitely supposed to be bigger and better. We would also have more people in attendance. Girlfriends were usually around, and we often brought pledges and potential pledges in for meals. The cook was one of the brothers, from a list of three or four brothers who had demonstrated superior kitchen skills over the years. They got paid $10 for a Sunday meal. I had been a Steward once, but I had never been a cook.
I didn't have an unlimited budget, and I didn't have unlimited manpower. I had me and Marilyn, after I promised to split my fee with her. She was generally hopeless in a kitchen, but I would supervise her and use her for the scutwork. I just wouldn't tell her that. I had been assigned a beef roast, and Arnie, the current Steward, had gone over my menu. I promised him roast beef, canned green beans, potatoes, gravy, rolls, and my choice of either Jell-O and Foo (a non-dairy whipped topping that we made from a powder) or ton cake (it's bigger than a pound cake), which was nothing more than a sheet cake with some baker's sugar sprinkled on it.
So that was the menu, but it didn't mean I couldn't improvise. We started early, and I had Marilyn help with mixing the ingredients for the ton cake and pour it into a baking tray. Marilyn, for all her being a lousy cook, is a perfectly adequate baker. As soon as the cake was in one side of the double oven, I had her make some dough for biscuits. Again, this can be pretty simple, but we needed 50-60. Meanwhile, I quickly washed three dozen potatoes and set them on a tray, and put them into the other side of the oven.
Just because we were doing meat and potatoes, it didn't mean we were doing something boring. I remember reading Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and there is a passage about the fall of communism. It basically goes that not everybody has equal abilities. A good cook can turn apples, sugar, and flour into a tasty treat, a great chef can take the same ingredients and turn out a brilliant confection, and a lousy hack can turn them into an inedible mess. I was going for something special today. These weren't just going to be baked potatoes; I was going to make double baked potatoes! You bake the potatoes until done, remove them from the oven, and cut them in half lengthwise. Then you carefully scoop out the potato from the skins and save the empty skins. The potatoes get mixed up with some milk and butter and chives, into a creamy mashed potato filling, get spooned back into the potatoes, and then rebaked. It takes a little longer, but it's very nice.
While the potatoes were baking and Marilyn was working on the biscuits, I was preparing the roast beast. I was going for a horseradish crusting. You slit some pockets into the roast and then dredge the roast in flour and place it in the roasting pan. Next you prepare a paste of melted butter, horseradish, parsley, and lemon juice that you pour into the pockets and then cover the outside of the roast with. Then you roast as normal. Very tasty!
For gravy, I was taking some standard canned gravy, but modifying it by adding some beef bouillon, garlic, and horseradish. For my veggies, I was using canned green beans, which I had to use since I couldn't budget for fresh and didn't have the time to prepare them anyway. I was tempted to bake a green bean casserole, but instead settled for adding some chopped onions and cilantro to the pot while they were warming up.
By noon everything was cooking along nicely. The real trick to cooking is not the individual dishes, but the timing required to bring it all together at once. Some items, like the dessert, can be prepared ahead of time without worry. Others can be cooked and then kept warm for a bit longer, like the potatoes. The meat needed to be ready about fifteen minutes early, so I could carve it in time to be served on the dot at 1:00. The biscuits and the gravy needed to be ready without any delay. By half past twelve Arnie was marshalling the waiters and starting to prepare everything for serving. The kitchen smelled fabulous; Marilyn and I looked like we had been dragged through a knothole!
By 12:45 the tables were set and people were starting to congregate. I was slicing roast beast as fast as my little fingers could go. On my own I used an electric carving knife, but here I used a big chef's knife. Meanwhile Arnie had the main counter lined with serving plates and bowls, and he and Marilyn were slopping beans and biscuits and gravy out. At five minutes of, cries of "Food! Food!", were sounding in the dining room, and we could hear the thumping of fists on the tables. I just grinned at the others as we started portioning out the roast beef onto serving plates. We actually got done with about ninety seconds to spare, by which time the hue and cry was thunderous. I looked at my watch as the grinning waiters picked up their plates, and as the second hand hit the 12, I flashed my hand down and sent them on their way. I leaned back against the counter and grinned at Marilyn. "Some fun, huh?"
She gave me an exhausted look. "I think I need a raise!"
"I'd make a smartass comment about the type of raise you're going to get, but I'm too tired.", I admitted. I pushed her towards the dining room, where I had reserved her a seat near the kitchen, next to my roommate. "Sit. Eat. Rest!"
Bradley looked at me as I leaned in the kitchen door next to Marilyn. "What's in the gravy?", he asked.
"You like it?"
He nodded. "Yeah!"
"I added some beef broth, garlic, and horseradish. The horseradish is what gives it the extra kick. That's on the beef as well."
"It's good!"
"What'd you do to the green beans?", asked Boris.
"Added some onions and cilantro."
He made a funny face. "I hate green beans."
Then why ask? I just shrugged. Everybody else was stuffing it in as fast as they could, and waiters were starting to head for the kitchen for seconds. I followed them in and sent out some more food.
About ten minutes later, the calls for dessert started, and I had the waiters send out the trays of plates with cake on them. As I knew would happen, there were immediate cries for 'Foo! Foo'", done in a high falsetto voice. I also knew that Arnie would clamp down on it. He jumped up and yelled back, "No, you don't get Foo, not after last week! No more Foo until you learn to behave yourselves!" Last Sunday the dessert was Jell-O and Foo, and had resulted in a Foo Fight at the end. In fact, it was about even odds that when Foo was served, a Foo Fight would ensue.