My placecards. I’ll be posting how-tos and more over the next few days…stay tuned.
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Category Archives: My Parties
Dinner Party of Blue, White and Chocolate – Part III
For dinner, I paired Ina Garten’s Parmesan-Roasted Broccoli with her Sole Meuniere. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to put cheese with fish and I. Don’t. Care. I love parmesan in any situation, and the pine nuts and lemon on the broccoli matched perfectly with the lemon flavor on the sole.
It was a gorgeous meal, and honestly, so simple that I often make it for myself when I feel like putting a little extra effort into my dinner and making something special.
Sole Meuniere (adapated from Ina Garten)
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon Vege Sal
- 1 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 fresh sole fillets (3-4 ounces is a good size, but you can buy them as large as will fit in your pan)
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
- 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (3 lemons)
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
Combine the flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon Vege Sal, and 1 teaspoon pepper in a large shallow plate. Pat the sole fillets dry with paper towels.
Heat 3 tablespoons of butter in a large saute pan over medium heat until it starts to brown. Dredge 2 sole fillets in the seasoned flour on both sides and place them in the hot butter. Lower the heat to medium-low and cook for 2 minutes. Turn carefully with a large spatula and cook for 2 minutes on the other side. While the second side cooks, add 1 teaspoon of lemon zest and 3 tablespoons of lemon juice to the pan (be careful that you don’t add much more than 3 tablespoons, or it will be too lemony). Plate the fish and pour any remaining sauce over them. Sprinkle with the parsley and serve immediately.
Blue and Yellow Inspiration for Easter
For my Easter brunch table, I have the most gorgeous deep robin’s egg blue paper to use as a tablecloth. I’m going to pair it with all shades of yellow, yellow, yellow.
Isn’t it fabulously lucky that mimosas are a light yellow? I think I might make my placecards just be pretty nametags wrapped around the stem of a champagne glass filled with a bubbly mimosa. A lovely way to arrive at a party and find your seat.
Dinner Party of Blue, White and Chocolate – Part II
Here is my appetizer table from my most recent dinner party! I love presenting apps on a simple wood cutting board.
Appetizers:
- Tomato, Onion and Goat Cheese Puff Pastry Tarts
- Blue Cheese Crackers served with fig jam and pear slices
Click here for the recipe for the puff pastry tarts, adapted from Ina Garten. This is a very Barefoot Contessa-heavy menu because her recipes are just soooo good and I can’t help it.
Instead of the large puff pastry rounds she recommends, I cut smaller squares from the rolled-out puff pastry and tucked them into muffin pan cups that I had sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. I pricked the bottom of the puff pastry with a fork so it wouldn’t rise, and then layered the onions, tomato and cheeses according to the recipe.
Blue Cheese Crackers (adapted from Ina Garten)
Really these are thicker than most store-bought crackers. They have more of a Melba toast crunch to them.
- 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature – make sure the butter is very soft. Microwave for five seconds if you have to.
- 8 ounces Stilton cheese, crumbled (about 12 ounces with rind), at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 extra-large egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water for egg wash
- 3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
Using a mixer, cream the butter and Stilton together for 2-3 minutes, or until smooth and fluffy. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour, salt and pepper and mix until it’s in large clumps, under 1 minute. Add a few more tablespoons of flour if it is still extremely creamy (as mine was). Add 1-2 tablespoons of water and mix until it all sticks together (gather it together with your hands to see if it holds).
Dump the dough onto a floured board, press it into a ball, and roll into a 12-inch long log. Brush the log completely with the egg wash. Spread the walnuts in a square on a cutting board and roll the log back and forth in the walnuts, pressing firmly so the walnuts are pressed into the dough. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or for up to 4 days.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cut the log 3/8ths-inch thick with a sharp knife and place the crackers on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes, then remove pan from the oven and flip all the crackers, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes. Cool and serve at room temperature with a quince or fig jam, or cheeses.
Dinner Party of Blue, White and Chocolate
I was preoccupied with Payback Time last week and didn’t tell you all about my dinner party! It was my dad and I, a good friend of mine from home and her parents, who were also good friend with my parents back in the day. Clear?! Ha.
I got excited about this blue, white and chocolate color scheme, and bought this gorgeous paper at the paper store around the corner with which to wrap vases for the table.
Which I filled with fluffy white flowers and paired with blue-silver placemats.
I made simple placecards out of gorgeous chocolate-colored paper and a white gel pen.
And placed them inside a napkin envelope – which I didn’t iron! I ran out of time. There was nothing to do but just go with the wrinkly look and hope it worked in a casual way.
I think it worked okay. It’s the least complicated table I’ve designed in a while, and I liked the minimalist simplicity that it had.
I’ll post the menu and recipes soon!
S’mores in the City
I’m so lucky that I have a wonderful friend with an apartment in the middle of New York City – with a working fireplace.
That’s right, kids. Real logs and everything. And she used it to throw an intimate s’mores party! If you have a fire source of some kind, I highly recommend it.
Instead of graham crackers, she used thin ginger cookies and they were purrrrrfect. I can never go back to normal grahams again.
For extra yumminess, pair the s’mores with White Russians (or as The Dude calls them, Caucasians). I make them with skim milk instead of half-and-half, and just a touch of vodka.
All we could talk about was how the fire made the party. Something about staring into it makes you feel like there’s a purpose to you being there.
Oscars Party
What are the Oscars without friends to shout at the screen with you when someone wears rosettes that look like they’re copping a feel? No fun at all, obviously. Lucky for me some friends got decked out in jeans and jewels (it was a casual gathering, yet with a nod to Oscar) and came to yell at Charlize Theron with me. I mean really? (with Seth and Amy). REALLY?
By Jason Merritt, Getty Images
So it was a fun time.
By the way, I love love love the Fug Girls for the red carpet rundown. Check them out, if you haven’t already.
Anyway, back to the shindig: I made two kinds of tea sandwiches, lemon cookies, my skinny margaritas and a grapefruit champagne cocktail that knocked me on the floor because it was SO tasty that I couldn’t stop myself. So tasty that I forgot to take a photo of it, even as I announced to everyone in earshot how good it was and how it was definitely going on BB&B in the morning. So tasty that I didn’t wake up in time to write this post before morning class and am now posting it well into the afternoon and frankly Ithinkwe’veallbeentheresothere. OKAY?
Raspberries on lemon cookies
The spread
Please continue for the recipes . . .
