I'm totally becoming an expert mini-dinner-party-thrower/cooker-person. A few days ago I cooked dinner for my sister and two friends, but of course with a lot of help, and this time there was only a normal amount of excess food instead of a gigantic amount of excess. I'm learning!
The menu included:
Appetizer: French bread toasted with olive oil and garlic, then topped with an artichoke tapenade (thanks Trader Joe's) and a mix of Parmesan and cheddar cheese.
Main course: Quinoa burgers topped with a simplified Tzatziki sauce.
Side Dish: Risotto with vegetables and Parmesan
Dessert: Chocolate chip cheesecake
Before I actually post the recipes and whatnot, though, I feel a need to confess some things. Secrets like this will just weigh me down and eat at me from the inside, like how the priest guy in The Scarlet Letter has issues because his guilt about the whole adultery thing gives him actual physical health problems. And then he finally cracks and shows the whole town how there's some horrible mark on his chest or something too, so it's like he had the same burden that Hester did except that he kept his hidden longer than her so it ate away at him. I think. It's been a while since I read that book. It's actually quite an unnecessary analogy anyway. I just get carried away sometimes. Sorry. I digress.
My first confession, which is barely a confession considering that I wrote it out earlier in this posting, is that the appetizer was super easy because it wasn't made completely from scratch. I used Trader Joe's Artichoke Antipasto, even though I could have easily chopped up some artichoke hearts and mixed them with some stuff. For a girl who's stubborn enough to make multiple batches of garlic knots instead of giving in and buying pre-made dough, using this jarred artichoke stuff is slightly shameful. I felt a little redeemed by the rest of the meal, though. So just in case you were wondering if I managed to validate myself or not by the time the meal was over, rest easy- I did.
My next confession is that I forgot to bring multiple ingredients to the kitchen where I was cooking, which resulted in some changes and substitutions being made to certain recipes. The Tsatziki sauce especially suffered because I forgot cucumber, amongst other things (also because I put about 4 cloves of raw garlic in about 7 oz of the sauce, so it was quite garlicky to say the least). Lesson learned- double check you have all the ingredients you need, or at least a suitable substitution for ingredients you need. I even had a list and I still missed stuff. Also, taste something before adding in massive amounts of garlic. Not everyone likes being walking vampire repellent.
My final confession is that I did not thoroughly do my homework when I planned dessert. I had been eyeing up a recipe for a polka dot cheesecake for the longest time, only to realize (when I was about to start making it) that it had to chill for at least 24 hours. Luckily my sister came up with another, faster cheesecake that was delicious. However, that served as a solid reminder that I should actually read all of the directions for something I am planning to make, instead of just drooling over pictures and glancing at the ingredients.
I will have recipes up soon for everything that was made for dinner. Please don't let this post scare you with my apparent incompetence in the kitchen- some of the best things today have been created by mistake! Chocolate chip cookies were an accident! Look it up if you don't believe me. But could you imagine a world without chocolate chip cookies?
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