A Fashionably Late Dinner Party with Erin Fetherston

As he gets gets ready to launch his New York City supper club, The Butterfly, chef Michael White joins forces with his upstairs neighbor, fashion designer Erin Fetherston, for a dinner party featuring updated comfort-food dishes and classic cocktails.

Chef Michael White is an XXL, former high school offensive left tackle from Beloit, Wisconsin. Erin Fetherston is a California-born, Paris-trained fashion designer who wears a size zero and occasionally models the lacy, feminine dresses in her eponymous line. But they have a few things in common, starting with a New York City address. That’s because White’s latest restaurant, The Butterfly, is directly below Fetherston’s design studio. And when The Butterfly opens this spring, the female staffers will wear Fetherston’s elegant black aprons with sky-blue ruffles.

White understands how food and fashion can intersect. At his flagship restaurant, the luxurious Italian seafood spot Marea, he feeds fashion-industry powerhouses like model Heidi Klum and designer Jason Wu. The good-natured chef debunks the cliché that fashion people don’t eat. “Carine Roitfeld,” says White, naming the former Vogue Paris editor in chief who launched CR Fashion Book. “Her favorite thing in the world is the sea urchin and lardo toast at Marea.” Fetherston also likes food. She and her boyfriend, Gabe Saporta—the front man for the band Cobra Starship—frequently cook together. “I put him on omelet duty,” says Fetherston. “That’s the test of a great chef, right? He makes a mean omelet. So he passed my chef test.”

Recently, Fetherston and White decided to throw a party together to celebrate the upcoming opening of The Butterfly, and to preview its Midwestern-inspired menu. Because neither Fetherston nor Saporta eat meat, White focused on vegetable dishes. One of these is his terrific version of artichoke dip, baked with panko bread crumbs and Parmigiano-Reggiano and topped with crispy shallots. For another dip, White pureed sun-dried tomatoes with olives and capers, a recipe inspired by his mother. At The Butterfly, White will serve potpies with seasonal fillings; for Fetherston’s dinner party, the chef opted for mushrooms and butternut squash, with a topping of tender Parker House dough like his great-grandmother made.

While White cooked, Fetherston readied her apartment for guests like Andrew Bevan, an editor at Teen Vogue, and Tom Palmer, who produces her fashion shows. “A fashion show is similar to a dinner party,” she says. “You have to have a concept, you have to understand timing and you have to think about all the details.” When Fetherston plans dinners, the first thing she thinks about is the flowers. “Boy, am I lucky with flowers,” she says. Her hero is Jeff Leatham, the man behind the incredible floral displays at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. “He taught me to be brave with them and not treat them like they’re too precious. I’m always in a good mood when I’m playing with flowers.”

In the kitchen, Fetherston usually tries to make food healthier—she’s been experimenting with coconut oil, inventing a recipe for silver-dollar-size coconut pancakes. But she approved of the dessert that White and his pastry chef, Bob Truitt, devised for her dinner: over-the-top blondie sundaes with a super-rich caramel sauce and candied nuts. The sundaes are the antithesis of healthy, but Fetherston loved them. And the colors even matched her dress.

The Butterfly Supper Club and Cocktail Bar, 225 W. Broadway, New York City; altamareagroup.com.

Drinks will be big at The Butterfly, promises Michael White. Overseeing the bar is mixologist Eben Freeman (left, teaching White how to make a Brandy Old-Fashioned). “I want to bring back the drinks from my parents’ era, but really well done,” Freeman says. “We’ll serve a Tom Collins, but with kaffir lime.” He plays with the classic Old-Fashioned, making a syrup with maraschino cherries—at The Butterfly he uses all-natural ones—and adding club soda as an unconventional finish.

Recipe: Brandy Old-Fashioneds

View the original article here

A Fashionably Late Dinner Party with Erin Fetherston

As he gets gets ready to launch his New York City supper club, The Butterfly, chef Michael White joins forces with his upstairs neighbor, fashion designer Erin Fetherston, for a dinner party featuring updated comfort-food dishes and classic cocktails.

Chef Michael White is an XXL, former high school offensive left tackle from Beloit, Wisconsin. Erin Fetherston is a California-born, Paris-trained fashion designer who wears a size zero and occasionally models the lacy, feminine dresses in her eponymous line. But they have a few things in common, starting with a New York City address. That’s because White’s latest restaurant, The Butterfly, is directly below Fetherston’s design studio. And when The Butterfly opens this spring, the female staffers will wear Fetherston’s elegant black aprons with sky-blue ruffles.

White understands how food and fashion can intersect. At his flagship restaurant, the luxurious Italian seafood spot Marea, he feeds fashion-industry powerhouses like model Heidi Klum and designer Jason Wu. The good-natured chef debunks the cliché that fashion people don’t eat. “Carine Roitfeld,” says White, naming the former Vogue Paris editor in chief who launched CR Fashion Book. “Her favorite thing in the world is the sea urchin and lardo toast at Marea.” Fetherston also likes food. She and her boyfriend, Gabe Saporta—the front man for the band Cobra Starship—frequently cook together. “I put him on omelet duty,” says Fetherston. “That’s the test of a great chef, right? He makes a mean omelet. So he passed my chef test.”

Recently, Fetherston and White decided to throw a party together to celebrate the upcoming opening of The Butterfly, and to preview its Midwestern-inspired menu. Because neither Fetherston nor Saporta eat meat, White focused on vegetable dishes. One of these is his terrific version of artichoke dip, baked with panko bread crumbs and Parmigiano-Reggiano and topped with crispy shallots. For another dip, White pureed sun-dried tomatoes with olives and capers, a recipe inspired by his mother. At The Butterfly, White will serve potpies with seasonal fillings; for Fetherston’s dinner party, the chef opted for mushrooms and butternut squash, with a topping of tender Parker House dough like his great-grandmother made.

