"ahead of time"

For ML's birthday supper on the weekend, I made the following for a party of six:

• creamy pumpkin soup with fresh apple garnish, accompanied with apple cider "ice wine"
• pan roasted duck breast (magret) with blueberry compote and green salad
• wild mushroom risotto
• fallen chocolate cake with raspberry coulis

This meal was, I have to say, fargin' awesome, not least of all because I didn't have the impression that I spent the entire dinner party in front of the stove. None of these menu items, taken individually, involves rocket science. Banging them out one after another for a group of six with minimal time away from the table, on the other hand, is facilitated by knowledge of at least model rocket science. The solution is, naturally, to do as much as you possibly can well before people start to arrive. Mise (rhymes with "knees") en place, they call it. In this post, I'd like to record elements of my "mise" for the birthday menu. Everything was done the morning of and took a few hours. It was very chill and enjoyable.

• make the soup, which then just needs to be reheated just prior to serving
• prep the apple garnish---firm apples like Granny Smith with hold peeled and cubed in "acidulated water", i.e. water with a lot of lemon juice, for many hours in the fridge
• sear the duck magret, which can then be held in the 'fridge until you pop it into a hot oven to finished cooking (I think parcooking is one of many fine restaurant's dirty little secrets. They want us to believe that everything is prepared "à la minute".)
• make the blueberry compote, which can be reheated while the duck is roasting
• clean and dry the greens for the salad
• make the vinaigrette for the salad
• sauté the wild mushroom topping for the risotto
• cook the risotto until it is about two thirds done then pour out onto a jelly roll pan and allow to cool---reheat with stock and another splash of wine to finish cooking the rice and get it creamy and top with the mushroom garnish. This idea is blasphemy for some, but the risotto was damn good and most restaurants work this way.
• make the coulis and hold in the fridge
• make the batter for the cake (which needs to be refridgerated anyway) and prep the muffin tin

With a good "mise", the rest is just timing, i.e. getting all these precooked or parcooked dishes on or in the heat in time to be ready when you are for the next course. Mise en place is also a key part of our yearly Thanksgiving dinner, but let's leave that for another post.