July 2 – July 8, 2023

Sunday:                     Cookout at Dennis and Annie’s with the Pinks

Monday:                   Julia Child’s Cream of Chicken Soup

Tuesday:                   Grilled Hotdogs with Coleslaw and Barbecued Beans

Wednesday:            Grilled Chicken with Corn Salad

Thursday:                 Can’t Remember

Friday:                       Tomato Crostata

Saturday:                  Grilled Chicken Chemuin, Corn Salad, Zucchini Gratin

A Recipe with a Schedule

During the recent hiatus in posts, Beez, who has great shoulders, a magnificent chin and other parts I am not allowed to mention, nonetheless decided to get a new hip.   She is doing well – healing fast, and, of course, not cooking at all.  And, fully recognizing my limitations (boy, does she recognize my limitations) she has been calling on me for a little assistance.

We’re almost back to normal, though we’ve done so little real cooking that I thought that, rather than a recipe, I’d share some thoughts on how to feed a horde or handle a dinner party with lots of people and many moving parts.

Our way to have a dinner party –

I love to entertain friends and family.  I’m sure that some anthropologist from  Antioch or Berkeley will speculate that this impulse arises from patriarchal and nomadic patterns etched into my brain by one hundred thousand years of evolution.  But I think it comes from the dinner parties my parents hosted decades ago which gave  their children a chance to stay up late with cousins and friends and overhear snatches of adult conversation (usually well-lubricated conversation by that point) and, in the summer time roast marshmallows together while watching the lightning bugs blink on and off in the inky blackness of Frick Park, back in the day when streets got really dark at night.  Wow – I’ll have to put that passage in a novel some day.

Despite of my love of entertaining, having a bunch of people over used to be a tad stressful at Casa Stuarti.  Indeed, that stress was precisely what led to Beez dubbing me ‘pscho chef’ and leaving the room whenever I picked up a large knife.  We have, however, learned to handle large gatherings with a fair amount of aplomb.  To begin with, for family dinners on holidays, we no longer cook 12 side dishes because “we’ve always had creamed spinach and green beans almondine and scalloped oysters . . .”  For gatherings with friends it means prepping well ahead of time and cooking things before the guests arrive.  It means, with our closest friends, that other folks are bringing hors d’oeuvres and dessert.

The beauty of this is that the hosts are free to speak with the guests and, of course, to ignore their children just as our parents used to do.  Trust me, the kids will be much happier.

We have friends who have figured out this formula as well and we began last week* with a wonderful dinner party at Annie and Dennis’s house.  The food was great, the conversation was sparkling and witty, if a little golf-heavy, and Annie and Dennis’s terrace and home are simply spectacular.  The ostensible occasion was an early celebration of July 4^th.  [This is not related to early-bird specials, and if I hear any of you saying so, I will hunt you down.]

*Here’s the deal with this blog.  When I write “last week” you’ll need to look at the head of the post to see which week I’m writing about.  Often, it refers to the week before last, schedules being what they are and writing requiring a certain amount of inspirational fermentation before it takes flight or, as my critics might say, oozes forth.

So here’s a dinner you can cook this summer – it will feed maybe 15 people provided they are not all adolescent boys or pro athletes.  And you may still have enough left over for the following day when, in spite of careful preparation and cooking ahead, you may feel a tad peaked.

Summer Dinner for 15

Menu

Roasted Shrimp with Cocktail Sauce

Other hors d’oeuvres from guests

Grilled Chicken Chemuin

Zucchini Gratin

Corn Salad

Dessert from guests

As for the recipes – there is a trick to cooking the Chicken ahead, so I’ve written that up below.  You can find the other recipes on line.  The roasted shrimp and zucchini gratin and corn salad are Ina Garten’s.  [Watch the cooking on the zucchini – we cook it a bit less than the recipe calls for – you want a bit of bite left when you eat it.  And I recommend that you add small-diced red peppers to the corn salad or even red and green peppers to give it a less one-dimensional taste.]

We grilled this chicken about 4 hours before we served it.  It is superb, if you serve it warm, but it is still excellent if you serve it 4 hours later – just cover it with foil and it will not get cold.  (If you eat it cold, it will be merely really good and, frankly, if you have a good, witty group of folks, people will enjoy it just as much.)

