That Fondue for Idiots, does exist and it looks like this:
Thank you Central Market!!
Seriously. I was calling my friend Kirsten at 3pm to tell her about my life as an adventure & to get ideas on where to buy fondue fixin's for twelve. At the same time I was hopping in the car to go shopping.
Perhaps I should back-up a bit....
Turns out that Michael is one of a gang of five core guys referred to as "Da' Boys". They've all known each other since the dawn of time. [Well, OK. Maybe it is just a really long time.] Earlier this year, Jeff had the idea of all of us gathering once a month for a potluck dinner that changed locations & themes. We hosted May & had Mexican for May 5th. The dinner has bounced around Dallas/Ft Worth since then.
So then we signed up for September at our place and suddenly, three weeks ago I realized that I needed to plan the darn thing. Ummmmm, with a complete lack of inspiration I watch Food TV and nothing came to me. Switched over to Fine Living & they had a new series called "The Art of the Cocktail". Hmmmm, that might be an idea. Somehow, that morphed into a general 1960's-1970's era fad called Fondue. At the time, as I sent out invitations, fondue for twelve didn't sound that daunting.
At 3pm on Saturday, with only 2.5 hours to go until everyone arrived -- Yup! I was fairly certain that I had lost my flippin' mind. Central Market to the rescue. And my girlfriends to the rescue too! Major kuddos to Mrs. K & Mrs H. for loaning me family fondue pots on short notice. Mrs K's sister even sent along a dozen fondue plates with all the sections for sauce. And the really funny part is that I went from 1 fondue container to 4 in the span of 45 minutes. It was like fondue pots popping out from everywhere! I also learned that those mini-crockpots can serve as a chocolate fondue server as well. Hey, Necessity is the mother of Invention!
Michael had done a fabulous job getting the house cleaned & prepped, and when I got home at 4pm I went into super chef mode. He laughs, but I was slicing & dicing with the best of them. I have a favorite knife I use the most & he stayed on stand by in the kitchen to keep sharpening it for me as I attacked the prep work.
I did in fact manage to pull off one heck of a dinner party. No one left hungry; most actually left feeling too full. The kids were all enormous fans of chocolate dipped marshmallows and I've got the photos to prove it! And then we even managed to get the kitchen cleaned up before bedtime. Truly a success!!
Just in case you're ever in the mood to try this, I did learn a couple of lessons to keep in mind:
- Prep all the meat and spiking it on bamboo skewers is very convenient. Then sanitation worries about raw meat & cooking utensils can be much less. But watch out for bamboo splinters, they are vicious!
- For the folks who really like to do the cooking, designate a community "cooked" plate that they can put the goods, so that everyone can get some meat to eat and it cuts down on pot traffic jams.
- For cooking the meat in oil, put the oil in the electric fondue pots. It's much easier to regulate the oil temperature. [Figured this one out the hard way, after the Sterno pots couldn't get the temp high enough. It was hysterical watching us transfer cheese out of the pot that the oil went into and then getting more cheese heated up.]
- Rival's stainless steel, electric fondue pot ROCKS! [Please note that I'd like one more of these as a Christmas present....hint, hint.]
- Darn near anything is fabulous with enough cheese.
- You really can fondue Meatballs!! And they are fabulous. About 3 minutes in oil at 350-375 and they get a little crispy crust. Yum!
- The can of Sterno keeps stuff warm/hot for about 1.5 hours. Then it smells really bad & makes awful noises as it runs dry. Do Not Be Alarmed!!
- Once the kids see the marshmallows, they will not be persuaded that chocolate dipped fruit tastes just as good as chocolate dipped marshmallows
- It's really nice to have intentions of custom making the cheese fondue, etc -- but seriously, for a party of twelve, just get the bulk stuff. That way you don't have to grate cheese for 4 hours. And the novelty factor alone of fondue-ing should not be discounted in regards to it's appeal.
I'm sure I learned a few other tricks, but these are the ones that stand out.
More pictures for your viewing enjoyment!
And what we call "Happy Marshmallow Face"!!
