le sauce

a lazy, sunday, spaghetti dinner party

The lazy, Sunday night, spaghetti dinner party. That wasn't.

I am selling this to you as the dinner party that you make for friends on a Sunday night, when you want to be surrounded by loved ones who will surround your dinner table and everything is cozy and nice and easy. It's a menu that's casual and meant to be hardly any work at all. Lots of one-bowl, one-pot, one-tray stuff. And it is. Honestly.

Until it wasn't.

I'm not bragging when I say I've thrown a dinner part or two in my time, more complicated than this. I'm telling you so you understand why I can't understand how I screwed this up so royally on a recent Saturday night when I had friends over and I burned the sauce, forgot to add cream to a simple batter for the dessert, and almost had to order a pizza to save dinner. My kichen looked like a tornado hit it and my two friends, regulars at my house for dinner, were like what the hell is wrong with you tonight. They weren't being unkind, they were asking honestly. They saw how simple the 3-ingredient sauce was to make. It needs almost no monitoring. It's just, like with, oh anything else, you don't want to accidentally leave on a high heat forever so 1/4 of it burns to a crust on the bottom of your pan. We still ate it, by the way and  it was still delicious--it's that forgiving despite incidents like this. So I was essentially serving them spaghetti and a salad and it didn't go so well. What can I say except sometimes, I have one of those nights?

But if you're not having one of those nights--the nights where if you'd left the house you would hear the whistle of the anvil falling to meet your head as you turned the corner of your street--this is the easiest, laziest dinner party ever. It's also 100% comforting, devour-able, and worthy of your best friends. It's the one to serve your best friends, to encourage that Sunday night gathering, when we're all busy getting ready for the week and don't know if we can get together. Get together. Just read your horoscope first. If it warns you to stay in bed, that's the only time this one might not work out for you. 

a lazy, sunday, spaghetti dinner party (all the recipes you need, below)

nibbles: fried olives and fried leek chips*

marcella hazan's famous tomato sauce* and crazy spaghetti

burrata with pumpkin seed pesto and chiles

wild arugula salad w/ parmesan snow

chocolate banana stuffed french toast pockets, with maple syrup and cream

*Previously published on le sauce.

an indulgent, deep-winter dinner party

(and a guide to help you pull off the night perfectly!)

There are those dinner rituals reserved for winter, the ones that involve an extra-stuffed grilled cheese sandwich, chowder, hot chocolate--sometimes all in the same night. I'm all for those. This menu, however, is nothing like those dinners. Even more indulgent, melted in butter, tossed around in cream, topped with crispy caramelized things, this menu, rather than embracing and cozying up to winter, is about defying winter with a dinner party. It's about setting a fabulous table with the holidays long past, dragging your friends out of their homes 3 hours after the sun's set, putting on nice shoes and rewarding yourself for not letting winter beat you down. It's celebration just for the sake of it, and a justifiable rich balance to flat, grey February.

So I give you:

an indugent, deep-winter dinner party menu...

risotto-stuffed chard bundles with browned butter oyster mushrooms

cauliflower in leek cream

sauteed brussels sprouts with fried shallots & toasted almonds

domino potatoes

banana cream pie

...and the guide to help you pull it off with ease!

scene + savoured: anniversaries, reunions, recoveries

scenes of the things i've recently savoured--bites, drinks, places, tables, people.

The saffron sour at barchef, sipped with commendable control during pre-dinner cocktails, had the potential to outshine everything that came after it. (Good thing we headed to Buca afterward.) I doubt you can get a bad drink there but it's the only drink I've allowed myself to reorder from a menu that I'm still trying to exhaust. Yes, that good.

That night we were out for drinks and dinner to celebrate our anniversary. But on our actual anniversary I made James a special tapas dinner at home: a tortilla Espanol, stewed beans, cheeses and a bottle of the same Spanish wine we'd really enjoyed years ago at another anniversary. Awww.

And then, to welcome january... 

Pre-party dinner on New Year's Eve was memorable but so filling you could see on everyone's faves the unspoken fear that we might not actually make it to the party. Hotpot or swish at Swish by Han, plus too many starters and delicious cocktails made for a celebratory meal, plus there's just something about a blue-hot fire roaring on your table, you know? 

My best friend visiting from LA => old friends gathering + lots of wine + as many truffled dishes + pretty blouses + animated conversation = everything good in life.

Weekend breakfast: buckwheat pancakes with molasses (love this combo!), soy sausages, very strong black coffee and apricots. Laid out on the coffee table, enjoyed on the couch!

