supper club

So I guess we're old enough to be doing supper clubs now.

Not to be confused with the potluck I'm going to shortly, where I'm bringing beer and a bag of pistachios. This is supper club, pinkies up!

This weekend, a co-worker hosted his first bi-monthly "blind" supper club, meaning a certain group was invited but without knowing the rest of the guest list. Everyone was assigned a course, told to pick a partner, make their dish for 22 people (bite-size), and coordinate with the theme "winter."

mmm peanut/carrot/ginger soup

Having mostly hosted/attended dinners where melted Velveeta cheese was a perfectly acceptable dish, I knew that wasn't going to fly with this group. This is a pickling, microbrewing, homemade-pasta-making crowd. I mean, they literally handmade the benches that we sat on. THAT kind of group. All good things, just far above my skill set, which only yesterday expanded to include the use of a food processor.

food processor proof. I'm thinking we could use more counter space

They mixed up the seating so you were near your partner, but not next to them - probably for setups, as I think we were the only married couple there (=we're old). Each pair served up their course with a short description of who they were, what inspired their dish, why it made them think of winter, etc. Since my dish was mostly inspired by desperation, I didn't have much of a storyline. The host had asked for the title of our dishes earlier in the week and I told him "Fire & Ice" because that seemed just vague enough to leave me options. Of course, by the time he'd printed the menus and I'd started actually considering my dish, I realized anything super hot or super cold is pretty much the worst thing to transport across town to a dinner for 22 people.

I gave up on that little ditty and settled for an apricot-walnut-brandy rugelach, with a small brandy sour drink on the side. I gotta say, even though these suckers took me all day to make, I was so super proud of putting something edible in front of a room of mostly strangers and not poisoning one single person. I wish I'd take a picture but I was more focused on serving :( It did look sort of like this picture though: 

that dough had to be mixed, frozen, filled, rolled, re-frozen, and baked. sheesh.

Other dishes were things like lamb with truffle mac & cheese, homemade pasta served two ways, spaghetti squash with an avocado/mango salsa....

If they let us back to the next edition, we'd definitely go again! Maybe I can even learn how to conquer the ole dough blade...