In late February Matt V called to say he'd be in town, and suggested we get together for dinner on a "double date." An hour later he suggested we invite one of his friends for a "triple date," then another . . . Alan and Vicki, Matt and Erin, Cory and Danielle, and George and Erin. With 8 people set for dinner, 6 of them under the age of 30, I wanted to do something fun, and suggested we do a little wine tasting and fondue. Matt gave the idea the green light, and the event was set into motion.
After a toast with a sparkling wine we had shipped from a vineyard we visited close to Pompeii at the base of Mt. Vesuvius, we kicked off the eating with Comté & Emmenthaler Cheese Fondue (page 104-105). Many cheese fondue recipes call for the shredded cheese to be mixed with flour, so that it thickens to the proper consistency. This recipe calls for cornstarch instead of flour. I personally think this results in a better tasting fondue as it loses its roux flavor. Also, it's something you can serve to guests with gluten issues as it's gluten free. Just be sure to serve apple or pear wedges and fresh vegetables along with the chunks of crusty bread for dipping.
A few years ago I was in San Diego for business and one night Matt and I went out for dinner in La Jolla, starting our meal with a flight of wine cleverly entitled
Spain vs Italy. What struck me as interesting was the way Matt was saying which wines he liked best, and how it kept changing as he ate different things. He really was starting to understand that wine changes as it opens up and breathes, and changes based on different food pairings. So I decided to introduce our young tasters to some wines from different countries and let them experiment with how the tastes evolve. I chose 3 countries, 2 wines from each. Spain vs France vs Italy.
A wine tasting can be set up many different ways, lighter to darker wines (white, pink, red), vertically (tasting one wine varietal from the same producer from several vintages/years), horizontal (focusing on a wine varietal from a single year, but from multiple producers), priceless (don't divulge the prices as it may affect people's perception of the wine), and all kinds of other ways. There are no hard and fast rules - the objective is to get some friends together and taste some different wines.
Blind Wine Tasting
For our tasting, all the wines were red, priced the same (~$20 per bottle), and all scored 90+ on the wine spectator scale. I selected wines from different parts of each country - some medium bodied, some much fuller. And just to dial up the fun factor, I made it a blind wine tasting, with a competition to see who could guess the most wines. To assist with the tasting, I prepared an info sheet listing each wine and detailing the characteristics of each. This way, as we tasted, we could read about the choices and try to match them with the selections.
Click here to see Info about the Wines we tasted
The wine tasting turned out to be a perfect activity to accompany fondue (pages 106-107) because our tasters could concentrate on the wine while their meat and veggies were cooking. And of course, one of the best things about eating fondue is trying all kinds of different sauces. For this dinner, we had filet of beef, chicken, shrimp, mushrooms and potatoes with 6 different sauces. Here is what we served and what sauce we would recommend with which foods.
-------------
Barbecue (I bought this one as there are many delicious varieties to choose from). Good with beef and chicken.
Curry Dip (page 96) - Good with chicken, shrimp, and potatoes.
Horseradish Sauce - Mix together 1 cup sour cream, 6 tablespoons prepared horseradish, 1/4 cup chives. and season with salt and pepper. Chill. Good with beef.
Thai Peanut Sauce (page 118) - This one is simply good with everything.
Chipotle - Finely chop 2 chipotle peppers in adobe sauce. Mix with 1 cup mayonnaise, 2 tsp. Worcestershire, and 2 tsp. of the adobo sauce. Add a pinch of cayenne pepper for additional heat. Good with chicken, shrimp and mushrooms.
Hoisin - Mix 1/2 cup hoisin with 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice and 2 tablespoons of ketchup. Good with beef, chicken, and shrimp.
-------------
Everyone took the wine tasting very seriously, and the younger folks actually got more wines correct than Alan or I did. Matt emerged as the wine tasting champion with 2 correct, winning the prize - a wine tasting kit and a bottle of wine. Ok, so none of us are ready to sit for the master sommelier test, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.
So here's a fun documentary to watch about 4 people preparing to take the Master Sommelier exam. Whether you know anything about wine or not, it's interesting to see just how much is really involved when it comes to wine tasting.
Click here to watch trailer for SOMM
After dinner, we engaged in a rousing game of taboo, where the guys beat the girls handily. Now that we had worked up an appetite for a little dessert, we congregated around the kitchen island to dip fresh strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, star fruit, kiwi, bananas, apples, grapes, pineapple, brownies (page 48), pound cake, and marshmallows into chocolate fondue (page 108) and our new favorite, Caramel Fondue. Yummy . . . star fruit dipped in caramel is simply divine.
