Cooking: Best Dishes for Dinner Parties

I love to cook for friends so had a blast hosting a group of dear friends where I went all out. I wanted to make appetizers they may not have tried before (and ones I hadn't made before either) and offer a mix of Korean and non-Korean dishes that are perfect for sharing and pairing with wine. This beautiful goat cheese-stuffed persimmon sandwiches were a bit more labor intensive than I had anticipated but they looked so pretty on the plate and were worth the time. They had crunch and sweetness as well as tartness from the cheese. And they went well with wine.

 

Of course I had to whip out the salami, the olives I love from La Tienda and a cheese spread that included cranberry stilton, regular stilton, smoked gouda, sharp cheddar and an aged cheddar that paired so nicely with the wine. 

I also made an African lentil dip concocted by Marcus Samuelsson that's basically pureed lentils with spices. Paired with some pita chips, they made a great appetizer -- and a healthy one that was very flavorful at that.

As starters, one of my guests made a delicious spinach salad with a bunch of roasted veggies from her regular delivery program that included fennel, squash and radicchio. Dress all that lightly with some olive oil and lemon and voila. We had ourselves a refreshing salad that brought out all the natural sweetness of the vegetables.

I also made this sorrel, mesclun, crab and avocado salad with a bright orange shallot and carrot juice dressing that is always a hit at dinner parties. It looks beautiful on the plate and is nutritious and light. The sorrel had a lemony aftertaste and I added mesclun because I wanted more greens and it's a fine substitute. Sorrel isn't sold in bulk so it's better to supplement the greens.

One of my guests made delicious chicken curry sprinkled with some fresh cilantro. We poured it over some brown rice and it was bursting with spices and flavors.

I made my favorite entertaining dish, slow cooked oxtail with a soy sauce-garlic-sweet marinade topped with some potatoes, carrots, shitake mushrooms and chestnuts. It was tender, moist and went well with red wine, if I may say so myself.

I also made green beans with a Hollyhock tamari dressing that a friend introduced me to. This dressing sounds nasty because it contains nutritional yeast but it's not the yeast used to make bread. It's flaky and does wonderful things when mixed with garlic, gluten free soy sauce and cider vinegar. You really have to try it to know it. Don't judge a book by its cover!

I'm usually not a big fan of green beans because I find them bland but this dressing added just the right amount of garlicky and acidic touch to the neutral flavor of the green beans.

I was inspired to make these mussels cooked in a red curry sauce from ones I had at Wilshire a while back (they serve green curry mussels with awesome crusty bread grilled to perfection). Unfortunately, they didn't turn out quite the way I had hoped. Still, I'm glad I found a decent mussels purveyor in Costco. They sold them in 5-lb bags so it was a bit cumbersome thinking of various ways to eat mussels post-dinner party.

I wanted something starchy so tried to recreate these potato and queso fresco pancakes I learned to make in Oaxaca by an amazing local chef. They are called bocadillos de papa that translates to potato snacks or bites that I served as a side. I got some locally made queso fresco from a store in Koreatown. I added some roasted green chiles when I found the first few I pan fried a bit bland. But the possibilities are endless here -- I could throw in some pickled or fresh chopped jalapenos too. They turned out nicely but they weren't as delicious as the ones I made in Oaxaca and I wondered whether it was the cheese. Probably.

For dessert, I was too busy wolfing down this flan that I barely got a good shot of it. Our dear guest of honor, AM, made this beauty and we diligently cleaned the serving plate little by little, down to the caramel sauce. 

I also experimented with the crema de mescal I brought back from Oaxaca that was infused with Jamaica (Hibiscus flower). I improvised a bit from a lime juice and mescal sorbet recipe I learned at the same restaurant in Oaxaca by adding the Jamaica mescal instead of regular mescal to the lime juice, lime zest and syrup mix. The kicker is I used the most low tech of all ice shavers -- the one used for patbingsoo (red bean dessert). The result was like the nieves found in Mexican street stalls. Shaved ice flavored with Jamaica mescal, sugar and lime juice. It was refreshing and a great alternative to having an actual ice cream maker, which the original recipe required. 

It was a magical evening with tons of good food, drinks and company.