Dinner Party Help

Do you want dishes you can make ahead of time for the most part or does it matter if you're in the kitchen cooking right before serving?

Fish, seafood, pork, beef, chicken??

Casual or formal?

Sit down app or pass around with cocktails?

Have a salad as a course?

Does cost matter?

I would definitely go buy some nice cheeses and crackers. Doesn't get much easier than that.

Several people on the board have made the crawfish beignet recipe I posted in the recipe book. See page 37. You put them together ahead of time and make the dip ahead of time. You have to fry them at the last minute, but they take no time to do that. You can pass them or just put them out on a platter with the dip. Very different and always a hit.

You could go very simple and have a gumbo dinner with both rice and potato salad on the side. Order a good king cake and either serve it straight up with a scoop of ice cream or make a king cake bread pudding. If you serve the cake, whoever gets the baby has the next dinner.

You could do something like grillades and grits. Grillades are best made ahead of time and reheated. You can make the grits before the guests arrive and hold them in a crock pot.

Some shrimp and grits recipes work similarly. I have a very easy one in the recipe book which is very very good. Might not look like it when you read it, but we have to keep copies of the recipe around for folks. You make the sauce a few days ahead of time, sans the shrimp and add the shrimp just before you serve. You don't need gigantic shrimp so it shouldn't run you too much. You can make that dish with crawfish rather than shrimp, as well.

Hard to suggest not knowing what kind of foods you're looking at.

Beef bourguignon is a make ahead dish and very good. Ina Garten's recipe is spot on and very easy. It can be served over grits, rice, pasta, mashed potatoes with some steamed or roasted asparagus or other vegetable of your choice.

Gris, I don't know how to find you other than detailing a thread for a minute, so I have to do that.

If I were to make an oven roux, I'd do it in the cast iron. Once I finish it and do the veggies on the stove, do I add the roux to already hot stock in increments? Or roux first and then stock? I usually make my roux in the same pot I make the entire gumbo in, so I feel nervous tossing roux into a huge pot of stock.

Look in the Recipe Book for the Plantation Cookbook Grillades recipe on page 20 if you're interested in that dish.

Thanks for advice. I'm def gonna check out the recipe book per your suggestions. I'm gonna try and get a feel of what types of food these people want and then post back. Maybe we could expand a little once I get that info. Thanks again!!

For a protein not much can beat a pepper crusted pork loin and its realtively cheap too. A 6-8lb pork loin can be had for under $20.

For an app, make a becahamel sauce, fold in some crab meat or small chopped shrimp and spread it over some English Muffins bake for 5-6 minutes.

Get a cryovaced beef tenderloin at Cost Co.

Butcher it yourself then reverse sear in the oven followed by a hot grill.