-------------
Caramel Fondue Recipe
Ingredients:
4 cups sugar
1 cup light corn syrup (recommended: Karo)
1/2 cup water
3 cups heavy cream
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into cubes
4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Add the first 3 ingredients to a saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium heat. Cook the mixture until the sugar has dissolved, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Lower the heat to a simmer and cook until the sugar mixture becomes an amber color, about 20 to 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture back to a light simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Set aside and let cool for about 30 minutes.
Serve in a fondue pot with dipping choices surrounding the pot so they can be easily dipped in the caramel
-------------
All of our guests spent the night, and the next day we pulled out the leftover chocolate and caramel fondue and started dipping all over again. In fact, we didn't even bother to heat it up as it was delicious as it was.
If you're looking for a fun theme for a party with family or friends, I'd definitely recommend either wine tasting or fondue or as we did for this get together, both.
Here are the highlights from the evening.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Another easy and fun meal is Pork and Red Pepper Stir Fry (page 40-41). There's nothing hard about this dish, and the most time consuming part is gathering and chopping ingredients. I think the key here is to have all your ingredients together before you even turn on the wok.
Let the rice simmer while you're making the stir-fry, and your dinner will all come together at the same time. I like to eat this dish with chop sticks, like the ones shown below that I bought in Kyoto, Japan last year.
A few simple touches can make any (and every) meal a bit more special. Bamboo placemats, chopsticks and chopstick holders, and a little candlelight turn this simple meal into one you can be proud to serve your family!
3.) Plan ahead. Simply stated, figure out your theme, decide what you are going to cook, make a shopping list, select the wines you want to serve, and do as much as you can in advance. Our dinner party date just happened to coincide with Valentine's Day, so we had a ready theme (For anyone who knows me, I love cooking with some sort of theme in mind to tie it all together). My advice is to do any decorating well in advance of your party date, so that you can focus only on the food as the date approaches. Decide if you're having a sit down meal or a buffet, make sure you have napkins, and enough plates, serving dishes, etc. Our score: C+. Our theme was a no-brainer, and I had lots of Valentine decorations from a family Valentine's weekend a few years ago, but we didn't decide on a menu until Friday - just 2 days before the party. I didn't start my decorating until Saturday morning, so the stress was on! On the positive side, we decorated enough to make it very festive, but still kept it relatively classy. I got lots of complements on the floating candle, fresh orchid, and hearts water arrangement on the dining room table. A few lights, fresh flowers, heart beads adorning the wine bottles and simple silver heart cocktail napkins (left over from our self-catered wedding in our house 14 years ago) completed the theme. I realized I didn't have the right color napkins, so bought some new ones the day before, then had to rush home and wash and iron them. Proper planning ahead would have prevented this stress!
4.) Go with what you know. In other words, hosting a dinner party is not the time to try new dishes, or experiment with different cooking methods; rather it is the time to showcase your specialties. Our score: C-. We made a new appetizer we'd never made before (Smoked Salmon Spread on Petits Toast), a new Horseradish Sauce, my mother-in-law's Carrot 
5.) Pick a good group. Choose friends who have similar interests, and ideally, who have met before your dinner party. Our score: A+. We had 6 couples, all neighbors, roughly the same age group. All of these guys are not only our neighbors, but our friends as well. As hosts, this group was stress free!
6.) Cook smart. Don't drive yourself crazy by serving food that involves to-order cooking, constant stirring, or bringing several dishes to a finish simultaneously just as the meal is to be served. Keep in mind how many dishes you can fit into the oven at once. Our score: Wow, we failed miserably on this one. I am never one to cook things ahead of time, as I like food to be fresh and hot when served. I was rotating dishes in and out of the oven, Al was stressing over how the meat increased in temperature 30 degrees in 30 seconds, the wine reduction had to be made after the meat came out of the oven, and the asparagus needed to go in at the final few minutes. We were fortunate that all our neighbors know each other, and everyone was catching up with each other, and didn't pay much attention to us in the kitchen running around like the proverbial chickens with their heads cut off!
