Village curry night

[LaBelleSauvage123]

I have agreed to organise a fund raising curry night in our (small) village. The idea is that a group of us make curries, side dishes etc and people pay to come and eat it. The people who make the food will get a free ticket.
Has anyone ever organised anything like this? I’m wondering if it’s best for everyone to cook something different, so it’s more of a feast, or choose three or four recipes and each cook makes a batch? All ideas welcome - it’s not until Easter so I’ve got plenty of time.

One person, one dish.
Mix of meat, fish and veg. Sides such as salad, naan, chutneys etc.

But how many portions should that dish be? Proportionate to the number of people attending I mean? So say 30 people come, how many should each dish feed?

Have helped to organise several of these and our last one was a curry night.

So, we had 8 people who all made a curry for 10 each. All the curries were different but we asked for dietary requirements early on and knew we needed food for 10 vegetarians/ 3 special diets etc etc. A couple of people made enough Dahl for everyone. Someone made raita for 80!

We decided not to do a buffet table due to Covid and fears about people moving about / social distancing. Each table had a main curry dish, a Dahl, rice, naan, poppadoms, chutney etc.

Things to think about:

• people cooked at home but bought their dish hot. If you need to warm the food while people are sitting down, have you got enough space on the stove top or in the oven to do that?

• how are you going to cook rice for that many people? Have you got enough big pots or will you be using several small pans? (See point above!)

• people will turn up expecting you to have catered for the special dietary requirement they didn't tell you about.

• think about your refund policy if people buy tickets and then can't come. If you've already bought the meat and you have to issue refunds, it might not be such a money spinner!!

• you don't need raita for 80 (unless you want it for lunch every day the following week).

It was fun though...

That’s very helpful Dorothea thank you! If you had eight different curries, did people choose which they wanted or was it just pot luck?
The warming food issue is a concern as the hall kitchen is small - but we will be lucky to get 40 people so maybe we’d only need 4 curries - that’s one hob each! I’m going to see if we can borrow rice cookers. Refund policy is something I hadn’t thought about but will now!

We do one of these events every year and normally, all the 'chefs' cook exactly the same dish so each table gets the same thing, which makes it much easier. We don't have room to have a buffet table (because we pack as many people in as possible to raise as much money as possible) so we have to do it table by table.

In this case, each table got a pot-luck curry for 10 and they served themselves. We needed to do a bit of re-organising - if a table of 10 had 2 vegetarians, they needed two veggie portions but also potentially 2 meat curry portions had to come out of that table's pot to another table. We have found though that when you multiply up, you end up with more than you need - a dish for 10 is normally very generous portions.

Other things that I've thought of that you might want to consider:

• have a plan for how you are going to serve up. We do it so that everything cold goes on the table beforehand. Then we do each table until they have everything. If you take all the curries out, then all the rice etc you end up with people asking where their rice is, or even worse, popping into the kitchen and taking one.

• it's quite time consuming for the people serving, so by the time they sit down to eat their meal, the first couple of tables are finishing so you feel the pressure to gobble down your meal and started on clearing the tables.

• think about how you're going to clear up. We don't have a dish washer in the village hall, so we have large plastic boxes that we put outside the back door that the dirty plates and cutlery go in and a big bucket for food waste. The boxes then go home with people and they wash up at home.

• naan breads really do need to be heated up. We thought we could probably get away with having them cold, but they do need warming!

• people generally want to be really helpful but sometimes that causes issues. Having two extra people in the kitchen helpfully starting the washing up means we can't open the oven! Also one year someone helpfully stacked lots of dirty plates and glasses etc on the worktop where I was just about to put all the desserts out.

• we need to think quite carefully about where we put the desserts as we don't have a lot of space!

• does your village hall have enough serving spoons, small bowls for mango chutney/raita, ladles for the curry, jugs for cream etc etc? If you and the other organisers lend the VH utensils/dishes etc make sure you put names on them. It's surprising how you can't pick your own spoons out of a pile of metal spoons at the end! All ikea dishes all look the same too!

I suppose my main advice would be to think the logistics through carefully beforehand. Otherwise you're going to end up at best flustered or in the worst case, mainlining gin and then lying on the floor of the kitchen weeping!!

Remember that meat eaters also eat dhal, paneer, vegetable curry etc, so make enough for most of the party to have some, don't just think 'we have 2 vegetarians so need 2 portions of vegetarian food'.

But all starters, rices, breads can be vegetarian anyway, so most of the food will be suitable for everyone with less worry about anyone going hungry. Er on the generous side and plan to let people take any leftovers home with them, so have containers available or ask them to bring some tupperware themselves.

Maybe discuss with people their likes and dislikes in terms of spice level and whether they will want a wide range of curries or if they are of the 'chicken tikka masala' only variety.

Starters, Dal, rice, curries for 30 people. Roti / Naan should be 60 pieces provided they aren’t huge (buy this in - making this much naan is a horrible task). Buy Indian desserts in. What will you be drinking? If lassi then make enough for 2 glasses per person. If chai at the end of the meal then half a cup person is more than enough.

Thank you all - much to think about here. A lot depends on where we are virus-wise in April. Our hall kitchen is small but well stocked with plates, bowls etc. I think I will probably go for the chefs making the same things option rather than pot luck. And will probably have a serving table with warming plates and tables called up one at a time.