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.

Succulent Sustenance - Deep Fried

With the extra time to sleep in and/or work out the weekend is the best time to have awesome food. So here is Succulent Sustenance where I recount the best meal of the week (which usually occurs during the weekend) and indulge my illicit love of alliteration.

This weekend after a straight week of cravings this dish, my mother and I made her world famous Southern Fried Feast.  It seems to be a tradition below the Mason-Dixon Line that the Sunday dinner is the big one. As a reward for going to church that morning (and no offense to any Southern Baptists but I feel like I need some kind of payment for attending your services) the average Southern family starts their week by  indulging in the sin of gluttony. This saves the other six deadly sins for the remainder of the week.

While mom peeled and butterflied the shrimp I prepared the French fries. Though we have this dish about once a year this is the first time I remember using red potatoes for the fries.

Start with a potatoe:

Slice:

Chop into strips:

And they are ready for the oil!

For the rest of the meal we prepped chicken, shrimp and oysters in an seasoned egg-wash. It's no Colonel Sander's eleven herbs and spices but I find it delicious. (Could have used a pinch more cayenne in my opinion)

From Left to Right: Oysters, Shrimp, Chicken Tenders

The best part was when we finally had all the food cooking.

Left to Right: Fries, Chicken, Shrimp

Lured by the scent of the oysters and shrimp we had an extra helper. 

By "Helper" I mean: Tripping Hazard (aka Ollie)

Finally dinner was served:

Hot Sauce for the shrimp. Ketchup for the fries. Honey for the chicken.

Several servings later...

Nothing but the shrimp tails.

Hi World! Let's start with dinner...

I am interested in pretty much anything. I love having at least basic knowledge of a variety of subjects.

One subject I find particularly fascinating is food. Eating, smelling, tasting, shopping, every part of the culinary experience is akin to the sensation of finding a 5 dollar bill in your pants pocket. (With the exception of prep work, which can be really tedious, though some good music and sharp knives help)

Tonight I made dinner for my family. Since we are on a tight budget the trick is to use ingredients that are in the fridge already or come cheap. So even though I was really really craving red meat (a trick for curing that post-time of the month yuckkies) I found the chicken breast we had in the fridge and made an old stand-by, Chicken and veggie stirfry.

The vegetables this time were a red bell pepper and a pound and a half of fresh green beans. It was a good thing I had that extra half pound of beans since my little brother (Little only in age, size-wise he has a good 6 inches and 30 pounds on me) had invited a couple friends over. The food turned out delicious and juicy.

This last bit was a bit tricky. I am a little paranoid about my food, especially pork and chicken. When over cooked chicken becomes dry and not unlike eating a cotton sock. When under-cooked the slimy texture puts even the most slippery eel to shame, plus the risk of disease exponentially increases the "ick" factor. So the trick with cooking chicken on the stove top is to cook it at a high enough temperature that you get a nice caramel brown color on the outside, but not too high so it doesn't burn when you try to cook it all the way through. Using the singed chicken bits left at the bottom of the pan as a base for any sauces enhances the chicken flavor (Yes chicken does taste like chicken if you do it right).

The end result was this:

While the presentation was rather basic it tasted better than it looked.

I was also craving pie. Apple Pie. So this happened:

It was also yummy. Unfortunately I have yet to perfect my pie baking technique so the filling was a little watery. Still good but the slice kind of disintegrated once it was separated from the rest of the pie.

Currently I am finishing alterations to a skirt while watching the original karate kid. I'm kind of hoping to dream with "You're the best, around. Nothing's gonna ever keep you down." as my soundtrack.