Spent the last couple hours cooking, and listening to Fischerspooner’s “new” album. Good times. Basically, doing a second French Laundry party (if you weren’t invited, it’s not ’cause we don’t like you, it’s ’cause we have to keep these events relatively small – so, we’ve rotated the whole cast (except us, obviously), and there are no repeats allowed).

So, this time, we’re making the “Caesar Salad” which is a bizarre twist on the regular concept of a salad. It’s basically a parmesan custard, with a little lettuce, and the standard Caesar dressing. Looked weird enough to be worth making, so that’s my contribution to this event. Ei-Nyung’s making Il Flottante, which are these insane merangues – I made the mint oil, creme Anglaise and the chocolate mousse filling, while she dealt with piping and cooking the merangues.

Tomorrow, I’ve gotta make the custards for the … well, I’ve gotta make the whole salad thing, which looks to be about a four hour process, *including* set up time, so about two hours (I’m budgeting from 11am to about 1 to get them done and in the fridge. Whew. Sounds fun.

Pictures on flickr later.

I really like cooking. There’s just something about taking things everyone can get in the supermarket, and turning them into things that aren’t obvious. That’s not to say I’m a good cook yet, but getting there. I mean, mint oil. WTF? Who makes mint oil? NO ONE. That’s because it’s totally ridiculous. But when you tasted the chive oil that we made for the last of these events, it was *TOTALLY WORTH IT*.

This time, it’ll be interesting because we’ve got nothing to do with either of the entrees. Oh – I’m also making a cream of walnut soup, which is essentially a dessert canape. So, we’ll have the salad off as a starter, then we don’t do any service until the end of the meal. Ha! I’m really looking forward to this. This has got to be one of our better ideas – the timing’s really good, because a lot of our friends are anywhere from competant to extraordinary cooks, and we have enough that we can literally “staff” three of these meals, rotating groups. There’s no way I’d spend four hours or five hours cooking a single meal (ok, I have in the past, when making things like ribs). But there’s no way I’d spend four or five hours making what amounts to five or six bites of food, since the French Laundry’s recipes are so damn small. But when you get a bunch of people together, and everyone’s devoted that much time and energy to making another five or six bites, you’ve now got enough food to eat ’till you’re stupid, and the quality of the food is *astonishing*.

Looking forward to it.

fo’ sho. (and if you haven’t seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, you *totally* should.)