Dinner for Friends

I really love cooking for friends but, let's face it, you're always trying to impress them. Or at least give them the best kind of hospitality you can manage. Now that I'm in my thirties, all of us are trying to make our way and prove it by talking about our stock, our real estate or our salaries at every possibility. It's exhausting, to say the least, and so are some of the parties thrown - rife with intimidating ingredients and the guilt of an organic provenance draped all over them. Some of the best parties I've been to were totally unapologetic: rolls, a vegetable platter, a fruit platter, sliced cheeses, ham and a big knife. I just like delicious food that makes you feel as if the host and hostess haven't been sweating madly and arguing over whether the vegetable brunoise is in fact a brunoise. Every dinner party I've thrown so far has made me feel as if I have been that mad hostess, except for this one. My husband came up with it, and it's a nice mix of plain but special food. Be forewarned, though: it does take a bit of time, especially if you're not used to rolling out pie dough or noodles. In that case, I would bake some cored apples with cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon rind earlier in the day to have with the ice cream.

Lemon Chicken
Fresh noodles with butter and Parmesan

Pesto

Green salad

Apple pie


Lemon Chicken
This is a variation on Chicken Escoffier, which I gleaned from the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. The best part of the recipe is the use of clarified butter, which doesn't burn or smoke or cause problems when frying up the chicken. I did away with the whole problem of melting the butter and skimming off the clear butter by buying a jar of clarified butter from the Indian grocery down the street. If too much butter stresses you out, just use olive oil instead.

2 whole large chicken breasts
3 lemons
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons clarified unsalted butter
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan
1/2 cup white wine

Cut the chicken breasts in half and salt and pepper on both sides. Zest the lemons and mix in with the chicken. Put the chicken in the fridge for 3-4 hours to marinate. Melt the butter and coat the chicken on both sides with butter, then pat the breasts in the breadcrumbs on both sides to create a crust. Let the chicken stand for 10 minutes. Heat two tablespoons butter plus two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Put two breasts in the pan, reduce the heat to medium-low and saute for 5 minutes on each side, till the crust is a rich golden brown. Remove the chicken to a separate plate to keep warm and cook the remaining chicken the same way. When finished cooking all the chicken, squeeze the lemons into the empty pan, pour in the white wine and scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Season this pan liquid with salt and pepper and pour over the chicken breasts. Sprinkle with some flat-leaf parsley if you've got it and surround with quartered lemons to squeeze over top.

Yucca Flux

Yuccaflux is one of those urban myth sorts of recipes - everybody I know has heard of it and knows what it is, but nobody has actually tasted one. Even the name is totally odd - I know what yucca is, and I know what flux is and, believe me, yuccaflux has nothing to do with either an ornamental plant or surface flow rates. Yuccaflux is fruit soaked in alcohol, but I really think of yuccaflux as a variation on the plugged melon, where you cut a plug out of a watermelon or cantaloupe or honeydew, fill it with rum and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Slice and enjoy the boozy fruit. Once I even tried to inject oranges with vodka using 60ml syringes, which could be another variation on the recipe. Yuccaflux could also be a kind of sangria, with the booze to fruit proportions switched. Yuccaflux, however, is plugged melon, injected oranges and solid sangria on a gigantic scale, suitable for celebrations way, way, way out of town or seventies-style key parties.



Yuccaflux (Yukkaflux/Yuckaflux)

Fruit:
Watermelon, peeled and sliced
Oranges, quartered
Cherries, stemmed
Peaches, quartered and pitted
Cantaloupe, peeled and sliced
Bunches of green and red grapes
Strawberries, cored
Mango chunks
Pineapple chunks
Lemons, sliced

Sandwich bags filled with water and frozen

Fill up a container with fruit. It could be a quart jar, ice cream pail, cooler, or even a garbage pail. I prefer the cooler with a spigot at the bottom so you can drain off all the delicious booze and fruit juice when you are done. Pour over a lot of dark rum and white rum. I mean a lot - probably 4-5 forties of booze. Close the top and let sit for 12-24 hours in a cool place. Then throw in the sandwich bags of ice and have at it! Another, more communal variation on this recipe is for everyone just to pour in whatever alcohol they brought to the party. Anyhow, there's no way Thomas Keller can put a classy spin on this one.