While White cooked, Fetherston readied her apartment for guests like Andrew Bevan, an editor at Teen Vogue, and Tom Palmer, who produces her fashion shows. “A fashion show is similar to a dinner party,” she says. “You have to have a concept, you have to understand timing and you have to think about all the details.” When Fetherston plans dinners, the first thing she thinks about is the flowers. “Boy, am I lucky with flowers,” she says. Her hero is Jeff Leatham, the man behind the incredible floral displays at the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris. “He taught me to be brave with them and not treat them like they’re too precious. I’m always in a good mood when I’m playing with flowers.”

In the kitchen, Fetherston usually tries to make food healthier—she’s been experimenting with coconut oil, inventing a recipe for silver-dollar-size coconut pancakes. But she approved of the dessert that White and his pastry chef, Bob Truitt, devised for her dinner: over-the-top blondie sundaes with a super-rich caramel sauce and candied nuts. The sundaes are the antithesis of healthy, but Fetherston loved them. And the colors even matched her dress.

The Butterfly Supper Club and Cocktail Bar, 225 W. Broadway, New York City; altamareagroup.com.

Drinks will be big at The Butterfly, promises Michael White. Overseeing the bar is mixologist Eben Freeman (left, teaching White how to make a Brandy Old-Fashioned). “I want to bring back the drinks from my parents’ era, but really well done,” Freeman says. “We’ll serve a Tom Collins, but with kaffir lime.” He plays with the classic Old-Fashioned, making a syrup with maraschino cherries—at The Butterfly he uses all-natural ones—and adding club soda as an unconventional finish.

Recipe: Brandy Old-Fashioneds

View the original article here

Swim-Up Dinner Party

Founded by two Chez Panisse cooks, The Market in Massachusetts is an ambitious fish shack steps from the Atlantic. Here, its founders throw a party for their crew. The Market Restaurant crew heads to the Annisquam River for their summer staff party.

The dog days of August run long, hot and hazy on the banks of the Annisquam River in Massachusetts, especially for people who spend those days working behind a stove. The only antidote: a dip in the water. A ragtag restaurant crew drinks chilled rosé and takes turns doing goofy dives off the dock, to giddy applause. Back on the deck, dinner awaits: a giant pot of smoky fish chowder, heirloom tomatoes in a warm anchovy dressing, thick pork chops piled with pickled peaches, slices of buttermilk cake filled with plump blackberries. This is a summer staff party at The Market Restaurant on Lobster Cove in the town of Gloucester.

Opened in 2010 by chef couple Nico Monday and Amelia O’Reilly, The Market is in the Annisquam neighborhood, one of those coastal destinations that make GPS devices go haywire. A faded sign on the old building, once an actual market, still says, “The Market.” But instead of live bait or lobsters in tanks, there’s a daily-changing menu written on a chalkboard behind the bar: oysters with mignonette, lobster-corn fritters, a Provençal tomato-and-Gruyère casserole called a panade. Most of the incredibly fresh ingredients were grown, fished or made within a few miles. All of it smacks of the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and for good reason: Monday and O’Reilly are Chez Panisse alums, and Monday is the godson of the restaurant’s Alice Waters.

Monday’s parents met at Chez Panisse when they were both servers, and he grew up stealing pizza out of the wood-fired oven. As an adult, he naturally turned to cooking, working his way through kitchens in Provence and Italy and even doing a stint at Dario Cecchini’s famed Chianti butcher shop. He returned for a job as a line cook at Chez Panisse, which is where he met O’Reilly, a culinary-school grad who was working the unglamorous garde-manger shift, tasked with doing a lot of the ordering. “You get to see the workings of the restaurant that customers don’t get to see,” she says. “You know the purveyors, the people you get your polenta from, the farmers. Everyone.”

After about four years together at Chez Panisse, the couple started looking for their own project. When work visas to Spain fell through, they came across The Market in O’Reilly’s hometown. Previously a greasy spoon, it had been empty for a year when the two decided to take it over, hiring their friends to help.

The wayward mix of cooks, waitstaff and bartenders is put through the wringer during the 20-week season. The tiny kitchen crew does everything by hand, including pickling, canning and butchering. Still, the feeling is “like summer camp,” says Monday. Many staffers live in cottages across the cove; to get to work, they either swim or walk over a creaky wooden bridge. And after the restaurant closes, they sometimes swim out to a barge owned by a local fisherman to hang out together in its wood-fired sauna.

Today, some of Boston’s best chefs make the one-hour drive up to eat at The Market. Craigie on Main’s Tony Maws, Hungry Mother’s Barry Maiden and Frank McClelland of L’Espalier, who also runs Apple Street Farm a few towns away in Essex, have all visited. “You’re sitting on the harbor, the sun’s setting—everything just tastes better,” says Maws. “It’s almost not fair.”

As night falls, laughter pours out of the sauna, along with buckets of steam, every time another Market staffer enters. Other members of the crew open Caraquet oysters on the dock, tossing shells into the water. O’Reilly takes it all in. “Sometimes I think, Wait, this is our life? All our best friends are at the restaurant with us, everyone arrives on time, wearing what they’re supposed to wear—it’s working,” she says.

Erin Byers Murray is a Boston-based food writer and the author of Shucked.

After sunset, The Market Restaurant crew hangs out on the dock with dessert.

