45 replies to this topic

[knews9]

Hello all.
I am having a group of girlfriends over this week.  We will be 6 and it will be very casual. I'd love to hear suggestions for that, but more importantly, I thought it'd be fun to start a post for dinner party menus.

take care,
karen

[Andy Lynes]

Tommy mentioned fried chicken and champagne on another thread, which, even at 9.00am on a Sunday Morning seems extremely attractive. The best recipe for fried chicken I have come across is in UK chef Shaun Hill's book Cooking At The Merchant House which is available from Amazon.com.

[mamster]

I'm having one this week;  the menu is simple but I don't think anyone will complain.

Beef bourguignon (Côtes du Rhône)
Egg noodles
Roasted asparagus
Chocolate soufflés (tawny port)
some French cheeses

I'm mixing it up with some things I know will be easy and great (the beef and the asparagus) with something that could fail spectacularly (the souffles, which is why I'm giving them a test run today).

[CathyL]

A favorite springtime dinner menu:

shrimp in oil & lemon (room temp)
good crusty bread

grilled butterflied leg of lamb (slathered with a paste of garlic, rosemary, soy sauce, olive oil and Dijon mustard a few hours before cooking)
roasted (or grilled) asparagus
roasted Yukon Gold chunks

crisp disks of pecan meringue, topped with vanilla ice cream and/or lemon sorbet, with raspberry sauce

[tony h]

I've got one next saturday.  This is what I'm doing:

home made seeded loaf
safron & fish soup (fish to be decied on next friday but probably bass & mullet)

fillet beef with oxtail
potato & mushroom terrine
red wine reduction

whilte chocolate ice cream (home made, of course!)
dark chocolate fondant

[knews9]

wow--as usual i am floored by the efforts people go to...quite inspiring.
mamster--let us know how the souffles come out. i've been wanting to do that for a while, but usually chicken out and go for molten chocolate cakes instead.

cathyL--could you explain your pecan dessert?

any ideas for a much more casual endeavor?

[Rachel Perlow]

I like doing a middle eastern theme and/or grilling for more casual dinners. Hummus, babaganous, cucumber & yogurt, grilled veggies (eggplant, summer squash, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms), vegetable salads (Bennies makes a great roasted carrots and cauliflower with tehini, yum), and grilled meats, kebobs of beef, lamb, chicken, shrimp, swordfish, etc., all eaten with lots of pita bread. Not all of it needs to be homemade.

[Adam_Balic]

I had some peolple around for a casual meal last night:

Great Big Salad: lots of ingredients, including fresh anchovies (not salted or brined)
Beef Daube (Like Mamsters stew, but with olives, orange zest and prunes)
New potatoes with butter/parsely
Two very good French Cheeses
Panforte

Drinks:
Couple of Cape Cods, Prosecco, two bottles of Grenache, Amontillado.

[sng sling]

...fillet beef with oxtail
potato & mushroom terrine
red wine reduction...

Blind Lemon:

I've been struggling to find a technique/recipe for red wine reduction that I really like -- would you share yours...?

Thanks!

[tony h]

The secret of a good red wine sauce is white wine.  Sounds daft, I know, but if you cook with red wine early on it can discolour.  You really need to make your own stock and use white wine - veg nage doesn't work too well so its got to be chicken or lamb (beef/veal is a pain).  Use any standard stock recipe.  I always reduce it further & have been experimenting by adding additional gelatine leaf recently (sounds disgusting - but results are encouraging).

The red wine goes in at the end - take 1/2 bottle of reasonable wine (5-7 pounds range) and reduce by half.  I also use mixtures of port, maderia and red wine to give it extra body - cheap red wine reduced can take on a metalic taste.

For the sauce - fry some shallots, optionally garlic, in some butter (plus a little oil to stop the butter burning).  When caremalised add the herbs (rosemary, bay, star anise, parsely stalks etc. - whatever you want or have at hand).  A little honey can also be added but not too much or you'll get a disgusting sweet mess.  Now add the stock, deglase, then the red wine reduction - half first.  Taste & add more if you need.

Boil for 5 min then pass through very fine seive.  Add cold butter and incorporate - don't boil or it will split.   Only add salt at the very end or you'll get a red wine salty mixture which is quite unpleasant.  If you over salt - throw it away & start again.

On saturday I'll be using the cooking liquor used to prepare the oxtail.

Another tip - if the sauce is a bit cloudy & dull at the end add a couple of bones to the sauce for a minute or so - it'll put a sheen back into the sauce.

[Jinmyo]

blind lemon, lamb stock? Very interesting. The mixture of port, madeira, and red wine is a good idea as well.