There were many couch meals so to get us back to the table, we lured ourselves with a simple meal dressed up with small touches. An every-herb and spinach soup with strained yogurt and spiced pumpkin seeds on top, buttery La Sauvagine and the most amazing Farmhouse Stilton cheeses (maybe my new favourite blue and quite different from regular Stilton) with seedy crackers, a creamy white wine we'd been saving and sweet and sour blood oranges for after.

And sometimes, you want an old standby--especially when you've been flat out sick. Two crazy bugs got James and then they came after me. For restoration, ginger tea, etc. To really recover, comfort in a bowl: white rice, stir-fried greens, soft-scrambled eggs (similar to these) and mugs of Jasmine tea.

a biryani feast

I don't know if my parents failed to mention that we would be having a dinner party or if I was to busy concentrating on the television to register the news, but I remember "discovering" that we would be having company as a child on certain evenings, and having only a short amount of time to get ridiculously excited before guests arrived. I loved that dinner parties meant having "friends" over to play with but even then I also loved everything else that came with entertaining, including the telltale signs that led me to the discovery of the events themselves.

For instance, the house would be tidied and prettier than on a normal day, with special table cloths wooshed over a table and every light in the house burning even before dusk. Records replaced the radio. I was scrubbed clean, made to wear something too nice to play in and actually encourage to sit and watch something on TV rather than run around. And the commotion in the kitchen was different too. The energy was palpable. Maybe there'd been crabs scurrying across the kitchen floor earlier in the day, maybe a caramel flan was setting in the fridge, but I didn't make the connection from those things, actually. But once I caught whiff of a biryani coming together, I knew for sure it was a special night, with special visitors to pamper and plump on their way.

To this day, regardless of how much my immediate or extended family toils and creates in the kitchen, I've never seen biryani envoked for anything short of a birthday or entertaining guests. I would never think to request it for dinner, even to this day when my aunt asks me what I would like to have when I'm planning to visit--see, I'm not a "guest" so a request for biryani simply never even crossed my mind. It has nothing to do with the effort involved--I assure you that whatever my aunt does whip up for my casual visits is much more intensive. Biryani, and it's traditional, expected if not required accompaniments, are simply reserved for a very special dinner. I hope you have both the occasion and inclination to make this feast one day soon--and somewhat often too.

(Happy new year.)

a biryani feast (all the recipes you need, below)

jackfruit biryani

spiced, fried potatoes

cashew nut curry

mint chutney*

pickle*

curried beans*

fried eggplant curry*

*Previously published on le sauce.

 

finger food

You know that saying, show me your friends, I'll show you who you are? My friend Sue threw a surprise party this past weekend for one of our girlfriends. She didn't ask anyone to bring anything, since she wasn't going to put out a big spread. Just wine and finger foods. I thought my friend Steph and I might be overdoing it then, bringing a tray of from-scratch savoury pastries that I had to make anyway for a recipe test. But when we got there we could barely fit them onto the long table of fresh rice noodle rolls, pesto-dipped bocconcini, roasted peppers in a balsamic reduction, homemade dips, cheeses, figs, crackers, olive and herb oven-toasted pitas, mushroom and carmalized onion quesadillas. The fruit trays and cake that Sue baked had to stay in the kitchen until we could clear off the main table. This is why we're all friends.

I know many of you were feasting this past weekend for various reasons. I hope your celebrations were fabulous too.

the menu: girls' night in

I think I've mentioned before that I basically throw dinner parties because I want to be at a dinner party. Is there any better way to spend time with people you love than eating, drinking, talking and laughing indulgently for hours on end? Not for me.

However, that wasn't the only motive behind the "Girls' NIght In"-themed  dinner I hosted a couple of months back. I wanted to create and shoot something bigger and more special than I could have pulled off without a team, so I enlisted the help of my best friends in the first ever collaboration on le sauce! Steph and Sue were my co-hosts and James agreed to shoot the process while my hands were full cooking--there's even video, which I will share with you whenever I finish editing!

The idea behind the theme was not to make something precious or pretty, it was to create a menu full of the foods women tend to appreciate. For instance, I think it's usually my girlfriends and I who want to order from a cheese board at the end of a meal, and we have a deep, deep appreciation for butter, don't you think? Sue, Steph and I tested and tweaked recipes for weeks, and hosted some of our closest girlfriends for dinner as James ran for the hills politely excused himself from the house. The results were even better than I'd hoped and we all had a great time, probably no one more than the hosts. Steph is now a pro-pasta-maker and Sue can safely say she has exhausted the ways, natural and non, to create the reddest red velvet cake. I had an amazing time working with my best friends.

