This past weekend we had a dinner party for twenty people and we decided to make it a sit-down dinner, providing and preparing from scratch all of the food.
This was unlike anything I’ve ever done before. We’ve had parties in the past where we’ve feed 70-80 people, but those have been open-house style gigs and open-house style gigs are a very different (and easier) animal. With an open house you put out food whenever it’s ready, you don’t worry too much about how much you’ve made, and you basically let the masses fend for themselves. If everyone that evening gets a taste of your cochinita pibil, fine. If the early-arriving guests can’t help themselves and plough through it all before the late-arrivers, then that’s fine too. Additionally, if someone made other plans for the latter part of the evening and have to leave before the chicken mole is out of the oven and served, well, them’s the breaks.
A sit down dinner, though — that’s a different story. You have to coordinate everything to be ready to be served at the same time, and you have to have enough of everything for everyone. In addition, you have to choose between threading the needle of everyone’s various dietary restrictions or being willing to serve some dishes that not everyone will be able to eat. Before this weekend, the most I’ve ever cooked for in this fashion has been ten people. As we were getting ready last week twenty guests felt not just twice as tricky as ten, but somehow exponentially more difficult.
What’s more, we decided that we wouldn’t serve anything that everyone at our table couldn’t taste if they wished to try it. Since several guests were Jewish this meant no pork or shellfish, obviously, but the biggest challenge actually came from a gentleman who, it turned out, is highly allergic to garlic. Garlic is one of those ingredients whose ubiquitousness you don’t really comprehend until you need to make an entire menu without a trace of it. It’s so near-universal, in fact, that what I ultimately had to do was choose the dishes I wanted to serve and then, if they contained any garlic, rework the recipes with different ingredients from the ground up in a way that didn’t lose the essence of the original dish.
We also decided to offer a large variety of different dishes. That way if a guest wasn’t wild about fish, there would be some lamb to compensate — and if they did’t like either there was always the steak or the chicken. If they liked all of those things, they could approach the meal as a kind of giant tasting menu. Because the weather here has been rather spectacularly sunny lately and we knew we were going to eat outside, we went with a islands-menu theme that was heavy on grilled meats, tropical fruits, and — of course — rum.
It was, without a question of a doubt, the most ambitious thing in the kitchen I have ever attempted by a very wide margin. And with two notable exceptions — the fish and the grilled bananas[1] — I have to say that I think it came off rather perfectly.
I’ve decided to make a post out of the menu — a series of posts, actually. One reason for this is that I feel like I earned the right to crow, of course. Another is that I’m considering having the next Leaguefest in Portland, and if so I’m toying with the idea of letting everyone save money on the dinner they would have bought in a fancy restaurant and instead recreating this meal for y’all.
But I also want to put these revamped recipes down somewhere and encourage readers to try them. They’re all easy, they’re all quite different from things most people probably make with similar ingredients, and they’re all perfect for summer patio eating. And so over the next few weeks I’ll be putting up recipe-posts for those menu items that I felt were particularly amazing. I’ll start tomorrow with the recipe for jerk chicken with banana-mango ketchup.
For now, though, I’ll just post the menu and do a wee victory dance, as well as one giant big-ass exhale.
Tod’s Island Dinner Party Menu
Avant le Repas
- Crudités with Mango-Yogurt Dip
- Grilled Vegetable Gazpacho
- Island-Style Deviled Eggs
- Guacamole with Corn Chips[2]
- Sangria Clara
- Fresh Daiquiris on Ice
Plats Principaux
- Jerk Chicken with Banana Mango Ketchup
- Whole-Spiced Skirt Steak with Smokey Eggplant Chutney
- Grilled halibut with Stone Fruit Salsa
- Grilled Peach & Lamb Salad with Fresh-Mint Yogurt
- Coconut Rice
- Spicy Black-eyed Peas with Kale and Peppers
- Mango, Papaya, and Pineapple, Dressed with Fresh Squeezed Lime Juice
- Chilled Bottles of Moscato, Pinot Noir Rosé, and (hey, this is Portland after all) un-chilled bottles of Pinot Noir
Aprés un Repas
- Grilled Bananas Brushed with Butter & Molasses
- Coconut Ice Cream
- Knittingniki’s Impossibly Good Brownies with Roasted Coconut
- Various Desert Wines & Digestifs
[1] If you’re curious, each of those errors was entirely the fault of the chef.
In the case of the fish, when we make this dish for ourselves we normally grill whole, thick filets. With this dinner I decided to cube the fish and put it on small skewers so that it would be easier to serve. Sadly, I miscalculated the amount of time I should grill the skewers and the fish ended up being overdone, not at all the moist and flakey dish we normally have.
In the case of the bananas, I made a mistake by grilling them right before we served dinner and letting them sit in a warming oven. By the time we served desert, they had gotten overly mushy, and the butter and molasses had had enough time to seep in and take away much of the taste of the banana, which is supposed to be the dominant flavor. Had I to do it over, I’d have still grilled them early, but I’d have put them in the fridge and served them cool.
Live and learn.
[2] Okay, okay… I might have actually bought the corn chips from the store.
Store bought chips? Savage!
Even though I am not a food kinda person, the whole thing sounds delightful. I love social gatherings. I am hoping to be able to make the next league fest, though my current movements are restricted.
(I do 3/4 of the cooking for my wife and I, and it is like pulling teeth. That is just for the two of us, for 20… You are a brave man!)Report
It’s probably easier for me than it would be for you, simply because of the different ways we each feel about food. I’m glad to hear, though, that this kind of gathering is still a thing that appeals! If we do this for Leaguefest, it would be awesome to have you there.Report
Oh my TOD that sounds fantastic and bravo on pulling it off. I would definitely make an extra effort to get to a Portland LeaguefestReport
That would be exciting!Report
This sounds wonderful. I’d have broken my carb-fast for this. Even the mushy, buttery, molassesy bannanas.