“Everybody likes eggs, and sometimes my staff and I like to have breakfast for a late dinner. This is a recipe we had on the menu for Bastille Day, and it was very popular with the staff, so sometimes we pull it out for a family meal. We allow about three eggs per person, whisking them gently until smooth. We add one tablespoon of cold cubed butter and a splash of water. This allows for a thin, crêpe-like omelet, which is that beautiful French classic we’re going for. Next, you’ll need something savory and delicious to put in the omelet, like herbs and Camembert or any other full-flavored ripe cheese with a similar consistency. It’s easiest to make this style of omelet with a thin, well-seasoned steel skillet, but cast-iron, nonstick or even a crêpe pan will work. Melt a little butter in the pan over medium heat, then pour in one portion of the omelet mixture, shaking the pan gently to even out the depth. Sprinkle on some chopped herbs like parsley, chives and chervil. Lay three or four slices of cheese in a line down the center of the omelet. When the bottom of the omelet is set but the top is still runny, gently slide a rubber spatula under one side and fold over the middle; do the same on the other side. Cook for another 30 seconds or so, until the cheese is barely melted and the eggs are still soft. Slide onto a plate and eat with a garden salad.”—Amelia O’Reilly

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How to Host a Gourmet Dinner

A French philosopher once said that eating alone was sadder than destitution. Certainly, no one likes to eat alone. Now that you have perfected that filet mignon, or vichyssoise soup, (or whatever your signature dish is), you will want to show off to your friends! But hosting a gourmet dinner is much more than good food. In order to truly impress your friends and acquaintances you must use as much skill and attention to details in entertaining as in the preparation of the food. Don't shy away from hosting if you are not by nature the next Martha Stewart. This article contains tips to turn your meal into a real event.

Phase One: Inviting your guests and planning the menu

Unlike barbecues and family reunions, dinner gatherings are meant to be smaller intimate affairs; so your plans should promote lively, yet amiable, conversation. Limit your guest list to six to twelve friends, aiming for around eight. Unless your guests already know each other, you must also do a little social engineering. Consider the interests and personalities of each individual as you make your list. Diversity is great, but make sure your group has enough in common that nobody will feel alienated or left out of the conversation. Be aware of any strong opinions your guests may hold-you don't want your friendly dinner to end up being the clash of the titans!

As you are drawing up your guest list, you will also want to start planning the menu. Your guests may have food restrictions that will affect your menu. If the couple next door is vegetarian and your cousin Dottie is allergic to tomatoes, you may have to exercise creativity in your menu. Take the season into account as well. You don't want the house to be an oven when your guests arrive. Rather, you want the right aromas to greet your guests at the door.

A theme can dictate your menu as well as inspire your décor (see section two: capturing the right mood). If you are an inexperienced host, it's a good idea to choose one big main course and a few easy accompanying dishes. Furthermore, dessert can be kept low-key: ice cream with store-bought cookies, or fresh fruit sprinkled with powdered sugar is always sure to please.

Once you have solidified your guest list, chosen a theme, and decided on a menu, you may want to send out invitations. These don't have to be fancy-unless fancy is your theme for the night. Whether the invitations are computer-generated or store bought, addressing the envelopes in your own handwriting gives them a personal touch.

Phase Two: Capturing the right mood

Restaurant owners know that the atmosphere is as important as the quality of their food when making an impression. Preparing your home for guests doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg, and it doesn't have to be time consuming if you use a little creative thinking, and follow a few simple rules of thumb. Mainly, you should consider the lighting, sound, and table settings.

Nothing creates ambiance like lighting and music. Dimmed lights and candles and soft jazz can turn your dining room into elegance personified. Alternately, playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and opening your windows on a bright sunny day can feel refreshing and Italian. The mood should reflect the meal.

Since the table will be the focal point of your evening, you must give it some thought. If you already have a beautiful dining room table, that's great; but the night's not a bust if you don't. Any long surface propped to the right height will work, and once it is covered with a table cloth no one will know the difference anyway. Think outside the box. I once served country fried chicken on bales of hay topped with red checkered tablecloths and daisies. I've known friends to "set" the floor-they literally spread a table cloth on the floor, and used cushions for guests to sit against. If space is tight, or as a last resort, it's not a sin to seat guests on the couch with their plates on their laps.

Here are some tips for setting your table. First, use real plates and china. If you don't have them you can buy a set at your local thrift store for almost as cheap as a package of Dixie cups. (There's no rule that they all have to match...) Likewise, use a real table cloth and napkins. If you have none and funds are tight, try a fabric store. A flat bed sheet works in a pinch. Use your creativity for napkin rings, or check out a book on folding napkins. Consider making name tags, especially if your guests don't know each other, and keep centerpieces short enough to see over comfortably.

Phase Three: The big day

If you have entertained before you know that timing is the biggest challenge you face. You don't want to be rushing around the kitchen getting everything done while your guests try to stop their stomachs from rumbling. However, you don't want everything done so far in advance that it is dried out and tasteless by the time everyone is at the table. Solve this dilemma by setting out appetizers and drinks as your guests arrive. This buys you the time you need to assemble the meal. Make sauces ahead of time and blanch vegetables so that all you have to do is sauté them. Consider doing the European thing and serving salad after the main course, so that your guests don't fill up before sampling your pièce de résistance! Keep water and drinks at the table to encourage guests to lingering and conversation.

As a final touch, start your dinner with a traditional toast. This fosters a feeling of community and starts the evening out on festive footing. Without a doubt, drinking to your good health and friendships will make each meal a memorable one.

Emma Snow is a gourmet and freelance writer. Writing for Gourmet Living http://www.gourmet-living.com and BBQ Shop http://www.bbq-shop.net

How to Make a Gourmet Fish Taco Dinner on Any Budget

Are you looking for fish taco recipes? This article will provide you with a great fish taco recipe that you can make on any budget.

Everyone loves Mexican Food

Let's face it, we all love Mexican food but sometimes recipes from Mexico can't always be recreated authentically because the ingredients don't always fit into the average families budget. What's the solution to this problem? Either you go to your local fast food burrito restaurant or you visit your local Taco Bell to satisfy your craving. Most people would rather chew through their arm than eat at Taco Bell and just ignore their craving all together if they can't afford to eat out at a decent Mexican food restaurant.

