B
Bob Terwilliger
Guest
Here's the first draft at the plans for my annual early-summer celebration:
Six or seven different kinds of olives: There's a tremendous variety of
olives flooding the market nowadays, and I'm largely ignorant about them.
This is just as much for my own edification as it is for my guests'
enjoyment.
Peel-and-eat shrimp: Besides the typical cocktail sauce, I'm thinking of
offering a "calypso" sauce based on rum, lime juice, and garlic; a
sour-cream-and-dill sauce; and my favorite faux Inner Beauty sauce (papaya,
mustard, curry, and habañeros).
Buffalo-burgers stuffed with blue cheese: My local Costco has excellent
ciabatta rolls from the La Brea Bakery, so that's where the burgers will
repose once they're cooked. For condiments I plan to offer the usual catsup,
mustard, mayo, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, dill pickle chips, and
lettuce. But I also plan to offer Frank's Hot Sauce and celery sticks, to
replicate the Buffalo-wing flavor.
Margarita chicken: I think this is pretty standard fare, grilled chicken
marinated and basted with a mixture of lime juice, orange juice, tequila,
and salt. (There's also melted butter and hot paprika on the chicken.)
Grilled Louisiana hot links: This is a particular weakness of mine. I plan
to serve them on sesame French rolls, and offer several different mustards,
pickle relish, corn relish, caramelized onions, and HP "Fruity" sauce as
condiments.
Cafe Beaujolais "Potato Goop" kebabs: The Cafe Beaujolais cookbook has a
recipe for something called "Potato Goop," where you roll partially-cooked
small potatoes in a coating which contains lots of olive oil, garlic, and
herbs, and then bake until the potatoes get crispy. I'm modifying that
slightly by halving the partially-cooked potatoes, coating them with the
"goop," then skewering and grilling them to crispness. They're very good on
their own, and they're awesome with catsup or mayo. If I'm feeling energetic
and ambitious, I might get creative and come up with some special sauces to
accompany them, like this place: www.pommesfrites.ws/menu.html. I'm thinking
they might be good with sun-dried tomato mayo, red-wine vinegar, or that
sour-cream-dill sauce I mentioned with the shrimp.
Caprese Salad: This is the famous combination of fresh tomato slices, fresh
basil, and fresh mozzarella. I serve it with coarse sea salt, freshly-ground
pepper, fruity extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and more of those
ciabatta rolls. But if I can't find top-quality tomatoes (and it might be a
little too early for them here), this item won't be on the menu.
Some kind of cold soup? I'm not sure: I wouldn't want to serve gazpacho,
since tomatoes are so well-represented in the menu already. And I'm not
crazy about fruit soups or vichyssoise. But I *like* the idea of a cold
soup; I just haven't figured out which specific soup would work here.
Anybody got a favorite cold soup recipe? Jellied consommé, maybe?
Some kind of cold salad? Tossed salads are often left to wilt at a party,
particularly with the bunch who will be in attendance at this one. Maybe
a platter of cold roasted veggies would be better-received, but I don't want
to heat up the oven to roast them, and I don't want to heat up the grill the
day before to grill them and then chill them afterward. Any suggestions will
be gratefully considered.
A platter of assorted cut-up fruit with toothpicks for skewering: The idea
is that the fruit will be available as a topping for the pavlova, for eating
out of hand, or for adding flavor to drinks. Exactly what fruits will be on
the platter will depend on what's good in the market. I'm sure strawberries
will be there, and I'm sure I'll be able to get good pineapples and oranges.
But as for other fruits, I'll have to wait and see: I saw some nice-looking
cherimoyas the other day, but there's no telling if similar-quality
cherimoyas will be available two-and-a-half weeks from now. And so it goes.
LadyJane's Pavlova and Grand Marnier whipped cream: The idea is to cut off a
piece of the pavlova, spoon on some fruit, and dollop on the whipped cream.
I've never made a pavlova before, so I'll be practicing it over the next
couple weeks. As indicated, I'm following the recipe posted here some time
ago by LadyJane; it's cooked in a springform pan, which I *hope* means that
it's more foolproof.
To drink we'll have some of my favorite beers: Pete's Wicked Strawberry
Blonde Ale, Pete's Rally Cap Ale, Pyramid Apricot Ale, and Pyramid
Hefeweizen. We'll also have a bottle of Quady's "Ariel" and a pitcher of
sangria for the wine drinkers, and we'll have bottled water, sun tea, and
several flavors of Gatorade for those abstaining from alcohol.
There will be about fourteen guests (though not all at the same time); none
of them are bringing kids this time around.
