extra extra

and never, ever too much

At some point, I started using the phrase “large format meats” with a friend of mine, who also loves to cook and host. It’s one of those bits that seems to have no beginning and no end, no real definition I could give, and no boundary on how much it has permeated our way of speaking to one another.

The idea of buying and butchering an entire Costco prime rib into steaks and roasts would certainly be a large format meat. The restaurant she found on Uber eats that lets you order a whole tandoor kebab lamb on the app for $800 certainly qualifies. Or this one time a local restaurant tweeted about how they had a customer cancel an entire suckling pig order, and they were willing to sell the whole hog at a discount to anyone who would take it and throw a pig party.

So far, no whole lamb or pig for either of us, but we have successfully hosted two large format meat parties at her apartment, where she has access to a borderline industrial kitchen as part of the building amenities. Something about the combination of this infrastructure, a shared desire to do just one more thing, and no inhibition between the two of us has led to gatherings around her dining table that feel so special and unrestrained.

For our summer meat party, she grilled chorizo sausages and marinated steaks and roasted a chicken al pastor, while I hand-rolled flour and corn tortillas and batch-prepped three different types of margaritas. This past weekend, we had our fall edition — steak frites, featuring sous vide steaks she grilled to perfection and a five-pound bag of potatoes I hand-cut and fried to go with three (admittedly store-bought) dipping sauces. There was also a salad that required at least three separate lettuce washings, and sourdough loaves that took three days of planning to bake.

I could not tell you where the idea to host these parties together came from. When did it go from being an inside joke to a plan? Why did no one think it was too much, and how did it become just enough?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity and how so many good ideas probably never become real things. It’s so much easier to tell yourself that an idea is mediocre, rather than to work on it until it becomes something good. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, but I often look at people who create — whether that’s musicians or recipe developers or even Instagram influencers — and I marvel at their ability to just put things out into the world constantly.

Large format meats is a somewhat tortured metaphor, but I have wondered if those parties would have ever happened if I had the idea in isolation, partnered with my own self-critical inner monologue rather than a friend who is so ready to say yes to silly things. I see so many places where I would have told myself that using an amenity kitchen was too much, or that a joke I put in the invitation wasn’t funny, or that I should just have people over for dinner without trying to make it A Thing. Who am I to make things A Thing!

But now it is a thing, and I think I’m so much better off for it. On Saturday, I remember being a little wine-drunk at the end of the night, hugging my friend goodbye and saying, yes, absolutely, let’s do this again in the winter. Maybe we will finally roast that Costco prime rib.

xx,

Annie

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bigger is better

For our steak frites Saturday, we ended up having about 10 guests. It’s tough to time individually-plated steaks to be cooked perfectly to serve, so we used some workarounds to remove as much variability as possible. If you’re going to host a large format party, may I recommend:

• sous vide steaks — I don’t own a sous vide machine, but my friend used one to batch prep all the meat to the right temperature, requiring just a quick char on the grill before serving. Doing it this way reduced the chaos around tending to 10 individual steaks to make sure they reached the right temperature.

• boiled and fried frites — I opted for a two-step cooking process for the fries. By boiling first, I could let the par-cooked fries sit on the counter until we were just about ready to serve, ensuring the fries were hot and crispy. Boiling them first also keeps the oil cleaner for the second cooking step, as opposed to a double fry, making it easier to prevent the oil from burning any bits that fall off.

• sauce upon sauce — We had talked about making a special sauce for the fries, but in the end, defaulted to fancy store-bought mayo. It just wasn’t worth the effort it would take to whip aioli on our own for such a large crowd, and finding a fun sauce at the store was worth the time saved. The dijon-cornichon blend was the solid crowd favorite.