Gourmet Fish Tacos

Tacos are one of my favorite traditional Mexican foods and are the one Mexican dish that my family eats frequently whenever we get the Mexican food craving. We also love seafood tacos and love to recreate the authentic gourmet fish tacos that we found in California and Mexico by adding ingredients like salsa, avocado and lime juice. Sounds expensive right? Believe it or not you can make a yummy, authentic tasting, gourmet fish tacos on any budget.

Here's how you find bargain seafood

You can make your gourmet fish tacos on any budget by using fish like flounder, tilapia and bass.

I've found that stores like Walmart and Costco offer great deals on fish that help to satisfy my Gourmet Fish Taco craving.

Another great way to find bargain seafood is by checking out the fresh and frozen food isles of your local grocery store. You can also find great deals on fish at local fishmonger. Many cities along the coast in California have fishmongers that offer catch of the day specials from local waters.

Budget Crunching Gourmet Fish Taco Recipe

This recipe can easily serve six people and is perfect for any occasion.

Here's what you will need:

* 1/2 cup nonfat sour cream

* 1/2 cup nonfat mayonnaise

* 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

* 1 package taco seasoning mix

* 1 pound of fish fillets

* 2 tablespoons lemon juice

* 1 package taco shells (Warm 6 of them)

Here are the toppings you will need:

* shredded cabbage

* chopped tomato

* lime juice

* taco sauce

Here's how to cook them:

Start by combining sour cream, mayonnaise, cilantro and two tablespoons of your favorite seasoning mix in small bowl.

Next combine your fish, vegetable oil, lemon juice and remaining seasoning mix in medium bowl then pour into large skillet.

Cook by stirring constantly, over medium-high heat for 4 to 5 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with fork.

Once the fish is cooked set everything out on your table and let your guests prepare and garnish their tacos themselves.

For the most delicious gourmet tartar sauce and gourmet cocktail sauce you will ever have click here or visit http://www.malibugourmetseafood.com

A Chef's Dinner Party Recipes

There’s a new way for restaurant groupies to get up-close-and-personal with the chefs they revere: Kitchit, an online company that connects great pro cooks with fans who want to hire them for parties. Here, San Francisco chef Jeff Banker grills a rooftop feast.

Nowadays, it has become increasingly possible to spend time at home with your favorite chefs—by watching them on TV, for instance, or using their branded cookware. But through a startup called Kitchit.com, restaurant fanatics can now bring actual chefs into their home kitchens. No kidnapping required.

Kitchit’s Ian Ferguson enjoys chef Jeff Banker’s dinner party recipes. Photo © Peden-Munk.

The site gives people with a chef obsession the chance to browse the profiles of seriously seasoned cooks, contact them via the web and book them for events of all kinds—like an elegant dinner party with a pajama dress code, say, or a whole-hog tailgate roast. Currently operating in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, with plans to expand to New York and Chicago this year, Kitchit has a roster of talent that includes boldface names like Traci Des Jardins, plus lesser-known cooks from renowned restaurants. Beyond preparing spectacular meals that would put most caterers to shame, the chefs might also teach cooking classes or lead farmers’-market tours. “When my mother and father came to town, I hired a chef to take us shopping,” says Kitchit co-founder Ian Ferguson. “Back at my apartment, he taught my mom how to butterfly a leg of lamb, then created a menu on the spot. My parents couldn’t stop talking about it.”

Jeff Banker works the grill to create delicious summer dinner party recipes. Photo © Peden-Munk.

The rooftop grilling party on the pages here represents another singular Kitchit experience. The chef is Jeff Banker, who owns San Francisco’s terrific Baker & Banker with his (aptly named) pastry-chef wife, Lori Baker. Their phenomenal menu—an innovative salad with feta, strawberries and almonds; salmon with lemon and dill, grilled on a cedar plank; brown-butter chocolate-chip cookies—would be perfect for your next summer party. At least until your favorite chef is on Kitchit.

Perfect wine pairings for summer dinner party recipes. Photo © Peden-Munk.

Baker & Banker wine director Chris Tang shares his value picks:

Picpoul, a light white wine from southern France’s Languedoc region, is spectacular with all different kinds of seafood.

This citrusy Provençal-style rosé from a small winery in Santa Cruz, California, can pair with just about anything.

When it’s warm out, this versatile, vibrant young red from Italy’s Veneto region is refreshing served slightly chilled.

Delicious grilled dinner party recipes from San Francisco chef Jeff Banker. © Peden+Munk

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Berlin's Best Dinner Party

Stephan Landwehr is the man to know in Berlin if you care about contemporary art. He invites the city’s tastemakers to his house for a preview of his latest venture: a restaurant reinterpreting German classics.

Stephan Landwehr welcomes friends to his art-filled home for a dinner party featuring updated German recipes. Photo © Lisa Linder.

For someone who is not an artist, Stephan Landwehr’s life is very much shaped by art. As Berlin’s premier framer, he is a major player in the city’s art scene. A shrewd collector and occasional curator, Landwehr co-owns the five-year-old Grill Royal, which he funded in part by selling a museum-worthy painting by Scottish artist Peter Doig for $2 million. The ambitious steak house has become a culinary hangout for key figures in the German art world, and a food critics’ favorite as well.

Landwehr is also known around Berlin for entertaining on a more personal scale. The dinner parties he hosts with his business partner Boris Radczun—a dapper former nightlife impresario and passionate home cook—are legendary for the amazing assembly of people (there have been as many as 400 guests) in his quirky, art-filled home. But lately, the success of the Grill Royal has kept Landwehr and Radczun too busy to organize many gatherings.

