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am a pretty lucky gal to have a house conducive to entertaining (except the parking situation) and a big-ass dining room table, so I was more than happy to hostess for my dear friend L's 30th birthday party last Saturday.

The lamb spices

The menu: L brought an awesome Cambodian appetizer (what was it called again?) of spinach leaves that you piled yourself with tiny shrimp, minced ginger, peanuts, toasted coconut, scallions, red onion, diced limes, and some kind of sauce. Her favorite cocktail is my fresh lime vodka gimlet (recipe after the jump) so I made a pitcher, and they went perfectly with the appetizer - a happy coincidence! For dinner we had couscous, vegetable tagine, spiced lamb stew with butternut squash, and a salad of romaine and arugula with toasted pecans, cranberries, and balsamic. I made a frangipane apple galette for dessert with calvados whipped cream.

The spices smelled heavenly simmering in red wine with onion and cinnamon sticks.

Click on over for the cocktail recipe, a few of my entertaining tips, and a bonus napkin fold!

Entertaining tips from Repast:
Cooking for a lot of people is always a bit stressful, but I learned a few things from Mom and experience that make the process smoother:

1. Obviously, make everything you can in advance, but I also make up a master plan for when I'm throwing a party and clip it into the front part of my recipe binder. It has the ingredient list for the grocery store, the menu, associated recipes, and a breakdown of when I'll make each thing (day before, morning of, etc.) so I can check it off and make sure I haven't forgotten anything. I also try not to shop and cook on the same day - I find it exhausting.

2. Presentation is nice, but at the end of the day, people will remember how it tasted over how it looked.

3. I'd like to be the type of person who irons my napkins, but really I'm just not. I'm cool with that.

4. Don't be a martyr - accept help with the dishes if offered, or lead a jaunty after-dinner parade to the kitchen for DIY plate-scraping and dishwasher-loading.

5. If all else fails, order a pizza, send a friend on a beer run, enjoy the company, and get over it. My theory is that a party will never be a failure as long the hostess has a good time!

Fresh Lime Vodka Gimlets:
It's easy with this 1-2-3 formula! But first you'll need super-easy simple syrup, which is just 2 parts sugar heated in 1 part water until it dissolves. I used to never make it because I thought it was hard, but it takes about 30 seconds and the extra keeps about a week in the fridge.

1 part simple syrup
2 parts lime juice
3 parts vodka (or gin for a classic gimlet)

Shake all the ingredients over ice and strain into a chilled martini glass (you can run lime around the rim and dip it in sugar first if you're feeling fancy). Garnish with a lime wedge.

Bonus: Buffet Napkin Fold!
When people are coming over for a buffet this is a great way to minimize delicate plate-balancing operations. First take a cloth napkin and put it on the table so the corner with all the floppy edges points towards you. Then grab the corner of the top layer and fold it up in half, so it points away from you.

Flip the whole thing over and bring the side corners toward the middle, so one overlaps the other. Tuck one into the fold of the other. Flip it over again and insert silverware - voila!

Posted by Satya at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

orry this one is a bit late. I was low on groceries on Valentine's Day so I threw this little bento together out of ingredients not ideal for M.'s tastes, but he was too busy to actually eat this one anyway so it didn't really matter - he had a very hectic day!

Contents: Tortilla chips and salsa, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (I had the dough frozen and baked a few that morning), carrot sticks, heart-shaped cheese sandwich, and a tiny tangerine.

After M. got home we went out to a sublime dinner at Fork in San Anselmo. I highly recommend this place, as we've eaten there several times and always had a great experience. I knew I could count on them for an elegant meal that wouldn't be harried despite the holiday diners, and they came through impeccably.

I'm a pretty unmemorable type on my own, but Charles, the maitre'd and co-owner, always remembers me, which gives the experience a personal touch. He wore a tux for V-day, classy guy. The service is always excellent and the menus interesting and seasonal. They have a great early bird prix fixe menu on weekdays, and a larger prix fixe tasting menu during normal dining hours, complete with wine pairing. Or you can order à la carte (except for on Valentine's day - they had prix fixe only). M. appreciates the vegetarian tasting menu, which they always offer, and overall everything about the place shows a tasteful restraint and attention to detail. Stop by if you're in the area!

