Successful Dinner Party: Did Not Poison Friends!

You are not going to believe me when I tell you.  I threw a dinner party and made some fancy schmancy gourmet food, and it came out GREAT!

Many props for my former NYC-tri club friend and chef extraordinaire Andrea, who recommended me these two “no fail, sure to impress” recipes.

When we lived in Manhattan, Earl and I had friends over for dinner on our patio just about every other week, if not more often.   It was so simple and fun.  Run 1 block over to the hungarian meat shop for some meats, hit up the wonderful bakery for dessert, marinate the meats then throw em on the grill.  Add cocktails and the patio and you’ve got your party.

Now, no grill (well, technically there’s a grill in the building’s backyard, but what an endeavor to haul all your food out there etc) and no patio.  So, I’m forced to actually cook stuff when people come over.  ¡Qué horror!   Also, this has scary implications of outing me as the infantile chef I really am.

Hence, last week found me begging Andrea for something easy yet scrumptious to impress our friends Don and Lianne.

Not missing a beat, here’s what the ace suggested:
Sage-Stuffed, Prosciutto-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin over Lentil and Scallion Salad
and for dessert, Nantucket Cranberry Pie, served a la mode.

I followed the recipes to the letter and must declare, I was super proud of how it all came out!  Everything was SO, SO good.  I think I redeemed myself from the disgusting radicchio linguine debacle.

Photos:

I made the dessert first, since it would have to bake for a while and I figured it could be cooling while we ate. I have no mixer so hence the silly “whip batter really fast with a fork” method.  At the least I should pick up a whisk!

Cake Batter & Upside-down cranberry/nut mixture prepared

I ended up using a few other spices in the pork, mainly because the store didn’t have much sage other than in the “variety park” fresh sage kit. There’s rosemary and thyme in there as well.

stuffing the pork tenderloin with sage

In their prosciutto blankets and ready to bake

something about pork wrapped in pork... so glorious

One thing I did a bit wrong- the lentils were kinda overcooked and a bit mushy. So I wouldn’t cook them as long as recommended on the package for next time.

the lentil salad

The final product, ooh la la:

it's edible!

The crowd looks happy:

Earl, Don and Lianne

Even dessert was GREAT. Everyone had seconds, and in two cases thirds of the cake!

not the best photo, but this cake was sooo good

After dinner I accosted Don, who grew up on the coast of Australia, with all my stupid questions about surfing. He’s an phenomenal surfer and always takes these crazy month long surf trips to Indonesia and the like. I’m sure all my really beginner-level inquiries, such as “how do you know if the wave is breaking right or left?” were amusing to him.
Visualize the napkin as the “wave” and you can see his demonstration. We also have some drawings on the pad which you can spot in the bottom of the photo. Haha.

teach me about surfing, o superstar

All in all, dinner was a raving success and it was so nice to see them again (particularly Lianne, who I haven’t seen as much as Don). They are constantly inviting us to their Tahoe ski house, so it was great to have them over at our place!

Again, many thanks to Andrea for passing along such wonderful recipe recommendations. She truly is a cooking rockstar.