Planning a Dinner Party
I recently catered for a dinner party for twelve people, my first solo paid gig. I spent the majority of my free time during the week prior to the party; planning, and as a result everything went smoothly, so I thought I would share my experience with you and hopefully inspire some of you to have parties of your own.
I had met with the hosts of the party the weekend before and we had decided on three courses, and a chocolate desert of some description. With no vegetarians or food allergies to cater for and no budget to adhere to (a multinational company was picking up the bill) the heavens were open to me.
I was also lucky enough to be doing some work experience in the promotions department of the BBC Good Food magazine at the time, opening up a vast array of inspiration to me. My only concern now was choosing a menu that worked well, and I knew I could prepare on my own without any disasters.
Although I have worked professionally in kitchens for several years, this was to be the first time without any back up, which I found considerably scary. Especially since the hosts asked me to cook for them without ever having sampled anything I had cooked before, they knew me only by work of mouth and I didn't want to disappoint them.
I decided that one way to limit the possible things that could go wrong would be to serve a cold starter and desert, thereby enabling me to prepare them earlier in the day or even the night before. I was also particularly keen on serving salmon as the main course, since I had cooked a great deal of salmon in Scotland over the last year.
Salmon truly is the king of fish, it needs little or no dressing and takes only a few minutes to cook under the grill. I decided to serve this with a hollandaise sauce that I would make in the afternoon before hand, baby asparagus, broccoli and roasted cherry tomatoes and new potatoes. All of which would require very little preparation allowing me to spend time on presentation.
After much indecision between various starters including hot goats cheese and a dish of melon, raspberry coulis and champagne, I settled upon tartlets of caramelised onion and mixed wild mushrooms. The beauty of individual tarts is that your guests fully appreciate all the effort you have been to; it is much more fulfilling to get a whole rather than a part.
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