[CathyL]

Karen, I started making these meringues years ago (from the dacquoise recipe in ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’).  They’re easy, versatile and can be made in advance and frozen.

2 large cookie sheets, buttered/floured

8 oz. pecans (or almonds or hazelnuts), toasted & pulverized with 3/4 cup sugar
6 egg whites, beaten to stiff/shiny meringue with 1/4 cup sugar & 2 tsp vanilla

Gently fold nuts/sugar into meringue.  Plop 6-8 mounds on baking sheets and spread into dessert-plate-sized disks. Bake at 250 for an hour, or until layers are lightly brown and can be pushed loose easily.

Cool on a rack.  Wrap airtight & freeze if you like.

Set a disk on a dessert plate.  Add 3 small scoops ice cream and/or sorbet.  Top with raspberry sauce (6-8 oz. berries frozen without sugar, mostly defrosted, pushed through fine disk of food mill, lightly sweetened, a bit of lemon added).

[knews9]

cathyL--sounds beautiful, thanks. sweet and light but not too light.

here's what i've decided on:  chicken in harrissa w/ couscous (from simple to spectacular); roasted cauliflower; yogurt/cucumber salad--some middle eastern appetizers as suggested.

i'm also making two kinds of empanadas (meat and veg) to bring to a potluck on wednesday.

[stellabella]

shrimp with julienned red & green bell peppers & swiss chard over cheese grits
broiled tomatoes
a tangy crispy green salad

and since it's six women, chocolate mousse, definately, and make sure you thwop some whipped heavy cream on top.

knews9-trust me, this is not hard

the motto in our house--food made from scratch from all fresh ingredients can't go wrong--

   knock wood!

have fun!

[Liza]

Jinmyo -  lamb stock can add a certain gaminess to a dish that regular beef stock can't. I relate a lot of foods to sounds and lamb stock has more defined bottom notes than beef.

EDIT: but as for dinner parties, well! What's growing where you are, Karen?  

[Jinmyo]

I relate a lot of foods to sounds and lamb stock has more defined bottom notes than beef.

Heh. I know what you mean. In conversation I'll often talk about pitches and keys and make vaguely orchestral conducterish gestures to indicate interactions.

[Liza]

And there I thought it was just me and Erich von Stroheim! I inherited my aural fixation from my father, who was thrice broke his wrist playing volleyball, and was often seen holding said wrist aloft, (whilst driving, mind you) conducting Beethoven or Ellington.

[Jinmyo]

Black and Tan or the less "orchestral" Ellington. Or the 1960s Ellington.

I remember an insight on Ellington's symphonic efforts, that like Delius, he was best at small sketches. I think that's so.

This is all irrelevant to the topic of the thread of course. Sorry, don't mind me. Sorry. Xcuse me. Sorry.

[Liza]

OK, sorry, too, but Ellington is too important to let go. Yes, early Ellington. Isn't early-anyone better than late-anyone? Now, wait, that's wrong. Early Sinatra, early Bennett, early Clooney - ok, vocalists improve with age. And though most dismiss late Billie, I am a staunch defender of her last record, as her version of "I didn't know what time it was" is "our" song with D.. And when you think classical, the inverse holds...Amazing what a musical-minded parent can impart - we like to do side-by-side comparisons, listening to the same piece of music conducted by different people.

[Jinmyo]

I do tend to dismiss late Billie and prefer her very early work with Teddy Wilson, in fact. But there are moments in the midst of her impressions of herself. I'll try to check out the last recordings again.

Early Ellington is...um...

Great to play at dinner parties!

Now we're back on track to the topic.

[Whew.]

[Rachel Perlow]

If you're doing the roasted cauliflower like Jim Dixon recommended a while back, you'll need a minimum of two large heads - it is so good. If trying to make the salad I described, just roast florets and some sliced carrots, then drizzle tahini sauce over it all.

[Malawry]

We're having another couple over for dinner tonight. Le menu:
Vegan cream of spinach soup, with carrot-flower garnish and a dusting of nutmeg
Jim Dixon's quadratini: mushroom risotto cubes, coated in bread crumbs and pan-fried, with remoulade sauce
Salade nicoise featuring obscenely expensive anchovies, with mustardy vinaigrette
Lemon and raspberry sorbets with purchased cookies (those Pirouline thingys)
Chocolates

I've been into doing multiple desserts since returning from the trip Edemuth and I took to NY. There's something very luxurious about having more than one course of sweets. Good chocolates are especially nice as a post-dessert dessert. Next time I do a big big dinner, I want to do three dessert courses, and maybe make some kind of petit fours.

