I have really be wanting to have a grown-up dinner party. No kids, no paper plates, wine and great food. I think I accomplished all I set out to do. The timing of the dishes were right on. Everything for our main course came out the perfect temperature.
I started with a cheese tray served with sparkling Moscato. I had gone to Bed Bath and Beyond looking for a cheese tray. There weren't any I liked (all too small), so I looked at cutting boards. I found this beautiful board and bought a cheese knive set and awhalla! a cheese tray. I bought 4 kinds of cheeses at Whole Foods, tasting each kind. I tend to like strong flavored cheeses, so I made sure to get a more mild cheese as well. The only problem.....was the cheese was sitting out in the kitchen to get to room temperature (which is what you are supposed to do to get the full flavor of the cheese), my dogs was 2 of the 4 blocks of cheese. I luckily had a delicious cheese in my fridge, which I added to the two remaining cheeses. At Whole Foods I also bought a scoop full of olives. I made sure to get pitted olives so that my guests wouldn't have to deal with the pits. On the tray I also put out genoa salami, crackers and honey. Have you every had blue cheese (really good, creamy blue cheese) with honey on a cracker?? Weird, I know, but tastes amazing! Creamy and crunchy, salty, sweet, strong. Perfection!!
This picture is the roasted vegetables I made. Yukon gold potatoes, red skinned potatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower and brussel sprouts. The guests were coming at 6. At 5:00 I preheated the oven to 450 degress. I put in the vegis around 5:15. I needed to put them on two trays due to the large quantity. I rotated the shelf in the oven they were on and occasionally moved around the vegis. At 6 I turned off the oven, but left them in the oven. At 6:45 I put the oven to 400 degrees and let them heat up. When they were ready (7:15), I sprinkled them with sea salt, then straight to the table.
These are the pork chops I made. At 4pm I rubbed them with bacon salt and chipolte seasoning salt. At 6:45 started the grill and put the chops on once it was hot. I put all the burners to the highest level. Once the chops had been on there for about 5 minutes, I turned them over and turned down the grill, to medium. As you can see, these were so juicy and tasty. I served a Reisling wine and a red wine with the supper.
I made a onion and apple compote. I put this recipe together on my own. I very thinly sliced 2 granny smith apples and 2 large sweet onions. For the apples, I peeled most of the outside, but I did leave bits of peel for texture and color. I put both the onions and apples in a saute pan with about 1T of butter. I put them on low heat and stirred it around about every 10 minutes. I did this for about 1 hour. Then I added apple nectar and chicken stock, along with a few shakes of cinnamon and nutmeg. I added 2T of apple cider vinegar also. I just let it sit on low for another 30 minutes, stirring every so often. I turned off the stove and reheated it (needing to add some more stock) about 5 minutes before serving. It was SO delicious of the spicy pork chops. The spicy chops with the sweet apple onion compote. YUM!!
For dessert I took out one of our precious ice wines from our anniversary trip to Toronto last year. I made chocolate fondue - one milk chocolate and one white chocolate. This was decided by taking a poll of my guests to make two choices - dark, milk, or white chocolate. I took out my two electric fondue pots, heated them up and put the chips right in there. Once the chocolate started to melt, we added half and half cream, just enough to thin out the chocolate. We did this all at the table. I served pound cake, bananas, strawberries and chocolate chip dunkers (cookies made long and thin for dunking into coffee or milk).
Chocolate heaven on a plate!