Any suggestions or comments?
Bob
Six or seven different kinds of olives: There's a tremendous variety of
olives flooding the market nowadays, and I'm largely ignorant about them.
This is just as much for my own edification as it is for my guests'
enjoyment.
Peel-and-eat shrimp: Besides the typical cocktail sauce, I'm thinking of
offering a "calypso" sauce based on rum, lime juice, and garlic; a
sour-cream-and-dill sauce; and my favorite faux Inner Beauty sauce (papaya,
mustard, curry, and habañeros).
Buffalo-burgers stuffed with blue cheese: My local Costco has excellent
ciabatta rolls from the La Brea Bakery, so that's where the burgers will
repose once they're cooked. For condiments I plan to offer the usual catsup,
mustard, mayo, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, dill pickle chips, and
lettuce. But I also plan to offer Frank's Hot Sauce and celery sticks, to
replicate the Buffalo-wing flavor.
Margarita chicken: I think this is pretty standard fare, grilled chicken
marinated and basted with a mixture of lime juice, orange juice, tequila,
and salt. (There's also melted butter and hot paprika on the chicken.)
Grilled Louisiana hot links: This is a particular weakness of mine. I plan
to serve them on sesame French rolls, and offer several different mustards,
pickle relish, corn relish, caramelized onions, and HP "Fruity" sauce as
condiments.
Cafe Beaujolais "Potato Goop" kebabs: The Cafe Beaujolais cookbook has a
recipe for something called "Potato Goop," where you roll partially-cooked
small potatoes in a coating which contains lots of olive oil, garlic, and
herbs, and then bake until the potatoes get crispy. I'm modifying that
slightly by halving the partially-cooked potatoes, coating them with the
"goop," then skewering and grilling them to crispness. They're very good on
their own, and they're awesome with catsup or mayo. If I'm feeling energetic
and ambitious, I might get creative and come up with some special sauces to
accompany them, like this place: www.pommesfrites.ws/menu.html. I'm thinking
they might be good with sun-dried tomato mayo, red-wine vinegar, or that
sour-cream-dill sauce I mentioned with the shrimp.
Caprese Salad: This is the famous combination of fresh tomato slices, fresh
basil, and fresh mozzarella. I serve it with coarse sea salt, freshly-ground
pepper, fruity extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and more of those
ciabatta rolls. But if I can't find top-quality tomatoes (and it might be a
little too early for them here), this item won't be on the menu.
Some kind of cold soup? I'm not sure: I wouldn't want to serve gazpacho,
since tomatoes are so well-represented in the menu already. And I'm not
crazy about fruit soups or vichyssoise. But I *like* the idea of a cold
soup; I just haven't figured out which specific soup would work here.
Anybody got a favorite cold soup recipe? Jellied consommé, maybe?
Some kind of cold salad? Tossed salads are often left to wilt at a party,
particularly with the bunch who will be in attendance at this one. Maybe
a platter of cold roasted veggies would be better-received, but I don't want
to heat up the oven to roast them, and I don't want to heat up the grill the
day before to grill them and then chill them afterward. Any suggestions will
be gratefully considered.
A platter of assorted cut-up fruit with toothpicks for skewering: The idea
is that the fruit will be available as a topping for the pavlova, for eating
out of hand, or for adding flavor to drinks. Exactly what fruits will be on
the platter will depend on what's good in the market. I'm sure strawberries
will be there, and I'm sure I'll be able to get good pineapples and oranges.
But as for other fruits, I'll have to wait and see: I saw some nice-looking
cherimoyas the other day, but there's no telling if similar-quality
cherimoyas will be available two-and-a-half weeks from now. And so it goes.
LadyJane's Pavlova and Grand Marnier whipped cream: The idea is to cut off a
piece of the pavlova, spoon on some fruit, and dollop on the whipped cream.
I've never made a pavlova before, so I'll be practicing it over the next
couple weeks. As indicated, I'm following the recipe posted here some time
ago by LadyJane; it's cooked in a springform pan, which I *hope* means that
it's more foolproof.
To drink we'll have some of my favorite beers: Pete's Wicked Strawberry
Blonde Ale, Pete's Rally Cap Ale, Pyramid Apricot Ale, and Pyramid
Hefeweizen. We'll also have a bottle of Quady's "Ariel" and a pitcher of
sangria for the wine drinkers, and we'll have bottled water, sun tea, and
several flavors of Gatorade for those abstaining from alcohol.
There will be about fourteen guests (though not all at the same time); none
of them are bringing kids this time around.
Any suggestions or comments?
Bob
