Partly because of the pandemic, partly out of laziness, it has been a long, long time since I have hosted a formal dinner party. I have had a couple of small birthday get-togethers, served lunch for my former student Meredith and her husband, and cooked a couple of meals for my friend Frank who house-sits for me when I travel. But the last time I served a multi-course, sit-down dinner was more than six years ago. At that time Alejandro was up here visiting, and I invited my cousin Gail and her husband for a Mexican dinner.
This week I had my new neighbors from across the street for dinner. Last September, they invited me to their home, and I said that we should get-together at my place over the holidays before I left on another trip to Mexico. Little did I know that my invitation would come smack in the middle of the Omicron wave. But we are all fully vaccinated and boosted and have tested negative, so we went ahead with the plan.
I was going to take pictures of the event, but I was busy preparing each course and socializing with my guests. After the dinner was over, I realized that the only photo I had was the one I took of the table before my guests arrived.
The dinner was a success, I believe. As an appetizer I served home-made salsa with chips. On New Year's Day, one of the gifts that I received from Katie and Olivier was a package of imported Spanish ham and sausage, so I put that out with crackers also.
For a formal Mexican dinner, the first course is the "sopa aguada" ("wet soup"). I prepared black bean soup. I tweaked the recipe that Alejandro gave me, and it came out exceptionally tasty, if I do say so myself. The second course is the "sopa seca" ("dry soup") ... a rice or pasta dish. I served "fideos al chipotle", noodles flavored with a chipotle pepper sauce. I used the peppers very sparingly, but it was very good also. (I wrote about the preparation of those dishes here on the blog a while ago. At that time, I was already planning on serving them for this dinner, and I wanted to try them out first.)
For the main course, I made "pollo encacahuatado", chicken breast in peanut sauce. This was a recipe that Alejandro gave me a couple years ago. It is very easy, very delicious, and something that you are not likely to see in the typical Mexican restaurant north of the border.
For dessert I was planning on serving something simple... vanilla ice cream with some "rompope" (Mexican eggnog) poured on top. However, when I went to the local Mexican supermarket, I saw that they had "Rosca de Reyes" ("ring of the kings"), a sweet bread that is served on Epiphany in Mexico.
Traditionally, a figure of the baby Jesus is placed in the bread, and whoever finds the baby in his / her slice is supposed to invite everyone for tamales on February 2nd, the Feast of Candlemas. Since it was a commercially produced "rosca" made by Pan Bimbo, I did not have high expectations for the quality of the pastry, but I figured that it would be a unique experience for my guests. So, I brought home one of the "roscas".
The box is enormous. I did not have a platter big enough for the "rosca", so I simply brought the box to the table and cut it there. Indeed, the quality was not that great, but we had fun. My neighbor John had the baby Jesus in his slice. I told him not to worry about making tamales, since I would not even be here on February 2nd!
It was a very nice evening, with good food and good company. I'm not going to wait so many years before having another dinner party.
No comments:
Post a Comment