One of my brothers has a friend who went to cooking school. By profession she does something very impressive and her standards for cooking are equally so. (As in, she is much stricter about things like making her own stocks, which take 3 days to make, etc etc.)
Unfortunately she broke her wrist not so long ago and is still recovering from surgery. I told her I would be her sous chef since we had discussed cooking together. Somehow we were volunteered to cook Christmas dinner before we knew what had happened. You can imagine how impressed I was, and how tough she is, that she did the bulk of the cooking for Christmas dinner for...14? 16? A lot of people anyway - more than I can count on just my fingers.
I got a telephone call Monday morning - it was early for me, as I was still jet lagged and sleep deprived (I had had an argument with technology the night before, which I won but only at 4am). I wanted to go back to sleep but woke up when she said it was to discuss Christmas dinner - specifically, the size / weight of the leg of lamb and the number of people which had grown to 13 people within less than 24 hours. I think only cooking nerds may appreciate how we managed to talk about the right stock (and how we didn't have any) for the jus, before we decided on a cheat version because we were the only ones who would care. By the way, the jus turned out well.
Preparation, Preparation and Preparation - Christmas Eve Day
'Twas the day before Christmas and all through the houses, creatures were stirring to get a lot of food organized for a lot of people.
Luckily Chef DC is very organized. We got our list of who was doing what. She and I discussed what was missing / logistics / timing. It was all good and under control. Nothing too complicated - but a bit of thought required given physical constraints with respect to counter space, refrigerator space, over and stove availability and our low tolerance for crap in the kitchen.
My prep was very basic - shopping, parboiling potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, mire poix for the sauce...some salad stuff, extra shopping for the more gourmet ingredients (thank you Williams Sonoma - no, this is not product placement, it's giving credit where credit is due - and letting you know shortcuts are not only ok, they can be really good).
Rock 'n roll
I'm not sure how or why it is a chef thing but it must be - I have heard this phrase so often and it's almost always in preparation for fun in the kitchen. Though somehow it's very different to hear it in a strong French accent than in our American one.
Chef DC also did a black rice dish, a cauliflower and chickpea curry which may sound not that good to those who don't like any of those ingredients but all I can say is, wow! (I actually hate chickpeas but I packed a whole container of this curry away for tomorrow, that's how good it was.)
Also brussels sprouts - although there are many who don't like them, these were so good my 4-year old niece not only ate them, but she told us how much she liked them as she ate them.
And Kabocha squash (Japanese green squash). And a butternut pumpkin / carrot puree. And a Caesar salad dressing. From scratch. Which was totally delicious (and I have the rest of the bottle in the fridge for tomorrow, hooray!)
and then today I just made a vinaigrette and the 2 salads. FYI, the Veal demi-glace from Williams-Sonoma made a very acceptable substitute in the absence of having a good veal stock to hand and it cut out a few steps. We had a nice sauce about 45 minutes after we started - not a bad record...
In which we have a very merry cooking party - Christmas Day
DC showed up today with a written time plan. I had one but it was all in my head and pretty easy. (As in, from time we planned to serve, onions - 1.5 hours; confit garlic - 1 hour; roasted veggies - 30 minutes.)
The lamb went into a portable convection oven which is just amazing. It came out a bit over for those who like their meat still moving but it was perfect for me. We were on time with DC's plan (we thought we were 15 minutes behind until we remembered that we had trimmed off a lot of fat and bones) and all went well.
We had an addition in the kitchen near the end of the day - a friend is the Yorkshire pudding Queen so she made a gluten-free and a regular Yorkshire pudding (yum!). They had different cooking times which was interesting for the person who made them, and we had to reshuffle our cooking timeline a bit to allow for the Yorkshire puddings to cook because they have to be last minute.
DC and I had a great old time - she actually fixed the leg of lamb because the butchery was done by machine so it didn't follow the joint (instead, the saw cut straight through the bone). She gave me the piece attached to the hip so I separated it and we had a nice little loin-ish roll. Which we forgot to cook. But it gave some really nice trimmings which made the sauce really good and one of the girls actually took home the meat and the veggies because she said it was like stew but without as much juice. She (DC, not our Yorkshire Pudding Queen) also put this really good rub on the lamb - an olive tapenade with a few other things thrown in - as you do.
Starters (aka Round 1 when I eventually got around to eating): cheeses, prosciutto, a few other things and sashimi (which we sliced at home). 
My plates: there isn't a whole lot of difference between the first and second platefuls of food but I was slowing down by the second plate of meat and veggies. There's no way to escape the day with eating only a little bit when there's so much good food and I have a bad habit of choosing "both" when presented with a choice. We also decided that food made with TLC doesn't have calories (for those who know about that sort of thing).
Dessert (aka Round 4): pumpkin pie, sweet potato and haupia pie, dried fruits, cookies and ice cream.
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