My mom’s giant Christmas party is coming up and I usually do most of the cooking. This year she’s just doing some beef tenderloins, which thankfully makes it easy. I’ve got a potato dish I can make ahead, and a great Caesar dressing, and people are of course bringing appetizers and stuff. What I need is some sort of vegetable.
Now, I have learned from doing this for years that what’s easy and simple for four is NOT for forty. Too much chopping is Very Bad. I often do roasted green beans with goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes, which people like, but I’d like to do something different for a change.
So, who has a good very tasty recipe that easily scales up to feed 40, doesn’t take a lot of hands on time (oven time is fine) and isn’t too rich (the potato dish is, so contrast would be nice.)
My wife makes something we’ve dubbed “cucumber bread thingies”. They take a bit of time, but they are easy to make.
Ingredients for 50-60
1 cucumber
1 tub of Philadelphia cream cheese (12ounce)
1 packet of powdered ranch dressing
1 or 2 French baguettes
1 shaker of the herb dill
Mix the cream cheese and ranch (1/2 to 3/4ths of packet to taste)
Cut the cucumber into 25-30 slices and then cut them in half.
Cut an equal amount of slices of bread (maybe 1/2 an inch)
Spread some of the cream cheese mixture onto each bread slice. Ontop of that place the 1/2 slice of cucumber and then sprinkle with the dill.
This might be a good idea for you. You could actually do the prep in advance; lay out the asparagus and mushrooms in your baking dish, mix the seasonings and olive oil in a jar and throw it together when you get there. It doesn’t take very long to cook, either.
Roasted Asparagus and Mushrooms
Ingredients
1 bunch fresh asparagus, trimmed
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, quartered
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, minced
2 teaspoons olive oil
kosher salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Lightly spray a cookie sheet with vegetable cooking spray.
Place the asparagus and mushrooms in a bowl. Drizzle with the olive oil, then season with rosemary, salt, and pepper; toss well. Lay the asparagus and mushrooms out on the prepared pan in an even layer.
Roast in the preheated oven until the asparagus is tender, about 15 minutes.
I've only made it once, but have thought about adding slivered almonds.
This is where I found the recipe: [http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Asparagus-and-Mushrooms/Detail.aspx](http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Roasted-Asparagus-and-Mushrooms/Detail.aspx) I swear by that site! I've gotten some of my best recipes from there. Also, you may want to read through some of the reviews, sometimes you can pick up some helpful pointers.
Also, you can scale the recipe at the link.
One word: Ratatouille. It scales up well, and you can cook it in advance and reheat it. The ingredients are pretty flexible: only tomatoes and onions are essential.
Forty people is really a lot. The good news is that at a holiday dinner, people won’t be very interested in the vegetables.
My go-to vegetable dish when just steamed broccoli won’t do is cheaty creamed spinach. Here’s how I recommend you do it for a crowd:
Buy about eight bags of frozen cut spinach. Frozen leaf is too stringy and frozen chopped is too fine, but if you have to choose between the two, choose chopped.
Heat up a stock pot on the stove. Put in enough oil to cover the bottom. Throw in a spoonful of jarred mince garlic (or, if you have time, press or mince it yourself–but I’m trying to help you cook a huge amount without killing yourself). Let it sizzle a while. Now put in all the bags of spinach and put the lid on. Open the lid and stir it every few minutes until all the spinach is hot.
There will be a lot of liquid in the pot now. Usually I make this dish in a skillet and reduce it away, but you’ll need to tip your pot and spoon out as much water as you can.
Once you’ve done that, add 2 cups half-and-half and 2 cups grated parmesan cheese to the spinach (that’s 1/4 cup each per bag of spinach), salt and pepper to taste, and stir it all up as best you can. Keep tasting to make sure you have enough salt.
This will hold well; in fact it’s best after it’s been sitting a while.
Veg? Try a Betty’s salad. there are many variations on this “layered salad”. make it your own within your personal parameters. It’s a very easy “composed and tasty salad”. Probably be gone before anything else… Great and local traditional salad. +1 for making the homemade “french dressing”, correctly.
And that recipe is Disinformation… Incorrect. Many involve peas and lettuce. But it must be the classic bitter, and fresh, green newly introduced to a Babyboomer generation who had ever had spinach canned or frozen… fresh spinach was a queer bird… Of course the overcompenasation with Bacon and Sweet Ketchup dressing was almost to be expected. It actually had texture and freshness, and for that midwest salad and dressing of time, it is worthy. The taste can’t be beat.
Cabbage & Apple:
1/2 medium Cabbage (green/red)
1 large onion (white/red)
2 small apples (green/red) - cored, cubed, unpeeled
1T sugar (white/brown)
Splash vinegar & Splash milk
Slice cabbage and onion finely
Fry onion in oil until translucent
Add cabbage and stir well to coat with oil
Add apple, stir & transfer to oven-proof dish
Sprinkle sugar over the top and splash with vinegar and milk
Cover and bake at 180 dec C for approx 40 min
Simple, should scale easily and surprisingly yum, even for those who don’t like cabbage. Pair red cabbage with red apples and onions and brown sugar (and vice versa).
