In December we hosted a Christmas party for 28 people. It was held in the party room of our condo building and the food was provided by a caterer. Jan wanted to have the tables be very celebratory and a friend here in the building volunteered to help her out with the decorating. She and her husband both jumped in to help. Not only did they do the decorating, they loaned us a
whole bunch of their personal Christmas items to make the tables over- the- top beautiful. As a small token of our appreciation, we are planning a special dinner for them and one more couple. The dinner will be on the evening of January 17, and the planning has already begun.
The key word in that last sentence was PLANNING. Any time you take on a complicated menu you need to develop a plan for putting together the meal. When I say plan, I am talking about a day by day plan leading up to the meal and a minute by minute plan for the day of the meal. This plan may be in your mind if you are experienced or the menu is not too complex, but with a complicated menu I find that writing everything down works best.
Step one is usually menu development. Here is the menu for this dinner party:
Assorted
Bruschetta
Cocktails
Cocktails
Butternut
Squash Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter
Scott Chardonnay
Scott Chardonnay
Spinach,
Apple and Cheddar Cheese Salad with a Maple Syrup Dressing
Gewürztraminer
Gewürztraminer
Beef
Wellington
Roasted
Asparagus
Baby
Rosemary Potatoes
Port
When you are developing a menu there are a number of things to consider. First is your guests. Do they have any foods they do not eat or are allergic to. If you don't know, ask them before you start to plan. I learned this lesson long ago when I invited my boss and his wife for dinner. I made seafood and found out at the dinner table that his wife didn't eat seafood. Oops !! Next, what is the season and what produce is readily available. Since we are in early winter you will see that we have incorporated things like squash, apples, maple syrup and pears. Don't get too carried away with complexity. For example, Beef Wellington is a very complicated dish that takes three to four days to complete from dry aging the beef to making the duxelles and the red wine sauce and wrapping in the puff pastry. We planned simple vegetables and potatoes to go with the Wellington because it is so complicated. You can't do too many difficult items at once. Think also about preparation. If you have limited oven space, for example, don't make your whole menu require roasting or baking. Finally, think about how the items on your menu will fit together both in taste and appearance. You want the end result to flow nicely from course to course and to be beautiful on the plate.
Once you have developed a menu, the next step is to create a general day by day plan leading up to the day of your event. For example, with Beef Wellington I know that 3 days prior to serving I will want to begin dry aging the beef in the fridge. 2 Days prior to serving I will make the stock base for the sauce. 1 Day before serving I will make the duxelles, (a blend of mushrooms, shallots, cream, maderia and herbs) and I will brown the aged beef tenderloin. Fortunately I made a batch of squash raviolis a couple of months ago and have them in the freezer, so they will be easy to prepare just before serving, otherwise that would have been another multi-day process. Once you have this general day to day plan you can back into when you need to shop for your groceries. Based on the general plan I laid out for the Beef Wellington, I will shop on Saturday morning for our dinner party to be held on Tuesday. Of course there will be some items that you may want to pick up the day of the party, like fresh bread and vegetables as well as flowers for table decoration.
Now that we know when to shop, we need to know what to buy. I develop my shopping list by laying out all of the recipes I intend to use. I go down the ingredients one by one and write down anything I need to buy. Of course there will be things like salt, pepper, olive oil, etc. that you already have on hand. There may also be some real specialty items that you need to search out ahead of time. For example, the Beef Wellington recipe calls for Dufour Puff Pastry. It specifically says not to use Pepperidge Farms Puff Pastry as the sheets are too small for encasing the tenderloin. I got on line today and found out that the only place in Kansas City that handles Dufour pastry is Whole Foods. It is frozen so I can pick that up any time in the next few days. Jan needed star anise for her poached pear recipe and she stopped at a specialty spice store today to get that. At any rate, by Saturday, I will have developed an entire grocery list and divided it into things I want to buy Saturday and things I will buy early the morning of the dinner party.
Once the shopping is done we will create a plan that leads us through the days leading up to the party and a minute by minute plan for the day of the party. We will create this plan by deciding what time we want dinner on the table and then backing into the timing for each recipe and when we need to start prep for each course to hit the table when we want it to. For our party we have asked the guests to arrive at 6:00 PM. We will need to have our assorted bruschetta ready to serve when they arrive. We will have about an hour for cocktails and then be seated for dinner at 7:00 PM, so we will need to have the butternut squash ravioli ready to go at 7:00. The salad course will be served at about 7:20 and the main course will need to be ready at about 7:40. We will linger over the main course, allowing about 45 minutes for that course to be served and eaten. We will clear the main course at about 8:25. Dessert and coffee will be served around 8:40. With these times in place we can back into our detailed schedule. Here is what it looks like:
Saturday AM - grocery shopping
Saturday PM - begin dry aging beef - place uncovered on a wire rack set above a rimmed baking dish in the fridge.
Sunday PM - Make stock base for sauce
Monday AM - Make Duxelles. Brown the dry-aged beef
Monday PM - Clean House. Make salad dressing.
Tuesday AM - Shop for baguette, ciabatta, asparagus and fresh spinach. Set table.
Tues 3:00 PM - Jan prepare poached pears - hold at room temperature. Steve prepare sage brown butter.
Tues 4:00 PM - Jan prep salad, Steve prep asparagus and potatoes
Tues 4:30 PM - Steve assemble Beef Wellington - hold in fridge
Tues 5:15 PM - Steve begin making bruschetta
Tues 6:00 PM - Guests arrive - serve Bruschetta. Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Tues 6:40 PM - Boil raviolis and heat sauce
Tues 6:55 PM - Beef Wellington into oven
Tues 7:00 PM - Plate and serve ravioli
Tues 7:10 PM - Add pastry ribbons to beef wellington top.
Potatoes into oven
Tues 7:20 PM - Steve Clear ravioli - Jan dress, plate and serve
salad
Tues 7:25 PM - Steve prepare sauce for meat
Tues 7:30 PM - Wellington out of oven. Reduce heat to 400 degrees. Asparagus in oven.
Tues 7:40 PM - Serve Beef Wellington, potatoes and asparagus
Tues 8:25 PM - clear main course
Tues 8:35 PM - Prepare coffee, plate dessert
Tues 8:45 PM - Serve Dessert
This is a long illustration and more than you need to know about our upcoming dinner party, but I thought I would use the whole occasion as a means to demonstrate how to plan and prepare a complicated menu. Over the next week I will include all of the recipes that we will use and include some photos of the prep and final products. I hope you find it fun to follow.
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