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Casual Dinner Party: Success!
desperaterobots
perth, ausRegistered User regular
perth, ausRegistered User regular
Okay!
This forum was an excellent help last time I entertained. You all gave me ideas for a housewarming punch that everyone went apeshit for.
Now, I've never had people over for dinner before. And all of a sudden I'm feeling very mid-twenties and I've invited about 10 people around for dinner on Saturday night. They are all friends of mine but none of them have spent too much time together before. It's mingling time!
So, the question: What the fuck do I do? I'm looking for suggestions on anything to do with casual entertaining. This is not going to be a sit-down dinner, probably more of a 'there's all the food, take what you like' barbeque style arrangement. Only, I don't own a barbeque.
I'm very interested in any good dishes you guys might throw together when people come round. Good salads, finger foods, mains, drinks, desserts, anything. Please note I'm not a kitchen wizard but I'm pretty competent following any recipe that isn't too involved. I don't want to fold egg whites to firm peaks is what I'm saying.
So when you had an awesome gathering, what made it great?
This forum was an excellent help last time I entertained. You all gave me ideas for a housewarming punch that everyone went apeshit for.
Now, I've never had people over for dinner before. And all of a sudden I'm feeling very mid-twenties and I've invited about 10 people around for dinner on Saturday night. They are all friends of mine but none of them have spent too much time together before. It's mingling time!
So, the question: What the fuck do I do? I'm looking for suggestions on anything to do with casual entertaining. This is not going to be a sit-down dinner, probably more of a 'there's all the food, take what you like' barbeque style arrangement. Only, I don't own a barbeque.
I'm very interested in any good dishes you guys might throw together when people come round. Good salads, finger foods, mains, drinks, desserts, anything. Please note I'm not a kitchen wizard but I'm pretty competent following any recipe that isn't too involved. I don't want to fold egg whites to firm peaks is what I'm saying.
So when you had an awesome gathering, what made it great?
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Bruschetta is good snacking food and easy to make. Obtain a baguette and cut it in slices kind of diagonally, so you have long, flat pieces of bread. Rub with olive oil, add diced tomatos and spices (I like parmesan cheese, garlic, and oregano), and toast for a little while. This looks very pretty arranged on a plate.
Drinks: have sodas, good beer, and pick out a nice wine to go with whatever you have for dinner. Wine pretty much instantly makes things nicer and less college-party-esque, particularly if you have real stemware and aren't drinking out of plastic cups.
For dessert: pie a la mode! Buy an apple pie, put it in the oven to warm up while you're eating, take out and serve with ice cream. I don't know anyone who dislikes both pie and ice cream.
As for the non-food aspects: make sure you have plenty of seating and don't leave the tv on unless everyone wants to watch a game or something. You don't want people watching the tv instead of mingling! Clean the bathrooms, obviously. Make sure you introduce your guests to each other, and try to bring up topics of conversation that will get people with similar interests talking to each other. I'd recommend cooking things that you can prepare beforehand and pop into the oven to heat up so you don't end up slaving away in the kitchen and ignoring your guests. Very importantly, if you do want it to be just a dinner party and not a staying-over-and-drinking party, make sure you have some sort of natural ending to the party. Maybe go out afterwards? Hope this helps.
if you pair that with some good wine/beer it will be a 100% success.
I'd actually considered tacos, but not everyone who is coming digs the mexican.
Guacomole is a good one too, especially with carrot
So far I'm thinking these:
- Dips
- Toasted Turkish Bread
- Bruschetta
- Some mini pizza things, I don't know, chicken, baby spinach and fetta or something.
- A good salad
I feel like I'm still missing a vital component. Something more filling. Like... Lasagne or something? Or a pasta bake? Any suggestions?
And guacamole needs cummin in it. Squash the avos, chuck in a fairly hefty load of the stuff, plus a finely diced red onion and a finely diced tomato, and the lemon juice. stir the tomatos in last so they don't get squished all to hell.
I don't think it's that kind of party!
In all seriousness, you could try making big crusty pieces of garlic bread for a side. They're easy to make and go well with a lot of dishes, and garlic bread is pretty universally loved. You might want to provide a bowl of breathmints though, you don't want people who are mingling to get self conscious about their breath :P
Also you can pick up shrimp platters from Costco that by themselves are pretty lame, but you can fry those shrimp up or make them spicy and rearrange them on the platter they come with, and it'll be an awesome surprise.
There will be a lot of wine. A lot.
Garlic bread yes! I might try making my own even. Although it's getting a little heavy on the bread now.
Get a loaf of french or italian bread (look for the pre-sliced kind)
Put some butter on a slice of bread
Put Garlic powder on the buttered portions of the bread
Toast, if you have a toaster oven, this makes life a lot easier if not you can use the oven just keep a close eye on it.
You can even melt some mozzarella cheese on there too if you want.
This seems kinda simple but its tastes really good. I make it for my family all the time.
Instantly improve on this: buy real garlic. Put in food processor (or mince by hand if you so desire). Melt butter. Mix garlic and butter. Use this instead of the butter / garlic powder combination.
