Dinner Parties

[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.