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“
Home For The Holidays” November 21, 2012 A Lincoln Daily News Magazine Copyright 2012
Planning a meal that doesn’t wear you out
I
am Roy Logan and have been involved in
the restaurant industry for over 25 years.
I still love to be in the kitchen and am
oftentimes happiest when I can combine my
culinary talents with my friends as we cook
together. Many of you in the community make
a quick association of food and me. Hopefully,
that’s a good thing.
As
the
holidays
approach, some of us are
not as comfortable in the
kitchen as more veteran
cooks. My first word of
advice would be to pick
a menu and dishes that
you are confident with
and in your comfort zone.
Simple can be just as good
and special as something
gourmet.
Hosting an event is really pretty
straightforward, and I’ll give you some tips
to help you with the planning and the details.
I’ll break each of these down to more details,
but for now three components come to mind:
the menu, serving style and actually doing the
cooking.
Now for the menu. I always like to choose
the entrée and then build around it. Pull out
your cookbooks or go to one of your tried-and-
true and lay that out in front of you. Do this
for your side dishes and salads as well. This is
where we will create a shopping list and our
timeline.
Consider color, because much of food’s
appeal is visual. If the plate has a nice color
palette, then the mind
perceives
the
meal
as better-tasting. For
instance, if I’m going to
do a pan-seared pork chop
(
brown), I would pick au
gratin potatoes (yellow)
and a steamed broccoli
(
green). You do not want
everything to be one color.
It has a lower eye appeal
and will be perceived as
more bland.
As you review your recipes, get up and pull
the ingredients out of the cabinets and visually
check that you have enough of them. If a
recipe calls for two eggs, make sure you have
two eggs. This eliminates multiple trips to the
store. When it comes to shelf ingredients, for
me, I have the open one in the cupboard and a
new one in the pantry. But I entertain far more
often than the average person.
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