It's November, and I'm not sure where you live, but a roast is always a winner. Get a decent beef roast, throw some lard in a pan with the meat, roast it at 350 for two hours or so (use a meat thermometer for maximum precision) with some potatoes, onion, and carrot. Throw some water in the pan in the last half hour for gravy. Once it's done, put it aside and deglaze the pan, and boom. It's dead easy and impresses the hell out of people.
Thank you, Rubacava!
My Mexican-food-loving self just blanched at the thought of that. Cumin and lemon juice? Blech, it's not a curry. Simple guacamole lets the flavor of the avocados take center stage. Salt, lime juice, and maaaaaaybe a tomato if you want to get fancy. (The kebab recipe sounded tasty, though.)
make a bunch of pizza dough and have a make your own pizza party
casseroles are always good and easy
definitely go for buffet style...much easier and makes people mingle abit
You got the drinks covered so that's good.
No, trust me, it works. You don't have to use a half ton of the stuff, but a little spice makes it awesome.
If they're like the ones I've had, a strip of puff pastry with cheese on top, baked together. I've only had them with parmesan and a little mild paprika, though.
My contribution to the advice here: stick with a theme. It may seem like an awesome idea to have guacamole and Thai chicken skewers and garlic bread and bruschetta and a pot roast all at once, but having a meal like that would be incredibly disjointed. Schizophrenic, almost. Mixing types like that will also make it very difficult to match flavours. I mean, I love me some garlic bread, and I also love guacamole, but going from one to the other would be nasty.
Pick a single basic genre you want to work within, then build from there. Doing this will avoid clashes between foods, it will simplify your decision-making, and it will also make things look more impressive to your guests: you'll be showing them that you actually took the time to come up with a coherent menu, instead of just dumping everything in your freezer on them. So, if you like the idea of Italian, you could do something like bruschetta as appetizers (maybe with some fresh mozzarella, tomato slices, and basil drizzled with a balsamic vinagrette), then have a classic Caesar salad, then some sort of baked pasta or lasagna with garlic bread as the main, and tiramisu for dessert. Simple, classy, and you can prepare most of it ahead of time. Or, if you want a classic homestyle American comfort food kind of meal, you could start with a nice hearty soup with bread, have some salad or cold veggies to nibble on, then do the big pot roast with carrots and potatoes, and finish off with warm apple pie and ice cream.
Just keep it unified, don't try to do everything at once. Serving that warm apple pie with ice cream after a meal of spicy chicken curry may be postmodern and global village and crosscultural and all that, but it will taste like shit. Learn how to play with food within the lines before you start breaking them.
So I'm thinking...
- Home made Garlic Bread
- Bruschetta
- Lasagne
- Mini vegetarian/fetta pizzas
- A good salad
And something simple for dessert.
The Cat's right, ground cumin does a homemade guacamole right. I'd also support the addition of cayenne pepper.
-Buy some plain pizza dough and garlic butter
-Make small balls with the dough. Make them smaller than bite sized, they will expand when heated.
-Bake them (can't remember the temps right now)
-Take them out and cover them with garlic butter, shake the bowl to disperse it evenly.
-serve
Main problem with this dish is it is kinda messy, but you could always put some type of stick in it (might be a bit hard, but who says life is easy?). Everybody loves them and they're simple to make.
I might take some photos to document the horror.
I spent all of Saturday on my feet, cleaning and cooking. I spent about AUD$150 on food all up.
The menu:
Cheese/Crackers/Dips/Etc, although I guess this really doesn't count.
Bruschetta -- In my supermarket I found par-baked pre-cut pre-staled bruschetta bread, with 12 slices per pack. This cost $3.50, saved me the effort and crumbs of finding/buying/cutting my own loaf. Really convenient as I was pushed for time.
I went for tomato, basil and red onion with olive oil, fancy gourmet honey-infused balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, with some shaved parmesan. Forgot to take a photo but they were actually pretty god damn delicious.
Lasagne -- Made enough for everyone and still had some left. Didn't make a bechamel sauce. Baked for an hour. Used mozzarella and parmesan on every layer. Was suitably filling and delicious.
Salad -- Chickpeas, Kalamata Olives, Snow Peas, Red Capscium, Tomatoes, Cucumber, Red Onion, dressed with the juice of half a lemon and brine from the olives. Salty, tangy, refreshing.
Pasta Bake -- Spinach and Ricotta. Pasta. Cheese. Vegetarians dug it, so did the Omnivores.
I was going to make a pizza but ran out of time. Turned out it would have been overkill anyway.
So the table post-dinner and pre-dessert looked something like this:
Dessert was one of those defrostable Bavarian cake things, Apple Crumble, Icecream and Custard.
After dessert, the kitchen looked something like this:
I had compliments all round, got thoroughly trashed and then went out dancing with all of these excellent people:
Hmm, though the people look kind of sullen in those images, we were full of cheese by that stage. ;-) All 12 people came, all left stuffed and satisfied, and many a mingle were had! By 1am we were dancing to Justin Timberlake while we waited for our taxi to show.
Good times! Thanks dudes.