No, strike that. Especially the mushy, buttery, molassesy bannanas.Report
I am in serious danger of drowning in my own saliva. Curse you Tod!Report
Sounds yummy, but Todd, “Since several guests were Jewish this meant no pork or shellfish, obviously, ”
None of the jewish women I’ve dated had all those restrictions. One chomped down on mussels (on the prohibited list I hear) and pork. The other, seafood, including scallops.
But I guess there’s all KINDS of jewish-ness 🙂Report
@damon
Those are pretty standard Kosher restrictions. Of course, not all Jews keep Kosher (and even those who do will follow different rules/standards based on any number of criteria). But unless you know for sure that your Jewish guest doesn’t keep Kosher AND if you want the sort of inclusive meal that Tod is describing, best to take the route he did.Report
Naturally@kazzy
Of course the second date I had with the Jewish Israeli school director, she was tucking into a dozen mussels and asked me “if I’d found Jesus Christ as my savior”. The cognitive dissonance stunned me for a moment. 🙂
@stillwater Indeed, as I do as well. But the thing that got me here was, being less familiar with jewish things, I sought council from a coworker who was jewish and he gave some some info. Of course that was “common” stuff. My girlfriend wasn’t “common”. She was a few standard deviations from the norm.Report
But I guess there’s all KINDS of jewish-ness 🙂
Yah. Same here. I also know some catholic women who use birth control, and even a few quite content protestant men who don’t seem to Protest all that much.Report
Lots of yummy sounding food. Bonus points for the Brueghal:
Peasant Wedding by William Carlos Williams
Pour the wine bridegroom
where before you the
bride is enthroned in her hair
loose at her temples a head
of ripe wheat is on
the wall beside her the
guests seated at long tables
the bagpipers are ready
there is a hound under
the table the bearded Mayor
is present women in their
starched headgear are
gabbing all but the bride
hands folded in her
lap is awkwardly silent simple
dishes are being served
clabber and what not
from a trestle made of an
unhinged barn door by two
helpers one in a red
coat a spoon in his hatbandReport
That’s a great poem. I love WCW.Report
How many ovens do you have, Tod? I’ve never hosted 20 people but I will say that a double oven can really make a difference.Report
@kazzy we have two, but we didn’t use either one. Other than using the stove to make the catchup and our rice cooker, everything that was cooked was cooked on the big green egg.Report
Ballsy! I can work the grill for large quantities of food if we’re talking burgers or sausage or dogs, but the sort of temperature control over multiple cooks (assuming you did) is hard if we’re talking about a fish. Does the BGE regulate temperature better than a gas/propane grill?Report
I’m looking at a BGE-knockoff (that is, substantially cheaper) kamado grill right now – I asked for some gift cards for Father’s Day, to go toward it – and supposedly once you get the hang of it, you can keep them at temperature for very long periods (like a 200-degree twelve-hour smoke for brisket, say).Report
It really does. Plus it retains it incredibly well, so the fire needs zero tending.Report
I love this series – I’ve made the roast chicken (and bread drippings!) and the chicken enchiladas plenty of times. Looking forward to these installments!Report
Thanks, @adam — I’m always rather happily amazed when someone actually tries these things.Report
This is one of those times when a catering/rental place (for serving/holding dishes, particularly) can make a huge difference. Dishes, chairs, glasses, etc; don’t keep that stuff at home if you don’t do this regularly, rent it.
Awesome job.
Want to know the Island Style Deviled Eggs. I love deviled eggs. Currently, I’ve been making them with a little homemade mayo, mustard, mild curry powder, minced shallot and celery, salt, and dusted with tandoori seasoning instead of paprika.Report
Oddly enough, I think I do have enough plates and glasses and all for 10, at least. (Thanks to Amazon, for free glassware!). Of course, they’d all be mismatched and that… but I couldn’t possibly invite people who would care about that!Report
Fancy deviled eggs are one of those gastropub trends i am see more and more of lately. looking forward to reading about those too.Report
I don’t have room in my house for 20.
I am impressed with what can be done “easily” on a BGE.Report
This is pretty impressive. We do Thanksgiving for about 25 every year but most of the dishes are very forgiving and the Crockpots come in handy. Doing a meal like this where you have to get the timing right is quite ambitious. Kudos and looking forward to reading more about it.Report
I know! I would have done like a third of this, and have most of it be make-ahead anyway.Report
It also depends on having guests that are game for what you are doing. When I feed my very meat-and-potatoes family they show up starving and if you drag out the meal prep the natives get restless. Doing something like what Tod pulled off requires that the guests appreciate what you are doing for them.Report
That’s what appetizers are for, nibbles that can be easily chomped while the real meal is cooking.Report
@kim And also what pre-dinner cocktails are for.
Everyone likes their dinner more after a few well made cocktails.Report
@mike-dwyer Yeah, that’s probably true. They were a very appreciative audience (participants? guinea pigs?), and that helped.
For me, the only thing worse than making an extra effort to cook a great meal for people who don’t seem to appreciate it is having the meal turn out crappy and inedible and having everyone tell you it’s wonderful out of politeness.Report
LOL. I suppose I’d make the perfect dinner guest then… never did get the hang of being polite. Honesty’s better.
(Yes, I do honestly ask my husband “How do I look in this dress?” — and expect an honest answer.)Report