[SobaAddict70]

*sigh*

I wish I had friends like Malawry's or stellabella's.  Most of the dinner parties I give for *MY* friends are edited affairs cuz one person won't eat pork/shrimp, a second is allergic to eggplants, cilantro, jalapeno peppers (not to mention he dislikes nuts and fruit in main dishes and doesn't really care for dessert), and several are vegetarians.  Makes it hard for me to get creative and interesting.  I'd rather have all vegetarians or all-omnivores for dinner guests.  Sometimes I wish I had non-picky eaters for friends.  Life would be soooooo much simpler....

If I gave a dinner party this weekend (big if cuz I'm low on stock at the moment and canned broth doesn't cut it (side note:  I'll sometimes cheat and get plain chicken broth from the local Asian takeout -- makes for a good substitute if you don't mind undertones of ginger/garlic, but then most of my friends don't have super-refined palates and wouldn't be able to tell the difference)), the menu would be:

Chawan-mushi (non-Asian foodies:  this is a savory egg custard from Japan, with things like shrimp, gingko nuts, and shiitake (or enoki) mushrooms inside)

What I call "chestnuts-in-the-wild" (note:  I can't remember the Japanese name for these -- these are essentially balls made out of shrimp paste and rolled around in dry noodles, then deep fried so as to resemble wild chestnuts, then a sweet glazed roasted chestnut is stuffed in the middle so that when its plated, your first impression is that of a chestnut in the forest)

Clear soup with mussels, garnished with a slice of lime and a piece of nori tempura

Salmon (or other fish) en papliotte (sic), with sauteed baby vegetables glazed with butter and herbs

Rice pilaf (or orzo cooked in chicken stock)

Sorbet

[Malawry]

I've got plenty of picky friends too, and while I am experimenting with eating meat I am not cooking it...we have basically agreed to keep our house free of fowl and meat for now. I'm not at all able to cope with the food safety issues these foods require, and furthermore my partner doesn't eat them.

I have a lot of patience for special food requests, but I was pushed to my limit when I cooked a seder in LA a few weeks ago. Everybody in my friend's family has major food issues, and I accommodated all of them. One person only eats snow peas and artichokes for veggies. One person can't have spinach or asparagus. A couple people don't eat wheat products if they can help it. One person had to be wheedled in advance about eating salmon, despite the fact that she didn't have a problem with salmon per se...she just didn't trust that this stranger from the east coast who was visiting would make a decent salmon. (Well, I guess I can understand that one, but then she wasn't a food geek, she was just a princess! She actually said she'd at least try it after much pleading and hesitation. Sheesh.) After much consultation I set a menu and then held a lot of things on the side to satisfy those who wanted a dish without the x or y.

I found that my patience with all these competing selective desires paid off, though. The turning point was when I brought out the matzo ball soup. I asked how many matzo balls everybody wanted, and who did or didn't want spinach, so the wheat-free folks could get no wheat and the spinach-denier could also eat in peace. Once people dug into the soup the whole mood at the table changed. Everybody seemed to realize that yes, they could trust me to feed them foods they said they'd eat, and that everything I'd produce would probably be pretty good. Soon I was being asked for seconds. When the many many vegetable dishes and the salmon came out the mood was eager anticipation, and there wasn't a shred of anxiety left by the time people had tasted my fish and my onion kugel. It felt wonderful to have earned their trust.

See, I like working with limitations. Half the fun of camping is working with limited cooking sources, pots and pans, and primitive refrigeration. I enjoy visiting a condo at the beach and cooking based on what supplies are left for guests in the kitchen. I think it'd be great fun to cook in an RV, and I'm not a sports fan but I bet I'd adore tailgating.

Tonight's guests don't really have any limitations, except one of them just had his wisdom teeth out recently. So he may not eat the Pirouline cookies, and he may choose a mellower dressing than the vinaigrette if he thinks the acid may annoy him. If he can't handle the greens, well, the eggs, haricots verts, beets, and potatoes should be easily gummed.

If you have a dinner party this weekend, can I please come?  

[knews9]

well.  i am a very non-picky eater and am free whenever a non-picky eater is needed to round out a dinner party.

malawry, your post really riled me!  (not your post per se but the descriptions of the fetishistic approaches many take to food).  i know that the point you were trying to make was a much more upbeat one, but i find adults who behave this way rather trying. i am not referring to folks who are veggies, of course, or vegans, but rather to people who treat each opportunity to eat as a moment to display strangely obsessive preferences with no rational basis (e.g., the salmon example; or the snow pea/artichoke person).  i appreciate those who manage to quietly avoid those foods they don't like (as my mother used to tell us, "eat around it then!") and not inflict their will on those who have just gathered 'round for a nice meal.  is this wrong?  like i said, i see your point--the pleasure in winning folks over, etc.--but i just see this behavior as incredibly self indulgent.
and at passover, no less!  where food is symbol...oy vey.

