A Smok’n Thanksgiving Pot-luck

So my new resolution is to make sure I buy groceries for a dinner party in advance!! I have never felt so flustered when preparing for a party. . .

I had originally planned to head back to Brooklyn on Friday morning after doing laundry. . .but being in the suburbs in a spacious home, comfy sofas, and hundreds of channels on t.v. sidetracked me. The roomie and I spent the better part of the morning finishing laundry and decided to try Geno’s cheesesteaks and hit up IKEA.

Sidenote: It really is a toss up between Pat’s and Geno’s as far as who has the best cheese steaks. The meat is in slices rather than shredded at Geno’s and the bread is better, but my provolone wasn’t fully melted, the onions were undercooked, and the cheese fries were not as good (although still quite good). To top it off, I overdid it with the hot sauce (which is the best hot sauce I’ve had, quite spicy and flavorful and packs a punch) so I couldn’t get a real taste of the meat.

In any case, I didn’t get back to Manhattan until around 9:30 p.m. and I was just too tired/lazy to go to Whole Foods. I woke up early and was at Whole Foods by 10 a.m. I was put in a state of mild panic when I found that they were out of oysters and duck breasts. So after getting some wild mushrooms and chives from the farmer’s market at Union Square, I high tailed it to Dean & Deluca’s. I talked to the guy working the seafood counter (great South African accent), and he told me that they had gone through bottles and bottles of shucked oysters but they were all sold out. After a bit of negotiating, he offered to shuck a little under a pound of oysters for me but it would take a couple of hours. I looked at my watch and it was already 11 a.m. and the dinner party was supposed to start at 5pm. Guessing that the situation would be the same at other grocery stores, I agreed. Luckily, they had the duck breasts too and I was able to get the majority of the other ingredients there.

I was out the door around 1pm and stopped at a local deli-mart to get flowers, a loaf of bread, before hitting the wine shop for a bottle of cooking wine and burgundy for mulled wine. I awkwardly lugged up my bulky bags up four flights of stairs and was in my apartment cooking by 1:30. As I was frantically chopping vegetables and preparing ingredients, I glanced at the clock and began to worry that I would not be finished cooking and tidying up the apartment by 5pm.

I called Q2 and pondered about whether I should postpone the pot-luck until 6pm. . She reasoned that most people would be late and no one would mind if things didn’t start on time. By 4 pm, I was in a groove and had time to clean up the apartment and myself.

There was a slight miscalculation with the duck recipe. I had doubled the recipe and the cooking time suggested was clearly not long enough (8 minutes on the stove was supposed to get the duck medium rare but it looked rare to me). Following the recipe, I put the sautéed mushrooms in a large dish and cut the duck in slices and placed it on top. Then I put the plate in the oven so the duck could cook some more. . unfortunately, fat drippings from the duck flowed down to the bottom of the oven and the entire apartment got smoky. Luckily Chan came to the rescue and cleaned it up and we opened up all the windows to air out the apartment.

Despite not being ready quite on time, the oyster leek stuffing and duck with wild mushrooms in a fig-red wine reduction came out okay (slightly overdone perhaps, but it’s my first time cooking duck), and the mulled wine was a hit with both the ladies and men.

After several rounds of mafia/cops/civilians we all called it a drunken night. As usual, a great low-key evening (except for self-inflicted stress). . .but I learned my lesson and will make sure to have all the ingredients bought in advance!