Skip to main content

Dinner Party 3

August 12th was dinner party 3, set in 1976. Mum and dad had come back from the Bahamas a while ago, and settled in Sheffield...and bought a freezer (which dad still has), and a Good Housekeeping freezer cookbook.


In the dinner party planner, mum seemed to experiment with lots of recipes from this book, so my idea was to cook practically everything beforehand, and then on the day I would only need to cook the main course, and everything else would come out of the freezer to be warmed through or defrosted. It worked, in that I was able to go out and meet a friend for coffee, and not be agitating about time, so well done, mum!
We had Cosmopolitans as a cocktail (and chicken crackling to nibble on, which I know mum wouldn't have done, but it's so nice I didn't want to just throw the skin away!) We moved onto salmon mousse and melba toast (again, but new guests, so I haven't yet repeated anything for anyone) with shaped butter. Main course was Chicken Marengo, (which is in my handwriting, with mum’s notes in…I think I missed some stuff out?) duchesse potatoes and peas and corn: sherry used again in the main course, but we were going on package holidays to Spain, and sherry was part of the fun.
Dessert was choco-liqueurs, yum, and cheese and biscuits for the guest who was allergic to raw egg in food, but fitting the instant dessert ethos of the freezer idea. And then floater coffees
No photo description available.No photo description available.
May be an image of food and indoorNo photo description available.May be an image of drink


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First real post, honest: an explanation of the title.

 Probably I ought to explain the title of the blog? To be honest, I’m fairly certain I ought to, or risk possible arrest... In February this year (2021) my mum passed away (honestly, I’m explaining the title, not confessing something awful...) and during the grief and sorrow, of missing mum but looking after dad, and cooking in mum’s kitchen, I realised that the place I most missed mum was in that kitchen. Every where I looked was something that she had taught me to use, or a place I would sit or stand while she cooked and I watched or both of us cooked together, or her recipe books and folders of dishes that were part of her repertoire and had become part of mine. So I started to look properly through her books and folders, and pulled out one that I’d been aware of, but hadn’t fully explored: her dinner party planner. She and dad had always had people round to dinner, and been to friends’ houses, but I hadn’t seen the whole picture. Mum had kept a dinner party planner, not just occasi
2 comments
Read more

Episode 1, Bahamas, part 3: the actual dinner party

 So, having made decisions, time to put them into practice. I invited 2 friends (thank you, Diane and Tina!) for this first retro dinner party, and it took me a very relaxed 2 days to make the preparations. First, the cocktail: the Moonwalk, made in honour of the moon landing, and supposedly the first thing given to the astronauts as they arrived back on earth. I purposefully didn’t try it before the dinner, as I wanted it to be a surprise for me as well as my guests…and it was gorgeous! Light, refreshing, and then a nice kick. Recipe: 1 measure of grapefruit juice (I used the bigger side of those measuring cups that come with cocktail shakers), 1 measure of Grand Marnier (well, I used Cointreau, because that was the orange liqueur that I had in the house) a couple of drops of rose water (I don’t know that I’d worry about including that again, because I couldn’t taste it) and 2 measures of sparkling wine, per person. I got 6 glasses out of the bottle, and rather happy we were… Starter:
2 comments
Read more