A Mostly Seafood Boodle for 50-60 people!!

Seafood, seafood, seafood. That’s what everyone wanted for the joint birthday lunch at the office. I guess when you cook several lechons every day, the lure of pork is occasionally diminished. :) So we called the purveyors and ordered hundreds of scallops, 20 kilos of alimasag or lambay, 10 kilos of large white shrimp or putian, crab meat, 10 kilos of talakitok or maamsa, and various other things…

But before we could dig into bounty of the sea, of course we had to have some noontime entertainment from our chicharon guys… complete with homemade palm skirts and coconut husk bras. :)

The “boodle” set up meant a 16 foot long table covered in banana leaves and heaped onto the center were several large rice cookers worth of steamed rice. Steamed crabs, prawns, baked scallops, baked crabmeat, an eggplant salad and some grilled talakitok or maamsa…

…in bamboo containers are some garlic vinegar, some soy sauce with chilis, tomatoes and onions…

…and we also made 6 kilos of buffalo chicken wings. I mixed the Frank’s Hot Sauce and melted butter myself, for a fairly authentic giant batch of chicken wings like they make in Buffalo, New York. But the original used margarine, I think. And make sure you deep-fry the chicken wings so they are nice and crisp and light golden brown. :)

For the scallops, I upped the ante by putting three scallops on each shell, then covering them with a mixture of butter and cheese (not enough cheese apparently)…

…and we also made a crab meat dip that was placed in the remaining scallop shells for an easy cheesy crab bite. On a side table we also had a beautifully made vegetable and coconut cream dish.

But what’s a birthday celebration without a lechon?! One of our biggest suppliers of backyard-raised pigs dropped by early in the morning, sporting a snazzy new truck that could well have been emblazoned “Katas ng Zubuchon” to drop off a small pig to be roasted for lunch, a gift that we all greatly appreciated. It was beautifully cooked, served piping hot and the perfect foil for all that seafood.

One of the best boodles we have had on the deck, by far. :)