Today, though, they’re having a dinner party to celebrate something new. The two of them, along with a third partner, Jessica Paul, have just launched Pauly Saal & Bar. Pauly Saal encompasses a modern German restaurant and a private dining room; a deli called Mogg & Melzer is located next door. The sprawling space takes up the entire ground floor and courtyard of the former Jewish Girls School, a 1928 brick structure that’s in the heart of Berlin’s fashionable Mitte district. The building has stood virtually empty for more than 15 years.

Siegfried Danler creates a menu of updated German recipes. Photo © Lisa Linder.

For this enormous enterprise, the restaurateurs enlisted Michelin-starred, Austrian-born chef Siegfried Danler to help revive the tradition of an archetypal Berlin grand café from the 1920s. Danler has created a menu focusing on lighter, more organic versions of classic German dishes, some of which are being served at the party. For an update on chicken with dandelion greens, for instance, the chef uses roast guinea hens with tender braised endives. He serves the succulent birds with a few satisfying accompaniments: boiled, buttered fingerling potatoes and thick, meaty slices of king oyster mushroom slow-cooked in chicken stock.

Landwehr and Radczun are both passionate about Germany’s culinary history; they can discuss it for hours and hours. For generations, they say, the shame of the Second World War separated the nation from its food traditions. “Back when the wall between East and West Germany fell in 1989, there were a lot of us in West Berlin who wished it would have stayed up,” Landwehr says. “That’s because, for many years, we were able to think of ourselves as Berliners rather than as Germans.”

Still, about a decade after the wall came down, West Berliners started to explore the beaches and massive stretches of forest of the former East Germany. They slowly began embracing the ingredients found there, many of which appear on the menu at Pauly Saal. “We’ve got it all—fish from the lakes and from the Baltic Sea, meat and vegetables from Brandenburg,” Radczun says. “We might have to go a little further south for the red wine, but the Spätburgunder coming from Fritz Keller in the Black Forest is as good as any Bordeaux.”

The party to celebrate their hard work on Pauly Saal is the first one the hosts have thrown in a while. This time, Radczun, who usually prepares the food for dinner parties, isn’t cooking himself; instead Danler is previewing a test menu from the restaurant for an eclectic mix of friends, including up-and-coming artists, favorite farmers and other influential Berliners.

Stephan Landwehr hosts a dinner party featuring reinvented German recipes. Photo © Lisa Linder.

An invitation to Landwehr’s home is a coveted event for several reasons. The house, in a building that was a laundry for almost a century, is full of amazing art. Even the L-shaped kitchen could double as an art installation: Landwehr framed panes of colored glass to use as cupboard fronts and lined the walls with drawings and photographs by notable artists such as Marc Brandenburg and Angus Fairhurst. The focal point of the living area is a stuffed, bandaged fox on a pedestal, wearing a jaunty green hat and carrying a walking stick. It’s one of the few sculptures created by German artist Daniel Richter. “I think he made about six of these foxes,” Landwehr says. “He’s giving me the last one he has, so I’ll have two to use to decorate Pauly Saal.”

In the living area, where an abstract portrait of Landwehr by the German painter and sculptor Thomas Scheibitz hangs with three other enormous canvases over the couch, guests drink glasses of deep red Spätburgunder and snack on appetizers of mini open-face pastrami sandwiches on toasted rye, spread with mustard. Instead of tart dill pickles, the traditional accompaniment to pastrami, Danler offers colorful toppings that are each a little bit tangy, including shredded green cabbage with sour-cream dressing, quickly pickled red cabbage and yellow lentils stewed with white wine vinegar and laced with minced scallions.

Dinner party guests enjoy Siegfried Danler’s menu of German recipes. Photo © Lisa Linder.

Gradually, the guests begin to arrange themselves around a wooden dining table underneath a monumental painting by Sean Landers of a clown walking through an arctic landscape. The first course is a mix of vegetables: sautéed local morels with fresh green asparagus and a bright butter-lettuce salad. Nils Odefay, a farmer who raises what he calls “happy chickens,” sits near Michael Zehden, a Berlin hotelier and the owner of a high-end kosher catering company that has fed everyone from the Pope to German chancellor Angela Merkel.

After the guinea hen main course, Danler serves sweet poppy seed–stuffed quark (fresh cheese) dumplings with cooked rhubarb. Zehden’s catering chef, Roman Albrecht, makes a second dessert: semolina dumplings served with tart apricot preserves. Although he’s not Jewish, Albrecht is well known for his kosher cooking at Liebermanns Restaurant in the Jewish Museum Berlin. In Pauly Saal’s private dining room, he’ll serve kosher meals on Friday evenings, as well as for Sunday brunch.

For Pauly Saal’s owners, it’s entirely fitting to offer traditional German and kosher meals under one roof in the former Jewish Girls School. “We’re calling it The Kosher Classroom,” Zehden says. “We hope to attract everyone, from local Berliners curious to learn more about kosher food to groups of Orthodox Jewish travelers.”

“Mazel tov!” says someone at the table. “Guten appetit!” Landwehr adds, as the guests pick up their forks.

Gisela Williams is the European correspondent for Food & Wine. She lives with her family in Berlin.

Stephan Landwehr (center), Boris Radczun and Jessica Paul offer lighter versions of classic German recipes at their new restaurant, Pauly Saal. Photo © Lisa Linder.

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A 2,000-Degree Dinner Party with the Artisans at Esque

Glassblowing meets grass-fed beef when the artisans at Portland, Oregon’s Esque host a dinner party at their studio, inviting star chef Naomi Pomeroy to cook in their superhot ovens.

