February Dinner Party with friends

We had three other couples come over for dinner Friday evening and I was in the mood to cook. I had my piles of Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines with dog-eared corners and I got excited about trying some new things.

Since it was going to be a cold day in February I wanted my entree to be something comforting - probably something braised and something my guests might not take time to prepare for themselves. I decided on Slow-Braised Short Ribs (See Recipe). I looked at some new preparations but ultimately decided on a recipe I know I like. However, I tried a new technique -"steamboating" the ribs. I couldn't find short ribs with a bone that were long enough so I tried to use one short rib with a longer boneless one. Before they were cooked they looked fine, but afterward they fell apart so that experiment didn't work. "Steamboat" style means that you remove the bones, scrape one off, then wrap the remaining meat around the one bone and tie it with string. The bone sticks out of the circle of meat looking like the smoke stack on an old time steamboat. Can you picture it? I wish I had one that turned out so I could show you. But anyway, they cooked until wonderfully tender and flavorful, so what if the presentation was a little off. One great thing about the short ribs (and any braised meat) is that it really tastes even better if prepared a day or two ahead. All I had to do was warm up before the party.

Once that was decided it was easy to decide on doing a risotto to go along with it. I did a Wild mushroom risotto using my standard risotto recipe, but adding sauteed crimini and porcini mushrooms. I have posted this recipe as well. Risotto usually take 25-30 minutes to cook and I didn't want to take that long between courses, so I cooked it about half way and put a lid on then finished it between courses. It worked fine.

Now I needed something green on the plate. Brussel sprouts? Green beans? Oh yeah. The Dunes Club had short ribs with collard greens for their Valentine menu. I could do some kind of greens. I found a dog-eared page with Skillet Greens with Crispy Shallots and a Cider Vinegar Gastrique. That sounded like a perfect accompaniment. It has collards, kale and swiss chard. For the Gastrique I switched to a combination of red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar at the last minute. I really like the flavor of those two vinegars better than cider (plus it sounded better!). The gastrique added so much flavor to the greens, I really hope you will try it. Claudia was sitting next to me and put it on everything. It has that wonderful savory sweet, sour, hot thing going on that makes your mouth happy.

Okay, so the entree was decided. Now, for the soup and salad. I wanted to do a soup that was not too heavy since the rest of the meal was going to be rich. Some kind of seafood would be a nice contrast to the dark meat. Frank's favorite soup is one we had at a restaurant in New York called JoJo's. It is Shrimp with Carrot Juice and Thai Spices. He liked it so much he ordered it for dessert after our meal! It sounds a little strange I'll admit, but the combination of sweet from the carrot, heat from a chili, tang from lime juice and freshness from the herbs is amazing. The flavors just dance all over your tongue. First the sweet, then the mint and on and on. Get fresh carrot juice from the health food store . Everything else is available from the grocery store.

For the salad course I did a Salad of Baby Greens, Lardons and Goat Cheese Phyllo Blossoms. The phyllo blossoms have a pretty presentation and taste really nice as well. The original recipe called for Dandelion greens, but I'm not that crazy. I'm not going out to pick Dandelions (sorry Chip), so substituted baby greens and baby arugula.

If you know me, you know dessert has to be chocolate. And one can never have too much chocolate, right? Why have one chocolate dessert when you can three? I was inspired by a chocolate extravaganza I saw in a pretty picture cookbook. I switched out one of the desserts for a Chocolate "Espresso". The other two were a chocolate panna cotta on a brownie bottom and a chocolate tuile. I wasn't too impressed with either of these, so I won't include them here. The best part was the brownie, and that was almost insignificant in the presentation.

I also made a couple of the breads featured on the cover of this month's Gourmet magazine - the cornstalk one and the buttermilk fans. The cornstalk one was the favorite of my guests and it looks really cool. If you have time to bake bread, give it a try.

The final menu consisted of a few tried and true and a few experiments. I think that is a pretty good plan. It's fun to try new things, but can be stressful as well. It's nice to have some things in the menu that you know will turn out well. I hope you will try some of these recipes and have as much fun as I did.