Planning next year’s Feast of Leviathan sometimes starts in the midst of the current one. I like to build my menu around themes, and when the right idea takes hold, I sometimes can’t get it out of my head and I must see it to fruition. The next phase of planning is the: “What can we improve from last year?” conversation that takes place annually at the Cheesecake Factory. While we are still excited by the many positives, we also immediately begin to discuss room for growth. Taking a critical look at what we can improve based on feedback from our patrons is one of the most important parts of planning a successful feast.
After our meal at the Cheesecake Factory, Leviathan usually goes to the back of my mind for a few months, but it never entirely goes away. I am always recording ideas for the feast on the notes section of my phone: neat soup ideas, new courses that seem interesting, and also ideas to make the feast run more smoothly.
The next phase of planning involves bouncing my ideas off of a small group. It’s important when planning a feast as large as Leviathan that the taste buds of the general population are considered. While it is generally okay to stretch the palate of patrons on one or two courses, I strive to make sure that there are multiple things on each course that the majority of our guests are willing to eat. Some of the courses that were cut from the original menu included shrimp stew (my dad’s recipe) in bread bowls (those we kept), brussel sprouts, split pea soup, and corn pudding.
I really loved the idea of chowder in a bread bowl, but I had never really made bread before. I knew it would be a time consuming process, and I needed to be sure that the bread bowls would freeze and thaw again and still be edible. The research and development phase of feasting is an important one. After reading dozens of cooking blogs, it seemed like it would work. Then came the test cooking. I probably botched 10 batches of bread before I finally came across a recipe that had the right height, texture, and flavor for bread bowls. Jeremy suggested making a tinfoil bread form so that the bread would rise up and not out, and that turned out to be the final touch necessary for mass producing 180 bread bowls.
Creating the shopping list is a mental workout. The entire process of creating the list takes approximately 6 hours. First, I have to take all my normal recipes, guess how many servings they will make, and then multiply them out to serve 180. Next, I go ingredient by ingredient and try and total how much of that ingredient I will need to buy. Every year I get a little smarter, and this year I paid attention to the measurements that are on most food packaging. So if a recipe calls for a cup of shredded cheddar, that is really 4 oz of cheddar, and most cheese is sold by weight and not volume. This process usually involves a lot of tabs open where I am googling food conversions. By sorting my spreadsheet list first by ingredient, then by aisle, and finally by store I was able to create a truly efficient shopping list this year. This is especially helpful when you are doing most of your shopping in a gigantic walk-in refrigerator and don’t want to be doing last minute calculations while freezing your toes off.
Alex, Jason, and I set off on our shopping trip at 10am so that we could finish it all before night fell. 5 hours later we were ready to start cooking...except that before I start cooking anything it is really important to me to make a schedule of everything that needs to get done. So we outlined each course and which days we would plan to make everything on. I am proud to say that this year for the most part we stayed ahead of schedule, which was great, because last minute stuff always crops up and it is nice to have extra time to deal with it.
If, by this point, you are wondering when the actual cooking for Leviathan happens, and why I can write so much about the planning, it is because for me, planning is essential to making sure that everything can get finished for the actual feast and that everything will go off without a hitch. But, of course, for two weeks straight leading up to the event, I do almost nothing else besides cook. Most of the cooking is fairly routine, but every year a few hilarious things will happen just to keep things interesting. For example, this year we purchased 40 pounds of fish for the fish cakes. Jeremy asked if we checked to make sure we got fillets. We didn’t. We had 40 pounds of whole fish. Cue frantic phone calls to my dad and Restaurant Depot. Luckily for us, we were able to return them and exchange them for fillets.
The reason that cooking for Leviathan is usually a lot of fun is because of the number of people we having helping during the cooking. It would be really monotonous to dip hundreds of truffles in chocolate by yourself, but when the whole crew is over cracking jokes and sharing the work, time flies. We usually aim to have the most people come help on what we consider “heavy prep” days. Peeling, chopping, dipping, rolling etc. are all jobs where having many hands really does make light work. Some nights, however, it is just the local crew doing some of the easier tasks that just need to get done. No matter the night, the worst part is always clean-up. I almost don’t believe how easy it is to completely destroy the kitchen on a daily basis, but it always happens. (The worst night was the fish cakes--there was oil everywhere.)
On the day of Levithan, I usually run on one cup of coffee and adrenaline. I hate to eat much of anything, and I am lucky for the friends who shove glasses of water into my hand, which I gratefully chug. Our kitchen staff this year was made up of over 2 dozen people. It takes a lot of coordination to make sure that everything gets done in a timely manner. I like to start the day with giving everyone their roles, and making sure they know who to direct questions to. This year we had a great time of people assembly lining the food on plates, and two person teams of servants delivering food to the tables. The kitchen is usually busy, and I tend to bark orders for most of the day, which is fairly uncharacteristic of me in most other situations. Somehow, we manage to get all of the food out, have court, pay the servants, and before I know it, it is time to clean up. Ugh. That might be my least favorite part of Leviathan, but we’ve gotten better over the years.
And then it’s time to wake up and go to the Cheesecake Factory and start the whole process over again.