[Malawry]

What I didn't disclose was the point around 11am that day when my friend remembered that somebody couldn't have spinach or asparagus. I, well, uh, flipped out. I asked how I was supposed to cook...in California where there was so much lovely spring produce...for Passover where food is the point and you're supposed to eat spring-y things...for so many annoying and even competing desires. I have little patience for people who just don't LIKE a million things. I mean we're all entitled to not like a few things but this got ridiculous.

I am proud of my eventual success, but I sort of took it out on my poor friend briefly the morning of the seder. She listened to my rant and then calmly said she understood this was frustrating. She explained that many people in her family have a lot of control issues, and that food ends up becoming the tool they use to express those desires. She admitted she does the same thing (she's one of the no-wheat people). I can see this, although it's a little hard for me to respect.

Nonetheless, once I'd ranted I was over it and instead got all interested in how to make it all fit together. You can complain about the whininess of your guests, or you can get over it and try to challenge yourself to fit those needs. I try to do the latter, though I admit I don't tend to invite the super-picky over too often. I don't need that every time I cook for friends.

I'm curious as to how this is for those cooking in a restaurant. I think that pickiness is one of the things that makes restaurant cooking much harder than home cooking: you're not only expected to accommodate every little whim, you're expected to do so cheerfully and to make interesting and creative food within the boundaries the diner sets. And then you don't even get thanks for doing so; you don't even get the pleasure of watching the diner as they start to trust you, assuming you succeed.

[SobaAddict70]

Oh, please don't get me wrong.

I am VERY accomodating when it comes to entertaining.  In fact, you could say I'm almost obsessive when it comes to ensuring that everyone has a good time.  It's just that there are times when I want to be able to run the gamut of my repertoire without having to worry about person X being allergic to food Y.  And of course, nothing p**ses me off more so than someone who invites a friend at the last minute without informing me, after the menu and the guest list has been confirmed (but that's a minor detail and we won't go there).

*sigh*

Malawry -- IF only you didn't live away from NYC.  hehe.  I take it you can eat fish/shellfish?  And that eggs are acceptable?  Something to keep in mind the next time you happen to visit the Big Apple.

[knews9]

i'm up in the air on this one--i love to have people over and love to cook for them, and make a point of asking what restrictions folks have, but i think there is a limit.  i am accomodating and want people to have a good time, but i am wary of good time being equated with having one's every wish fulfilled.  
as for the restaurant aspect, i saw a funny outtake of (blanking on his name, of Les Halles fame)'s show where he is complaining bitterly abt diners' absurd request--hollandaise sauce but no butter, etc. this is a different category but not.
i think, malawry, your friend's comment re control is right on. which returns to teh question of being accomodating and making folks happy--if they will only be happy by controlling the entire night, the dinner party doesn't sound like much of a party at all in the end.

[Malawry]

I like to be accommodating. I agree that the worst is when somebody doesn't even make it possible for me to accommodate them. Gah!  And I agree that last-minute guests are so beyond rude. I actually had it out with one friend recently about that issue...they had no idea that their noncommittal attitude was causing me to go through emotional and technical gyrations when I just wanted to cook them dinner sometime. The whole point of having somebody over is I want to have an opportunity to make them feel nice and show off a little in the process, plus it gives me a chance to challenge myself. It's hard to do that if somebody brings their food issues to the table, or doesn't even bother to let you know whether or not they'll be there.

I think if the seder had involved a single person with all those food issues, then that one guest would have been left off the list if humanly possible...or expected to bring a few dishes if they had to be accommodated. As it was, the person who only eats snow peas and artichokes contributed a pea dish. At least this wasn't my family; I'd be so disinclined to cook for my family if I had to deal with a bazillion issues every time.

Why yes, SobaAddict, I do eat eggs and fish and shellfish. I even eat small amounts of the other stuff these days. *bats eyelashes*

[SobaAddict70]

Cool beans.

This thread brings to mind another dinner party I had for a friend and his wife's going away party (they were moving to Suffern, NY which is this little dinky town in Rockland County, just over the border from New Jersey).  My friend tries to keep kosher but more often than not usually settles for a ban on pork/shellfish and is a diabetic to boot.  His wife isn't Jewish, but she's into organic food of all stripes and won't touch anything processed (this last is fine by me -- I rarely consume anything processed -- well, except for Haagen-Dasz or sorbet).

Dinner went well, can't remember everything but there was this standout shepherd's pie made with ground lamb and topped with a sweet potato crust that was a super hit.  Ditto for the roasted winter root vegetables with the lemon viniagrette.  I'll post those recipes later (still at work....)