At Esque Studio in Portland, Oregon, things happen quickly. In less than five minutes, a glassblower can transform a small molten blob at the end of a long tube into a drinking glass; in about half an hour, the glassblower can create a foot-long vase. And in the studio’s 2,000-degree oven, a roast beef for eight people—the main course for an amazing dinner party—will cook in only about three minutes.

Chef Naomi Pomeroy uses Esque studio’s glass oven to roast minty snap peas. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

Andi Kovel and Justin Parker, cofounders of Esque, are part of both fast-moving experiences. The pair launched Esque a dozen years ago after meeting at Parsons design school in New York City. They soon became known as glass artists, creating beautiful but functional items in saturated colors like fuchsia and mint green. For the spring 2012 season (like fashion designers, Kovel and Parker create two lines a year), Esque features items like oil and vinegar cruets that resemble elegantly mutated test tubes and paperweights that look like bubblegum bubbles.

Esque’s studio, in an industrial part of the city, is very much a working space; still, Kovel and Parker sometimes host dinners there. Parker, an avid cook, learned this style of entertaining from his former teacher, Italian glassblowing master Pino Signoretto, who would have elaborate Italian meals in his studio after a day of work. Parker’s specialty is tacos: He brings carnitas or roasted root vegetables from home, then very briefly heats flour tortillas in the glass oven. But sometimes the studio meals are more ambitious. Periodically, Kovel and Parker open the huge garage-style door, spread white tablecloths on one of their long worktables and invite a great local chef, like Naomi Pomeroy, to come cook.

The Esque team designed sky-blue bowls for the meal. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

Pomeroy, an F&W Best New Chef 2009, first met the Esque team in 2002, when they made glassware and art for her now-defunct restaurant Ripe. For a recent dinner to celebrate the expansion of her current restaurant, Beast, Kovel and Parker created serving dishes specifically for her food. When Pomeroy decided to serve curried spring carrot soup with tarragon oil, Parker designed sky-blue soup bowls that look like pools of liquid glass—a version of Esque’s clear Lump bowls.

Parker and Kovel are usually blowing glass when guests arrive, and this party is no exception. “It’s a little performance-arty, but we’re usually about 10 pieces behind schedule,” says Parker, who gives guests a quick glassblowing lesson. (His girlfriend, Kim McCleod, who works at the boutique Oregon winery Anne Amie Vineyards, comes for the meal but passes on the class.) Then Pomeroy begins cooking vegetables in the intense heat of the oven, blasting snap peas before tossing them simply with lemon oil and shredded mint. “In the glass oven, the snap peas cook so fast, but they stay bright and crispy on the inside,” she says. “It’s like you’re walking in your garden picking peas, but they’re caramelized peas.”

Esque’s Justin Parker and Andi Kovel collaborate to make glassware. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

For the main course, Pomeroy sears eye of round beef in the oven in minutes, taking it out of the intense heat every 20 seconds or so to be sure it stays rosy pink inside, then serving it with a conserve of oven-roasted tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. “I love cooking like this,” says Pomeroy. “People are standing around while you’re taking things from the oven that are incendiary. And the drama: You pull out a piece of meat, and it’s smoking, and it’s crazy. But then you see that it’s just steam. And when the steam clears, you see this beautiful piece of meat. It’s like knife-throwing dinner theater.”

To make sure that ingredients cook evenly and don’t stick, preheat pans or skillets before adding the vegetables or meat. (And make sure they’re ovenproof.)

Rub meat or toss vegetables with a little oil before putting them in a very hot oven. “You don’t want them to brown too quickly,” says Naomi Pomeroy.

Any meat that benefits from quick cooking does well in a very hot oven (many steak houses cook beef at 1,000 degrees and above). A little bit of sugar helps beef brown.

Sturdy green vegetables, like asparagus and snap peas, caramelize in a very hot oven, becoming sweet and brown on the outside while staying fresh and crisp within.

Sweet Cauliflower-and-Carrot Pickles

« Curried Carrot Soup with Tarragon Oil

Roasted Beets with Pistachios, Herbs and Orange

Roast Beef with Oven-Roasted Tomato Salsa

Blistered Snap Peas with Mint

Prune Upside-Down Cakes

Tips from former Food & Wine Best New Chefs

The artisans behind Esque host a high-heat dinner party with star chef Naomi Pomeroy. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

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A Fabulous Cal-Japanese Dinner Party

Chef Sylvan Mishima Brackett of Peko Peko Catering treats California as if it were a province of Japan, serving hyperseasonal dishes on exquisite ceramics.

Any good caterer knows that garnishes should be fresh. But it would be a reckless understatement to call Sylvan Mishima Brackett “good.” For a casual dinner with friends, the owner of Oakland, California-based Japanese catering company Peko Peko makes a 40-minute detour to a friend’s backyard in Berkeley. In the fading light, he clambers over hillocks of wild watercress, his bee-striped sneakers growing damp as he crouches down to hunt for the tenderest shoots. He snaps off 10 or 12 of them, stem by stem.

Back in the test kitchen at his house, Brackett prepares the soup course. In the drafty converted garage where he tests new dishes, he plans to make silken tofu bathed in dashi stock and garnished with crabmeat. Serious Japanese cooks shave their own dried tuna for dashi, so he hammers the blade of his Japanese carpenter’s plane into place and unpacks the katsuobushi (dried, fermented and smoked skipjack tuna) that he bought in Japan. (Born in Kyoto and raised in California, Brackett returns to Japan at least once a year to eat and to stock his pantry.)

Sylvan Mishima Bracket of Peko Peko Catering forms crab and pork dumplings. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

Kirk Lombard, a fisherman friend, knocks on the door bearing Dungeness crab fresh from the Bay. In the warm glow of the two bulbs hanging from the raftered ceiling, Brackett hands his visitor a glass of tart-sweet plum wine, brewed from fruit harvested from another friend’s backyard. He pulls the crabs out of the bucket, their claws snapping furiously. His test kitchen has no stove, but the next afternoon, Brackett will fire up one of his three 50,000-plus BTU portable wok burners to steam the seafood.

