Something old, something new, something seasonal

I start planning a menu from the moment a dinner party is in the works. There are several factors to be considered: the number of guests, any dietary restrictions, how much time there is to prepare, etc. The main dish - usually meat - is generally the first to be decided. The appetizer and the dessert are generally settled upon next. With the general framework of the dinner menu set up, I start filling in the details - what kind of soup? what kind of salad? what vegetables to serve with the meat? I consult recipe books and recipe notes, and start making lists. A list of ingredients, a list of courses, shopping lists tailored to shopping destination, to-do lists ... I would be lost without them.

Most courses are made up of old standbys, foods we have made before and are confident of pulling off successfully. However, I do try to include at least one new thing in the menu that we haven't tried before. For our big dinner last week, our new thing was the trou normand. A trou normand can be considered as a palate-cleanser or refresher between the first and main courses of the meal. It is also thought to aid digestion and stimulate the appetite in the middle of a long meal. The traditional Normandy version is a shot of Calvados (apple brandy), although more recently it's served as a bit of Calvados poured over some apple sorbet. These days there are many variations, although the common factor is the combination of a sorbet with a spirit. We decided to go with a lemon sorbet and vodka combination. We made the sorbet the night before. The important thing about making sorbet without an ice cream machine is to take it out of the freezer every once in a while, to break up the ice crystals with a hand mixer.

I also try to include at least one seasonal food item in the menu. This time, we decided to go with asparagus in the soup, as in a cream of asparagus. The soup was also made the night before - if I may add, with the chicken broth I made a few weeks ago.

So the final menu we settled upon looked something like this:

Cheeses
Moules Marinière (mussels in white wine sauce)
Salade de Chèvre Chaud (grilled goat cheese salad)
Cream of Asparagus soup
Trou Normand
Roast Beef with gravy
-baked potato with sour cream and green onion sauce
-maple-caramelized carrots with almonds
Crème Brûlée

We always question whether to serve the cheese at the very beginning of the meal, or at the end like the French do. (I like to serve them at the beginning, because people are generally too full to enjoy the cheese by the end.) We were a bit lax with the roast beef and the crème brûlée, resulting in an overcooked roast and water in the crème. (I confess I was rather tipsy by this point in the meal as well.) This was rather unfortunate, because the rest of the dinner went off rather splendidly. (Well, I guess there was also that problem with miscounting the number of guests.) Fortunately, our guests were gracious about it. We topped it all off with a bottle of Canadian ice wine. Delicious.

I can't count

We had a dinner party on Saturday evening. Giving nice dinners is something we like to do, and generally it takes several days of preparation. So I was going to write a series of rather pretentious blog posts on planning and hosting a nice dinner party, from menu planning, shopping for ingredients, preparing the food, etc. I even took a few photos of the preparation process. The cooking started in earnest on Friday evening, and all day Saturday. By Saturday at 5pm, I had laid out a nice tablecloth on our dining table, and Seb had set the table for 8 people (the maximum possible, as we have only 8 chairs in the apartment).

Saturday evening just after 7pm, our guests start arriving. When about half our guests were assembled, is when the realization hits me. Holy crap, we are NINE. NINE people. Now, I'm rather prone to full-blown panic in these kinds of situations, but luckily Seb stepped in before the panic-meter got too high. "I'll just go borrow a chair from our neighbours," he said, cool as a cucumber (never mind that we barely know our neighbours). And thus, disaster was averted. Thankfully, the food worked out. The only number-specific food that we didn't have enough of was the baked potato (I had only made eight), but the table was so crowded that I don't think anyone noticed. In retrospect, I can't believe I could've mistaken the number of guests: I counted them last week, more than once. But I laugh at it now, and it's situations like this that remind me never to be so cocksure of myself.

On unexpected guests, and tidy apartments

I am not a cleaning kind of person. While I do prefer clean to mess, and I have made several resolutions to clean more often and more regularly, I just don't enjoy it. Our apartment has a tendency to devolve from tidy to messy, and stay that way until we're expecting guests over. Only then am I sufficiently motivated to clean the place.

Thursday evening, as I'm making supper (Japanese curry, if you're curious), I got a call from Seb:
"Plam's at the airport. He'll be arriving as soon as he figures out the public transport to get to our place."

It had been a few weeks since we had anyone over, so our apartment was starting to be on the messy side. Moreover, this was rather short notice. I confess I was rather panicked. Plam undoubtedly remembers the unholy mess of Seb's bachelor apartment days but ... well, I have certain standards to uphold. Cue Benny Hill music as I tidied up the apartment on speed, cleaning the bathroom in record time, vacuuming the kitchen with one hand whilst stirring the curry pot with the other. Plam arrived just after I finished my frenetic cleaning session. We had a nice dinner, and I hope he is none the wiser. (Until he sees this blog post, I guess.)

There is a lesson here, which I hope I will take to heart, about keeping the apartment presentably clean at all times.