Posted by Satya at 7:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

wo news articles that came out recently have inspired me to make some changes in my food shopping habits:

Government orders biggest-ever U.S. beef recall
and
Consumers may not be able to avoid cloned food

I've also been reading Michael Pollan's The Ominvore's Dilemma which has also provided a lot of insight into what you're paying for when you buy your food, and where it actually comes from. It's complicated because one can't simply decide to eat all organic food - problems abound throughout the entire food industry, and sometimes organic doesn't mean what one might think. I'm also very budget-minded when it comes to food, and don't agree with paying a premium for a chicken, for example, who may have had a door to the grass outside, but was never able to make use of it.

I'm no food fascist either, and think it's a personal choice that should be left to the individual. But there are some principles I agree with, and I feel if I can use my food budget to support them I'm happy to do so.

What does this look like, in practical terms for me? Well, I'm switching my organic produce delivery (which is mostly local but also does some importing) to an all-local polyculture farm - I'll pick it up weekly at the farmer's market, which will also give me an opportunity to buy grass-fed beef and organic rice from the people who farmed them. The meat will be more expensive, but I think it's better to eat high quality meat less frequently, and since M. is vegetarian I won't be buying much anyway. I'm also switching from the less-expensive Clover organic milk to Strauss milk in the glass jug. I prefer the taste of Strauss anyway, and though they're still working out the whole cloned cow issue, I feel Strauss will make more of an effort to keep cloned cows or their offspring out of their herds than Clover would.

Mind you, I don't know anything about the actual effects of consuming cloned cow's milk, and probably for practical purposes there are none. But it's about the principle of the thing, and how absurdly far we've come from a true local food economy. I feel it's within my capacity to make changes to support my preferences and beliefs, so I will, but my hope is that doing so will help make better food available for everyone. Plus I just like things grown the old-fashioned way.

What are your thoughts on what to buy and eat? Leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you!

Posted by Satya at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

ust got back from the hospital to have the stitches removed, and the finger is doing well - just have to baby it along for a couple weeks, as the doc said. Meantime I've jumped back in the cooking saddle, but haven't had a chance to update for a little while, so here's a big entry with my myriad latest creations.

Numero uno: a little bento for two to celebrate my friend L. obtaining her own studio space for artistic/crafty endeavors - something Repast is a big supporter of! I packed us turkey BLATs (the A is for avocado!), carrots, cheese, Haribo gummy rolls, and miniature champagne. I packed straws in the chopstick container, but the champagne bubbled over quite amusingly when we tried to use them.

More after the jump!

Numero dos: oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I made for a vegetarian potluck I was attending the next day. I froze the rest of the dough in balls to make in a pinch when company comes over - everyone always appreciates a warm cookie from the oven. This crowd tends to lean towards veganism, so I thought I'd make it clear that eggs and butter were intimately involved in the creation of those cookies. I wouldn't have it any other way, really.

Numero tres: One of my favorite salads in the wintertime is spinach, grapefruit, and avocado. Sometimes I add hardboiled egg for a bit of protein. Arugula is also excellent mixed in when in season (the flowers are incredible if you can find them). The grapefruit is the perfect splash of sunny flavor, matched nicely with a mellow creamy avocado. Here I had the leftovers with some bread and port salut.

Numero quatro: Just a little bento for M. consisting of sourdough, homemade white bean spread (garlic, lemon, parsley, mint), olives, and carrots.

And finally, tonight's dinner. I was feeling like doing some emotional eating somewhere in the meat realm, so I threw together a turkey meatloaf with no recipe whatsoever (very unlike me, but I was hungry and couldn't be bothered). I mushed ground turkey in with breadcrumbs, hot sauce, an egg, worcestire, ketchup, s+p, parsley, and oregano. I remembered hearing somewhere that wrapping meatloaf in bacon kept it moist, so I laid on some strips of turkey bacon (I don't eat the pig) - to delicious results!

Posted by Satya at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

t was bound to happen sooner or later. I recently had my knives professionally sharpened, which has been fabulous but also, unfortunately, dangerous. Friday night I was happily prepping for a cozy dinner of red beans and rice when I slipped while horizontally cutting an onion. I caught my pinky and it was all over - M. drove me to the E.R. and I wound up with seven stitches and a bottle full of antibiotics to ward off infection. It was a drag but I'm healing with all my digits intact, Alhamdulillah.

As a result I haven't been doing too much cooking, but I did put together this little bento, which M. really enjoyed to my relief. The cabinets were pretty bare but with a little creativity a bento can be created out of very little.

Pictured is a container of chopped raw carrot and green pepper (with dressing in a tiny bear-shaped squeeze bottle), cornbread, two star-shaped cheese sandwiches, and gingersnaps. Edamame were liberally employed to fill the gaps.

Posted by Satya at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)