Galangal or Fries?

You're cooking for four friends tonight. Which menu would you think would be easier: Thai curry, with lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves and bamboo shoots, with jasmine rice and gyoza on the side, or hamburgers with oven fries?

"EEEEENNNNHHHHHH!!!" (sound of gameshow wrong-choice buzzer) if you chose the burgers.

I always thought that simple stuff like sandwiches was a much easier menu choice than complicated spice-filled extravaganzas, but a while back I realized that whenever you have anything approaching a one-pot, reheatable solution, you've just taken yourself to a stress level approaching zero.

I know that on the surface, the curry with its exotic ingredients and fussy prepping, spicing and dicing can seem to be more trouble than it's worth — viz. an entire afternoon in the kitchen — but please compare it to a huge, last-minute plating nightmare of trying to keep six burgers hot while dressing them six different ways, then trying to make sure the fries haven't wilted into soggy greasebars by the time you get them on the plate. At least with the curry, it's all done by six and you're sipping a glass of wine while chatting to the guests, not slicing red onions or monitoring the potatoes in the oven.

Which is why I dread the great Burger Shoot coming up in the next few days. I not only have to make them, I have to film them.