7.) Choose good tunes. No gathering is really a party without some good background music. Ideally, make a playlist. Otherwise, let Pandora do the work for you, by setting a channel, and don't spend another minute thinking about this one. Our score: B+. We tested some different Pandora stations while we were prepping before the party, and selected one we liked. There was a point during the evening where I could hear a pulsating techno beat, and asked Al to switch it to a little Miles Davis. All things considered, good tunes, proper volume.
8.) Dim the lights. Low light makes us all look (according to one article I read) "prettier, sexier, and more mysterious." Our score: A+. A wood fire in the Living Room, another fire in the Family Room, candles everywhere, lights dimmed, strings of heart lights in the windows and on the plants set a festive mood. Of course, I was lighting the candles when our first guests arrived . . .
9.) Clean as you go. Don't wait until you've made all the food before cleaning. Pro tip: Start the party with an empty dishwasher. Our score: A+. I am a classic "clean as you go" cook. We actually ran the dishwasher 4 times on the day of the party BEFORE the party, but like pros, started with an empty dishwasher. I'm a pretty messy cook, so I stopped and mopped the floor after all the food prep was done.
10.) Clean up the party mess before you go to bed. This is a tip I suggest, although surprisingly, I didn't read this one anywhere else. Our score: A+. I find that after all the guests leave, it's a perfect time to clean up the aftermath and debrief as you're washing and drying dishes. Other than the 2 wine glasses I knocked over and broke, we excelled on this one. Plus . . . I can't imagine waking up to a pile of dirty dishes - that would be serious stress!
11.) Cook for your audience. If you have a group of people in their 50s, you probably shouldn't serve Jello Shots. It's also important to find out it there are any dietary restrictions, like do you need to cook gluten-free or vegetarian? Our score: B. I had Al check with a few of our guests to make sure they ate red meat, but other than that we just winged it.
12.) If you're serving wine, provide some type of wine glass marker. I didn't see this one on any list either, but I noticed several times last evening someone was trying to find their glass. Our score: We failed this one, but I'm vowing to find something clever before my next event.
Summary - Although we used to entertain frequently, it had been awhile since we had people over for dinner other than our (grown) kids and their friends. Our kids eat any and everything, and are laid back about whether we eat at 7 or 9:30. We were a bit out of practice, and subsequently a little stressed because we did everything at the last minute. Now the beauty of this type of get-together though is we were in a safe environment, surrounded by friends who were just happy to get together with other people they know and like. We didn't need to impress anyone. We all had a great time talking, catching up, and laughing over some good wine and tasty food. Hopefully, we'll entertain more in the future, and maybe, just maybe, we'll even pay attention to some of these stress-reducing hints.
So get together with a handful of your friends, and cook something! 
Lots of cinnamon is key when making French Toast, second in importance only to the bread. French Baguettes are my favorite, but any kind of crusty bread works great!
Cooking any dish is more fun if you do it with someone else.
In our never ending battle with carbs, noodles of any kind are the enemy. It doesn't mean that we have to avoid all sorts of pasta dishes, rather it means we have to be a bit more creative. This delicious Pad Thai recipe (page 74-75) uses fresh zucchini in lieu of noodles, so make this dish and eat guilt free. Shrimp, red peppers, fresh bamboo shoots, scallions, peanuts and fresh cilantro make this dish something you'll want to eat often! (Fun fact: I bought the dish above in Tokyo. So it's Japanese, not Thai, but it's still pretty cool.) 
One of the best things about traveling to Italy is the food. Pasta, Pizza, Cannolis. In our (extended) family, we are all big fans of Pasta Bolognese - homemade wide noodles covered in a rich meaty sauce, topped with fresh parmesan cheese.
During a recent trip to Milan and Sicily with Al, Matt, Ben, Josh, and our friends Drew and John, we sampled Bolognese many, many times. According to John, Drew has been clammering for some Bolognese for a while, and a few nights ago John granted his wish by making a big pot of it. Typically Bolognese Sauce (page 26-27) is made with a combination of ground beef, veal and pork, but John being John, improvised when he couldn’t find any veal, and used ground lamb instead.
Per John, “The Bolognese was perfect. I used 2% fat milk thinking it would lighten it up, but I don’t think anyone would be able to tell the difference. This is wonderful on a cool night, just probably cut your portions down a bit from the normal marinara/tomato sauce. Some garlic bread and a light green salad, and everyone’s happy!”
If you're have a little extra time, make your own Homemade Pasta as well (page 28-29). Check out my Italian wine recommendation (Il Poeta 2010 Barbera D'Alba) under In The Glass as a nice complement to Bolognese. 
