A better way to have a dinner party

The last time I had people over for dinner was Shavuot --- I made Blintzes. I started gathering ingredients at roughly 1pm and ended my cleanup a little after 11pm. During the 10 hours in between I was pretty much working the whole time.

Even for me, 10 hours in the kitchen is just too much time. That is why I was very happy when a college friend of mine emailed me a few weeks ago with the idea of jointly having people over at her apartment.

So, yesterday my friend and I met up at the Wholefoods at 6pm to get our ingredients. The plan for dinner was to have salmon as the main dish. Seeing the price of salmon at Wholefoods, however, I started to wonder if, perhaps, another type of fish might be a better choice. At between 13 and 16 a lb, salmon was just too much. We did not give up on salmon though, as we still had a secret weapon --- Chinatown. After purchasing the rest of our ingredients we walk down Mott street (near my friend's place) and looked at the fish markets. There were some salmon steaks (we wanted fillets though) and then there were some really gross looking cuts of salmon with the bone in it. We asked one of the mongers if we could buy 3 lbs of salmon fillet --- he responded that we could buy a side of salmon which would be seven pounds!

Finally, we wandered into an indoor market which was nice and clean, and actually had some really nice looking salmon fillets. We settled on a little over 3 lbs of the fish and returned back to my friend's apartment.

Since I'm on the subject of Chinatown fish markets, its worth mentioning some of the weirder things you see there. At one of the outdoor markets there was a gigantic barrel of live frogs hopping around. Then, inside of the indoor market, there was a large display of alligator's legs. I'm sure if I had look a little more I would have seen some other oddities as well.

Back to the dinner -- we got to my friend's place at about 7:30. Dinner was set for 9 so I delayed cooking the fish for some time (knowing also that people would be late). The menu was as follows:
~Oven cooked salmon covered with chopped dill, honey, mustard, ginger, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil and some salt / pepper. To go along with this was a sour cream based sauce with dill, mustard, honey, lemon juice, curry powder and paprika.
~Over roasted potato chunks, tossed before cooking with olive oil, rosemary, paprika, a little curry powder and some pepper (salted after cooking).
~Fresh spinach salad with chopped red pepper, carrot, strawberry, craisin, almond slivers, and some balsamic vinegar.
~Cooked string beans with ginger, garlic, almond slivers, honey, curry powder and balsamic vinegar (I've posted on this before).
~Fruit salad desert.

I need to admit that the inspiration for the fish and for the salad recipes was from one of my aunts. During holidays when my family congregates in Springfield Mass, we often have lunches at my aunt's and we have wonderful dairy/fish dishes there. The salmon and salad both are very similar to things which we often have there. I'm sure that the recipes which I have eaten there will continue to influence much of my cooking.

The food turned out well, and the time of it was just right. People came a little late, and the fish finished just as they were coming. We moved everything up to the roof of the apartment building, where there was a beautiful table and a bunch of chairs (most of which were dry). The lighting was a little tricky, but we managed to use to lanterns to cast just enough light to see what you were eating. I was happy with the way the food tasted. The salmon was cooked well, but not dry (in fact it was quiet juicy) and the sauce went well with it. A friend of mine mistakenly thought the sauce for the salmon was a dressing for the salad, causing her some confusion and discomfort (I don't think the mix of spinach salad and sour cream sauce is all that good). The potatoes had a nice skin and the rosemary had infused them with a nice flavor. In all I was happy about the outcome of the food.

And the best part of the whole night was that when everything was done and people were ready to leave, I was able to leave too! Having done the cooking I was spared the work of clean up. All of the good and fun of cooking, and none of the wrinkled hands of washing dishes and cleaning up. This is definitely the way to do dinner parties.