Despite all the attention to detail, Brackett himself is wonderfully mellow. With Peko Peko, he aims to capture the low-key atmosphere of Japan’s most informal dining venues, the drinking pubs called izakayas. “Izakayas really took off in the 1950s and ’60s, when the new class of salarymen would go out to eat,” he explains. “The best ones were located under the train tracks, little stalls selling simple things.” He loved the scene, he says. “I wanted to re-create some of that feeling in California.”

Peko Peko Catering menus. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

To foster a “throwback-y” atmosphere, he Photoshops images from Japanese matchbooks from the 1920s and ’40s to use for his menus. (He taught himself graphic design as Alice Waters’s longtime personal assistant, and later the creative director of Chez Panisse.) Unusual for a catering operation, he has also commissioned his own hand-thrown Japanese plates, many from one of his cooks, Yuko Sato, who studied ceramics in Tokyo and has an online shop, Nama Ya (nama-ya.com). Just in the last year, his client list has grown to include tech companies, which order his beautiful bento-box meals by the hundreds, and the more experimental-minded Scribe Winery, which, for a recent party, invited him to run a secret udon restaurant inside a closet. He has also begun looking at spaces to open a restaurant.

Peko Peko Catering’s Sylvan Mishima Brackett steams rice over a wood fire. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

Brackett’s wife, Jenny Wapner, a cookbook editor, has spoken to him about moderation. But she doesn’t mind that his test kitchen has taken over their yard: Brackett prefers foods cooked over wood fires. At the dinner party the next night, as their friends arrive, he grills exquisite chicken-and-yuzu meatballs on the yakitori grill he’s improvised on the mantle of their outdoor fireplace. When a log explodes, issuing a loud pop, Wapner doesn’t blink but sends Brackett to check the wood-fired Japanese rice cooker. It’s blazing at full strength to steam rice stirred with tangy pickled cherry blossoms—flowers harvested from yet another friend’s backyard.

“There’s this tension,” Brackett admits as he stirs the fire to settle the coals. “Once people call you a chef, you feel compelled to justify it. My food is getting fancier.” He pulls down one of Sato’s matte, iron-hued platters, on which he’ll serve a cloud-like omelet laced with mirin and soy sauce. As he fusses with another garnish of pickled ginger, he laughs. “I need to go back to meat on sticks.”

Emily Kaiser Thelin is a writer and former F&W editor living in Berkeley, California.

Peko Peko Catering’s Sylvan Mishima Brackett creates new dishes in the converted garage he calls his test kitchen. Photo © Fredrika Stjärne.

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Family Dinner Recipes

F&W’s Grace Parisi shares homey recipes to please finicky eaters and omnivores alike.

I am not one to indulge picky eaters. It’s probably a holdover from my childhood—the resounding “I’m not a short-order cook!” from my mother, nightly. We ate one dinner. I picked the peppers out of my frittata, stashed the tomatoes from my caprese in my napkin and snuck whatever I could to the dog. Now that I’m the family cook, my strategy is to prepare dishes everyone will be happy to eat. Sure, we have a lot of broccoli and green beans—since my kids happen to like them—and because one of my children can’t bear spicy foods, the rest of us make do with hot sauce on the side. But as my kids have grown up, so have their taste buds, which is a relief beyond words. The recipes here should satisfy everyone at your table. If they don’t, remember: Most kids know how to make PB&Js.

Sipp organic sodas are fruity but not too sweet. haveasipp.com.

Made with wine grapes, Navarro Vineyards Pinot Noir Grape Juice ($11) pairs almost as well with food as wine does. navarrowine.com.

Courtesy of Kobrand Corporation

Berry-rich Barbera, like the 2009 Michele Chiarlo Le Orme ($15), is terrific with dishes that feature tomatoes.

Fast family dinner recipes from F&W’s Grace Parisi. Photo © Pernille Pedersen.

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Have the best dinner party with Gourmet Food on the table

Dinners are wonderful, especially if you're just one of the participants. An Hosting is a nightmare for many, especially for mothers or wives. The tasks are really tiresome and are also subject to the control, if you like it or not. To host a party takes a lot of planning and looking for someone to satisfy is not always the best idea, even more important if you are on a budget crunch. To get rid of these concerns and reduce the work to be done, looking for an online gourmet food provider can give you the answers. This can be a good tool to ensure the quality of food you will serve as well as increase your time on other things.

The next thing you need to worry about is how to give your home a little retouching. Please note that submission and the overall appearance of the House can integrate the type of food they serve. If you plan to serve the best gourmet food then make sure that the environment is suitable for you. No matter how delicious the food is, the mood of those who eat them is also a big factor to consider. The covers of your table, the curtain on your wall, the music that you play and the food that will serve all give the verdict at the end of the day.

Nowadays, you can seek the help of chef that provides its services on a basis of appointment. While searching for the best food and gourmet online, see if you can also ask a good cook make cooking for you. Once again, you will find information about this type of service via the Internet. The important thing to remember is to exhaust all possibilities, so you can get the party that is difficult to forget.

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Gourmet Food Recipes Online Can Help a Dinner Party

The prospect of having to host a dinner party can be stressful enough to reduce the most hardened veteran to tears. Anyone who's been involved in work behind the scenes would know that cooking the food for the party is just one part of the intensive preparation that needs to be carried out prior to the event. Even so, this doesn't detract from the importance of acquiring gourmet food recipes online.

