A Harvest Dinner with Wonderful Friends

Dinner parties are wonderful, especially when enjoyed with the company of goods friends and family. There is something about delicious food that creates conversation, relaxes the high-strung and can create community even amongst strangers. Hosting a party where the star is your food can be fun, if you stay well planned and relaxed enough to go with the flow.

Saturday afternoon, in the brisk fall weather of Minnesota, my husband and I set up tables and chairs, scavenged together enough silverware, dishes and glassware (borrowing some from a good friend) to have a group of friends over.

Our table was finished with menu cards and napkin rings my husband, Todd, designed.

Most of our friends are in their early thirties and are a mix of married, singles, kids, no kids. Some are meat and potato eaters, while others prefer vegetables. This can create challenges, however I don't believe that you need to create a menu that caters to everyone's eating styles or habits. It's wise while introducing new flavors or ingredients to accompany those items with familiar foods or tastes. This creates a nice balance of familiar and new, and people are likely to feel comfortable with trying a dish they haven't had before.

Fresh wild plums.

If you are at the stage of life where kids are involved in your get-togethers, they are the one group of people where new isn't necessarily the best. You don't want your guests distracted from their own food because they are trying to encourage their child to try something unfamiliar. I love kids, and I love my kids — but they can be very stubborn when they want to be, especially when you want them to simply go with the flow. For our dinner party we had 4 little mouths to feed, so I created a second menu that was friendly to our young guests. My husband made pigs-in-a-blanket with homemade crescent rolls wrapped around all-natural, nitrate-free hot dogs. We also prepared a mixed fruit salad and a vegetable medley of heirloom carrots, broccoli and green beans. Everything was easy to eat with the hands since none of the kids were over the age of 3 and utensils aren't always high up on the use list. I decided to serve our dinner in courses, but we gave the kids all their food at the start and then they were able to run around while we ate our food. It worked very well. Kids always add an extra element to a get-together, so you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride and not be too overly concerned about the outcome as long as everyone is having a good time.

Fresh figs.

When planning a dinner party I am a believer in having a theme, at least to start. Guests don't necessarily need to know there was a theme to the dinner, but it can help you choose your dishes more easily as you consider whether or not they fit into the theme you've chosen. In the case of our dinner, I focused on local and seasonal ingredients of autumn while staying in line with how I cook — everything was made from scratch, including all the butters, bread, pasta and even the ricotta cheese used to fill the ravioli. I hit up the local farmers market the week before our get-together to see what unique ingredients I could find. From there I was able to build a wonderful meal using almost all local ingredients. The flavors of in-season ingredients are unmatched and more often than not most of us enjoy the flavors that come with the seasonal bounty.

Wild mushroom, beats getting ready to ferment, heirloom carrots, mixed mushrooms.

 There are all kinds of wonderful ways to host a fabulous dinner party. Your guests can bring their favorite dishes to share, you can have an a la carte menu where people can mingle and munch on a variety of tapas style dishes, guests can participate in the cooking — like making personal pizzas or you can have the nice formal sit down dinner where your guests are served by you. I've done it a variety of ways, but because this was a special occasion, with my husband's help, we served our meal in courses. I usually try and invite people over earlier then I expect to actually eat. It's just about impossible to have people arrive and then immediately sit down at the table.

Homemade butters and fresh baked white and whole wheat bread. 

As people begin knocking on your door, it's nice to have something for them to munch on while you finish food preparation and they wait for dinner to be served. Food begins to relax people and gives them something to talk about, which is always a good idea when everyone doesn't know one another. We started our evening with an array of fresh homemade butters — truffle, herb, plain, apple and wild plum, to pair with fresh baked bread. While everyone enjoyed the first "nibbles" of our meal, I put together the salads.

Fermented beat salad with arugula and toasted pumpkin seeds.

For our salad I included beets I lacto-fermented earlier in the week. This was a way to show an example of the way foods were traditionally preserved and stored from the fall harvest. It also introduced the idea of including a fermented food with every meal to help aid in the digestion process.

From our salads we moved on to our first course of hand-made mushroom ravioli in a mushroom wine broth. I had the broth hot on the stove and the ravioli made before the guests arrived, so when it was time to serve this course all I had to do was drop the ravioli in boiling water for a minute or two then ladle the hot broth over top. The "soup" was then garnished with wild mushroom and fresh parsley.

Hand-made mushroom ravioli in a mushroom wine broth.

At this point the kids were done eating and began to run and play. Parents got up and mingled while following after some of the new walkers - keeping their hands from touching the fire or getting into something they are not supposed to. This was the perfect interlude to finish up my entree. My pork tenderloin finished roasting while guests arrived and had been resting (a necessary step for any well prepared meat) while we ate our first course. As my husband sliced the meat, I mashed the already cooked potatoes and warmed the fig jam which I had made the day before. Together we plated the food and a friend helped serve it.

As the sun set and the evening cooled we gradually moved inside to enjoy our dessert. All in all I would call it a very successful evening and I think that everyone had a nice time. I'm glad that we had some wonderful friends to share our meal with and I had the opportunity to participate in challenge 3 of Project Food Blog.

Apple spice cake with caramel icing.

After the last bite was eaten and the kids began to yawn, our friends casually made their way home. My husband and I put our kids to bed, sat down on the couch, put our feet up and relaxed after a full, but wonderful day.

After a wonderful evening.