A few weeks ago my roommate Rachel, who is a chef, thought it'd be a great idea to throw a dinner party. With her cooking and hosting skills of course it was a brilliant idea! The only not so brilliant thing is our apartment is so tiny it barely holds the three of us comfortably. Still, we all really wanted to do it. The solution: Rachel's friend and her fiance have a HUGE apartment in Chelsea where Rachel actually stayed for a little before we moved into our apartment. Rachel wanted to do this dinner as a thank you for Corinne and Nick so their place ended up being a great place to have the dinner. The two of them thought so too! Rachel told them to invite some of their friends and she, Liz and I would take care of everything else.
On Sunday afternoon the three of us started cooking with Rachel as the head chef and Liz and I as her sous chefs. Rachel came up with an amazing menu based largely around food items we already had so the grocery bill was nothing. I sliced up and lightly oiled some french bread, hand crushed beans for falafels, shredded cheese, shredded cucumbers, peeled butternut squash for homemade soup and... chopped anchovies. Never thought I'd have ANYTHING to do with anchovies. We made an anchovie butter and it was actually tasty. The three of us had a great time putting everything together and had loads of laughs - my cooking skills are no where near Rachel's! We packed everything up in containers, caught a cab and brought our feast to Chelsea.
Corinne and Nick's place is absolutely gorgeous and they had their Christmas tree all decorated and lit up. They invited a few friends and there were about a total of 12 or 13 of us there. Rachel did most of the assembling when we got there and everything looked beautiful. The biggest hit was the soup: Liz hollowed out some acorn squash and leveled the bottoms so the could stand on their own and Rachel served the homemade butternut squash soup using the hollowed acorn squash as the vessel. The soup was topped with crushed cashew nuts. Everyone loved it and went back for seconds and thirds. We polished the evening off with homemade shortbread topped with strawberry jam. When Rachel was baking those at our place she let me have a piece fresh out of the oven. WHOA. They were delicious.
Soooo... SUCCESS!! The dinner party was absolutely wonderful. Everyone had a great time and Rachel made a very beautiful toast about friendship and being there for each other - it was great. I'm thinking the three of us should go into catering together. Do we need a business permit for our apartment? :)
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