I'm excited to finally share the recipes from Girls' NIght In with you all this week! Look for them every day. The only two I won't be bringing you are the recipes that are not le sauce originals: for the pasta dough we followed Lidia Bastianich's recipe, from Lidia's Family Table, and Cook's Illustrated's red velvet cake recipe.

For now, the Girls' NIght In menu and a few pictures I took that night. Enjoy! 

The menu...

three ingredient tapenade (vegetarian)

 

It turns out that you don't really need to worry yourself with a substitution for anchovies when making a vegetarian tapenade. Quality olives, capers and olive oil are all you need. Maybe a touch of salt if, after rinsing the brine from the olives and capers, they aren't very salty. And maybe just a squeeze of lemon if you need to freshen everything up, but that's fancier than I got when making this last weekend. And that's basically all I served with some white wine before dinner with friends. No complaints, unless I was too busy enjoying this to hear them?

winter weekend brunch

We're lucky to live near some of our best friends. So near by (and such great friends) that they will leave their homes on the very coldest day of the year, just to sit around the table and eat together. Brunch, that bitter winter day, was sweet challah french toast with syrup, herbed scrambled eggs, sausage (for those of us who partake of meaty things), fresh biscuits and jelly, hashbrowns, slices of fruit and strong coffee. It was potluck, there was too much food, we ate it all anyway. And I couldn't send them back out into the cold without thick hot chocolate and whipped cream. Here's to perfect Sundays!

so full

so? thanksgiving weekend was great, right? sunny, warm, golden and red. i'm still full from dinner last night, and of course, leftovers today. and sprawling on the couch this evening, i'm still a little tired from hosting. everything seemed so on track, with the table set and tons of preparation done the night before. yet we still ended up eating a little later than planned (to put it mildly) which, quite honestly, my family is more than used to... 

...but i think it was worth the wait--everyone enjoyed their dinner a lot and i can always count on my family to give me the fair critiquing i really do want about new recipes. i was really happy with how the main turned out, a roasted root vegetable pie. though i've made pies in puff pastry before, i wasn't sure if the already roasted vegetables would get soggy, not sure if the leeks and cheese i added on top of those layers would add enough flavour, etc. but it was a success! 

rivaling the pie was my mom's rich, chocolate espresso cake, topped with a perfect little rose from her garden!

so it was a good thanksgiving with lots of nice things to eat but i'm most thankful that this dinner was not that special or unique. i have the great fortune of cooking with james, seeing my family, and eating great food together all the time, which are the things i'm truly grateful for. 

the menu: thanksgiving

i got up early this morning to set the table--for tomorrow's dinner. i always leave that task to the very end, when i've completely run out of time, and regret it, so this time i'm starting early. as you can see, i succumbed to the lure of overpriced, inedible decorative gourds at the grocery store. but when i saw them i envisioned a place setting that looks kinda like this. what do you think?

and if you're celebrating thanksgiving this weekend, how are your preparations coming along? are you hosting or bringing a contribution to a meal? i really do love to hear about dinner party menus, so please share yours in the comments if you care to. i think seeing a full menu can be inspiring and give a real sense for how a nice night unfolded, so i'm introducing a new, perhaps bi-monthly post on the blog where i share some menus from taco night, a gin + grey gardens premiere and other parties i've had or am having. first up, thanksgiving of course. 

this year james and i are hosting my parents, aunt and cousin--a small group--and we're doing a pretty standard menu incorporating those great fall harvest vegetables in the market right now. because we don't eat meat, a root vegetable (potato, parsnip, celery root, yam and leek) pie will be at the centre of the meal. the year before, however, we hosted almost 20 of our friends at a sit-down thanksgiving dinner! we took a slightly different twist with that fall menu. i've included both below, in case you're still looking for some last-minute ideas.

wherever you are and however large or small your feast or gathering, i hope it's one you enjoy very much and one that makes you thankful. happy thanksgiving.

 

harvest menu

pistachios - saint agur bléu with quince jelly - champagne

roasted root vegetable pie - sage & chestnut stuffing - creamed potatoes - garlic butter peas - broiled corn with za'atar browned butter - tamari gravy - apple relish (james' family's preserves!) - pinot noir

espresso chocolate cake (courtesy of my mom) - banyuls

 

friendsgiving menu (2009)

goat milk gouda - comté - la sauvagine - banana peppers in oil - beet-pickled devilled eggs - cava

mushroom farro pie - caramalized corn with mexican chili powder & cayenne - porcini fried rapini - buttermilk mashed potatoes - pinot noir

cakes + pies supplied by gracious guests - port