It's important to keep the décor in mind when throwing a dinner party. Buying a completely new dining and living room set is extravagant, needless and out of the question. It's possible to glam up your home without breaking the budget. Always remember that guests perceive the setting as a reflection of the meal to come. Therefore, one would not expect the best gourmet food in dull and dowdy surroundings. Different slip covers for the furniture and good quality dining utensils are things you can't do without.

Once you've sorted out any décor issues, it's time to plan the menu. Settling on a specific theme makes it a lot easier to put together a meal. Exotic foods like Thai or Filipino or even a medley of well-known Asian dishes are likely to be well-received by guests. Deciding on a particular theme makes it easy for you to look for gourmet food recipes online as recipes can be grouped either based on their main component or the region from which they originate.

You will need to go shopping after deciding on a theme and décor. The shopping can be divided into two trips - one for non-perishables (decorations, cutlery, etc.) and one for perishables (food). Shopping in a methodical manner helps eliminate stress and a shopping list will prevent you from forgetting anything. It also helps you budget too, as the best gourmet food doesn't come cheap. Never shop for food on an empty stomach either as this leaves you open to impulse food buys, loss of focus and potentially blowing your budget.

It's important to send out your invites early so that it doesn't clash with anything else guests might have planned. As the day of the dinner party approaches, the guest list should be finalized and attendances confirmed.

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Spruce Your Dinner Party With Specialty Gourmet Foods

One best way to come together as a family or with your friends is by throwing a party. This is because of the fun and thrills that you are bound to get.

Dinner parties have become so common in the current community thus if you are planning one you need to ensure that it is the bomb and that every person attending the event is fully satisfied. There are many ways in which you can dapper this event, this can include great entertainment, unique setting and theme and so on but one thing that pimps a dinner event is dinner.

You have to ensure that the type of food that you are lining up for your guest is fresh and worth to reckon all through. There are many types of foods that you can offer during this event but non can match the satisfaction of gourmet food mixes. This is because the food is beautifully cooked and packed which is imperative in boosting appetite.

Gourmet foods are with no doubt the desire and love and most people irrespective of social of social status in the society and most of them strive to have a meal of this type. Your dinner party will be one to remember if you ensure that your guests are treated to gourmet food mixes.

One significant thing about this type of food is that there are many other varieties that you get from it as long as you know how to prepare it. In case you have minimal information on preparation of gourmet foods, then it is advisable that you seek the services of a local chef. Ingredients of this food are easily available in the local grocery shops or food shops at affordable prices.

One way to spruce your dinner party is to have Specialty gourmet foods. You can also add some flavor to it with Gourmet Food Mixes.

The most popular Gourmet Food for dinner

Gourmet food is refined and elegant kitchen which is great for entertaining guests and dinners. Is rich in flavor, delicious and provides a beautiful aesthetic. In addition, food baskets are an excellent choice for gifts for friends and relatives. There are many types of gourmet foods ranging from simple cheese and smoked meats, crackers and smoked salmon. Decide on the perfect gourmet food depends largely on your palate, as well as the presentation you want.

With its smoky, buttery flavour and smoked salmon is always a favorite and wonderful flavors in any variation. Smoked Norwegian salmon is for those who wish for a strong, smoky flavour and intense. Produced by Norwegians, handsomely trimmed portions of salmon are treated with a mixture of sugar and salt and slowly smoked. The result is a smooth velvet plot thread, a subtly smoky and salty flavor and a nice color peach. For those with the most demanding palates, cutting Balyk salmon fillet is the most exclusive and desired.

In addition, The Hot Norwegian smoked salmon is not only intense but also provides a very rich and flaky texture that melts in your mouth. Hot smoked salmon can be served as a main dish or appetizer and is very different from its counterpart chilled. For its rich nature, this salmon is much thicker and more nutritious than smoked Norwegian salmon.

Conversely, Scottish smoked salmon is tender, delicate and smooth. Ranked as the world's most popular salmon fillet smoked Scottish is less smoky and thinner than Norwegian cuts. Characterized by a pinkish-orange color and delicate meat, the Scottish salmon can be reserved for some of your best entertaining.

Also, dill-rubbed a little-known Scottish salmon Gravadlax is listed as a favorite with many gastronomy shops. This delicacy is becoming increasingly popular around the circuit and gourmet food. The salmon is marinated in a unique blend of salt, sugar, and Dill who is hand-polished, clean and slowly smoked, creating a rich and unique flavor. Best is a mustard-dill sauce.

Although there are numerous varieties of gourmet food, wine and cheese pairings were timeless and traditional parts of the family and gourmet food. Moreover, they are a sophisticated addition to a salmon appetizer or a meal. With over 350 types of cheese, offered by many grocery stores, the options are endless. However, following some simple tips on appropriate combinations will ensure that your Board of cheese is elegant and memorable.

Some of the most popular gourmet cheeses and wines combinations include: Swiss with Sparkling, blue Anti with door, Boursin with Gewurztraminer, Brie with Sweet Sherry, Mild Cheddar with Chardonnay, Strong Cheddar, Feta cheese with Cabernet with Beaujolais, Gouda, Havarti with Riesling with Bordeaux, Muenster, Provolone with Zinfandel with Chardonnay and Gorgonzola with Sauternes.

A dinner is complete without a little sweet. There are several selections of chocolates and desserts to choose from. Provides a decadent Dessert, ending in the evening. Although it is hard to go wrong with any kind of sweet, some of the most popular include: chocolate truffles, Marzipan, Jam Tarts, cakes and mousses.

Gourmet food is a rich, silky and decadent to host a party or send a special gift. Some of the most popular foods include smoked salmon, wine and cheese. Providing an array of these items will not disappoint even the most sophisticated palates.

There are many types of gourmet foods ranging from simple cheese and smoked meats, crackers and smoked salmon. Decide the gourmet food perfect depends largely on your palate, as well as the presentation you want.