HERE’S THE KEY – YOUR SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY OF THE PARTY 

Guests arrive at 7:00

Serve dinner at 8:00 – 8:15

A.M.     Make Cocktail Sauce for Shrimp, make parsley sauce for chicken, clean and set up charcoal grill, buy ice, if needed.

Make corn salad and chill

Assemble platters, bowls, etc. for serving.  Set up table – cutlery, linens, centerpiece, etc.

Sweep the walk – perk up the flowers – arrange the booze – chill the wine

P.M.

4:00  Prep Chicken, then prep zucchini, bread crumbs, cheese, thyme and other ingredients for gratin.

4:30 Start Coals, then start zucchini by cook onions, then zucchini.

4:50  Chicken on grill, assemble zucchini gratin, cover with foil and set aside

5:10 or so, flip chicken – set oven to 425 F

5:20 – check chicken, remove from grill if cooked through (thermometer should read 170 F when inserted into thickest part of breast and thigh), cover with foil, set aside

6:00 – Zucchini Gratin into hot oven

6:20    Remove foil from zucchini (hold onto that foil) and cook for 10 more minutes, or until top is golden, then remove from oven, recover with foil and set aside.

Just before serving, carve the chicken, reheat zucchini if you like, and serve.

Grilled Chicken Chemuin

(adapted from Francis Mallman’s Seven Fires:  The Argentine Way to Grill)

 This recipe can be multiplied by as many chickens as you can buy and as much grilling surface as you have.  Mallman calls for 2-3 lb. chickens.  You might be able to get a 3 lb. chicken if you have a butcher shop in farm country, but you can get 4 lb. chickens at any good butcher shop.  What you don’t want are those 5 and 6 lb. beasts that dominate super market coolers – they take so long to cook that you will have charred the skin before the inside is edible, or, more likely, you will putting them back on the grill after Uncle Harry is into his third martini and Aunt Joan wants to skin you alive.

Timing:                                        One Hour

This dish takes about 10 minutes to prep, before which you should start your grill – you want a medium fire.

Ingredients:                         One Chicken serves 3 or 4

Whole Chicken – 4 lbs. or so

¼ cup rosemary leaves, minced

Garlic – Mallman calls for 1 head of peeled, smashed cloves.  That’s over the top, I think.  I usually grate 2 cloves for each chicken

Parsley Sauce (see below)

Juie of 1 lemon

Coarse Salt

Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Mallman also calls for lemon confit (you can find recipes on-line), but we just serve with a lemon wedge

Prep:

Fire up the grill – you want a medium fire.

If you know how to remove the wish bone from your chicken, do so.  This will make it easier to carve.

Mince the rosemary, grate the garlic, juice the lemon and put some salt in a cup or dish (you’ll be using it with ‘chicken hands’ which you don’t want to dip into your main salt dish.

Using kitchen shears, turn the chicken over and cut down either side of the backbone and remove it.  [Mallman cuts through the breast bone, but that leaves lots of tiny, exposed rib bones.]

Flip the chicken over, place it on a baking pan with a rib and press down on the breast to flatten the chicken.  Now loosen the skin over the breast and thighs.  (Do this by slowly wiggling your finger under the skin at the top of the breast on one side and working down the breast and over the thigh.  Repeat with the other side.)

Season the chicken all over with the lemon juice and then the garlic, rosemary and salt, pushing some of it under the skin and over the breast and thigh.

Cook:

Place the chicken skin side up, on the grill and close the lid and cook for 20 minutes.  Now turn the chicken and grill on he other side until the skin is crisp and brown (you can close the lid, if you want – it leads to a faster cook) for 20 minutes or longer, until a thermometer stuck into the thickest part of the breast and thigh reads about 170 F.

Remove the chicken from the grill and hold it under foil for up to 5 hours.  If you are serving immediately, let it rest for 15 minutes before you carve and serve.

Parsley Sauce:

You’ll need ½ cup of packed, minced straight parsley leaves and tender stems, a dash of garlic salt (if you like garlic, use up to 1 teaspoon of fresh garlic, minced), ½ cup (we used maybe ¾ cup) of extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt and ground black pepper.

Combine the parsley and garlic salt or garlic in a bowl.  Slowly add the olive oil, whisking to combine.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and we like a squeeze of lemon juice.  The sauce will be very bright green and very thick with parsley.