Dinner with friends

I have a lot of hosting fantasies. I have my own house and nobody can stop me! and I can't resist an opportunity to show off with my cooking. This delicious Substack post I read recently has not only given me interesting ideas to think about, but made it crisp and clear that I would love to be written or talked about like this. I'm working on it by inviting friends for dinner at the slightest provocation.

Because I try not to bore my guests by overexplaining everything I've cooked, I'm going to do it here. Having recently acquired kittens is a great excuse for a visit from friends, so here's a writeup of a recent dinner.

Rainbow plates

This is not a novel idea, but I came up with my preferred template and I'm still trying to come up with variations of it. The template is:

• Protein (bean or lentil preferred for batch cooking)
• Carb (of which there is always a broad selection in my pantry)
• One cooked vegetable
• One raw vegetable
• Something salty or sour or pickled

Here's how the first occurrence of this came to be. I sort of woke up one day a few weeks ago craving bulgur. I made a delicious pilaf out of it: onion, garlic, tomato paste, cook til done. It was exactly as good as I'd envisioned, so I think it will make regular appearances. Coarse bulgur is forgiving, too, so this is much less scary than a rice pilaf. I paired this with canned black beans, topped with powdered coriander and cumin tempered in olive oil. Then, I threw in some cherry tomatoes, cooked until just broken down; some diced cucumber (my cucumber intake this year is through the roof); and some green olives. Glorious.

The next occurrence was a little less successful, but I'll still write it down for posterity. It involved green lentils, whole-wheat pasta, cooked zucchini, canned sarma (stuffed wine leaves) and for the life of me I cannot remember what was the raw veg. 

The point is, the first bean/bulgur pairing was so good that I just did it again when my friends Austin and Nikky came to dinner. The raw component was avocado; the cooked veg this time was cauliflower, roasted in the oven (a slightly questionable idea given the temperature outside) and topped with salted green pepper I picked up at the market near my parents'. The pickle was an idea from my friend Salima, a few years back; it was one of the recipes included in her New Year postcard. I'm not quite sure where I've put the postcard now, but it's so simple that I make it regularly: thinly slice a red onion, salt generously, dampen with lemon juice or vinegar and leave to rest for a few hours. The result is a delightful, bright pink, mellowed-out pickle that goes with everything. I made two onions' worth and they were gone in that one evening.

Here's more things I might combine into such pretty plates, just to get myself in a creative mood.

• Turkish red lentil balls (mercimek köftesi); another attempt at green lentils (this time properly flavoured with onion and carrot and fennel); chickpeas (maybe garbanzo con espinaca...); more black beans; and if it's just for me, maybe some mock meat...
•  Bread bread bread; roasted potatoes; any pasta that is small enough to shovel in my mouth (macaroni or orzo); bulgur; rice of every kind; freekeh; buckwheat
• Roasted or pan-fried cauliflower (there's never enough of the stuff), zucchini (quartered and sliced an inch thick), mushrooms, cabbage wedges, fennel, carrots...
• Raw or just blanched leafy greens like spinach, or crunchy things like broccoli or asparagus
• Salads... every food blog seems to have endless amounts of wonderful winter salads, but I'm always so cold in the winter that I neglect them in favour of warm dishes. I'm hoping hosting can give me excuses to make them. In the summer, anything diced or grated: cucumber, avocado, coleslaw, grated carrots...
• Cornichons, capers, pickled onions, chutneys, relishes, sauerkraut, homemade kimchi (vegan!)

The drinks

In my hosting fantasies, I always have a pitcher of something delicious, original and quite possibly boozy. In practice, not only do I not own a pitcher, but I frequently have guests who don't drink alcohol. My +1 likes keeping the fridge stocked with Fun Drinks (especially Bundaberg ginger beer), putting a further damper on my excuses to make cocktails. This time, I made a pot of bissap, using up what was left of a pack of hibiscus flowers and some mint from the garden. A jar of sugar syrup prepared before my holiday came in handy for sweetening it just to the point of drinkability. I love bissap; tart and slightly astringent and a gorgeous ruby colour. Great hosting drink. Next time, since I am now amply supplied with tamarind, I might prepare something with it...