Let me give you a little background first.
My fiance and I have decided to learn how to cook a couple months back and it's been going great so far. We obviously started with beginner-level recipes and made quite a few good dishes (steak, chicken breasts filled with mozarella and wrapped in bacon, a whole lot of pasta, etc).
In an effort to give back a little (and, hey, show off) every Sunday we cook for our parents (it's a small country, easy to get together).
My question is this: So far it's been quite difficult to manage cooking for 6 people at once (me, her, my parents, her parents). Sometimes I don't have enough burners, the food doesn't fit into the pan at once, so some of it is a bit colder than the rest of the food, etc. It's a headache. For example, I needed to cook six steaks, but only two fit in the pan. so I had to cook two, remove them, cook two more, remove them, and all the while, the first two are getting colder. You know what I mean?
Now, my fiance has asked me to do a meal which includes a first course and a main one. This blew my mind. It's not that I don't know how to cook these things; it's that I know I'm gonna explode under the pressure.
Short of skipping on the first course myself to continue cooking the main course (or cancelling the wedding and finding a new wife :p), what tips can you give me for managing such (relatively) large endeavors?
My fiance and I have decided to learn how to cook a couple months back and it's been going great so far. We obviously started with beginner-level recipes and made quite a few good dishes (steak, chicken breasts filled with mozarella and wrapped in bacon, a whole lot of pasta, etc).
In an effort to give back a little (and, hey, show off) every Sunday we cook for our parents (it's a small country, easy to get together).
My question is this: So far it's been quite difficult to manage cooking for 6 people at once (me, her, my parents, her parents). Sometimes I don't have enough burners, the food doesn't fit into the pan at once, so some of it is a bit colder than the rest of the food, etc. It's a headache. For example, I needed to cook six steaks, but only two fit in the pan. so I had to cook two, remove them, cook two more, remove them, and all the while, the first two are getting colder. You know what I mean?
Now, my fiance has asked me to do a meal which includes a first course and a main one. This blew my mind. It's not that I don't know how to cook these things; it's that I know I'm gonna explode under the pressure.
Short of skipping on the first course myself to continue cooking the main course (or cancelling the wedding and finding a new wife :p), what tips can you give me for managing such (relatively) large endeavors?