Succulent Sustenance - Dinner Party!

This is a couple weeks late. I have excuses: allergies, end of summer, packing to go back to school, leading a summer day camp for kids (ages 6-12, and just precocious enough to make me want to remove my uterus), Renaissance festival. But those are just that, excuses. So rather than blathering on and on, or making lists of the things I have been doing instead of blogging let's get right on to the good stuff.

So two Thursdays ago I had an End of Summer dinner party for several of my friends in the area. I had an entire menu planned out but since all the recipes were new I only wound up making one of them. That was probably a good thing since it took so much longer to get everything finished than I had planned. Of course the best laid plans get disrupted and all the careful list-making did nothing to prevent everything falling apart and me driving all over town trying to gather ingredients.

Since dinner was a little later than I planned I did a little appetizer. Sliced French bread toasted with goat cheese and sliced fresh basil. Unfortunately they never got pretty plating and thus no pictures.

For the main course I got a recipe from a weekly email called Tasting Table They send out two recipes a week. Any foodie who appreciates experimenting with new stuff should sign up for it. One of the recipes that showed up in my email was Grilled Lamb Skewers. Since this came at a time I was craving red meat, I was eager to try the recipe and foist it upon others. I made a few changes to the recipe. I doubled the recipe (11 dinner guests) and I cut the ground lamb with ground chuck. Since lamb is so flavorful the mutton overpowered the beef  and the fat in the chuck made the skewers extra juicy. I also made additional wine reduction and added about a tablespoon of honey and melted 2/3rds of a stick of unsalted butter in the reduction to make a sauce. For side dishes I made wilted spinach and sauteed red bell pepper salad and saffron flavored rice.

Prep work

The Skewers pre-grill

Ravishingly Red Bell Peppers

A dinner plate for one lucky guest

My sister played co-host for the evening and her major contribution was dessert. I don't have links to the recipe she used but as soon as I do I will post them. She made individual Raspberry Creme Brulees for each one of my guests.

It may look like a basic creme brulee but at the bottom of the ramekin was a layer of raspberry preserves and fresh raspberries.

The dinner was a hit! Even my friend who is a notorious picky eater cleared most of her plate (and all of her dessert). I love entertaining like this when everything gets to come together even though things were delayed.

PS. The Picky Eater is the reason the photos in this post look so amazing. She brought her giant camera and took all the pictures for the evening. Unfortunately most of the pictures of me are before I was able to shower so I am not posting any featuring me. I love her to death for making my food look amazing and plan to invite her and her camera every time I make a good meal.