Party
409 recipes found
Baked Apples With Honey and Apricot
Baked apples are a humble dessert, but these have a certain elegance. Stuffed with dried apricots and raisins, glazed with honey and apricot jam, and served with crème fraîche, they are delicious warm or at room temperature.
Salt and Pepper Lassi with Mint
This savory lassi variation includes salt and mint leaves, which are traditional, and black pepper and lime zest, which are not. It’s the kind of thing to serve with juicy ripe melon and prosciutto for a light hot weather lunch, or to offer as a nonalcoholic alternative at a cocktail party. Sheeps’ milk yogurt lends a lovely earthiness to the mix but plain cows’ milk yogurt is a perfectly fine alternative. Feel free to adjust the salt and sugar levels to suit your taste. You want this on the savory side, but a little more sweetness works nicely with the pepper and mint.
Crunchy Coconut Twists
At first glance, these long, skinny cookies look a lot like savory cheese straws, the kind of thing you’d nibble with cocktails. But those golden shreds are coconut, not Cheddar, embedded in store-bought puff pastry and coated with sugar. They’re crunchy, caramelized, and look dramatic on a cookie plate. Try to seek out all-butter pastry for the richest flavor. And if you come across chocolate puff pastry, even better!
Gâteau d’Hélène (Coconut Cake)
This coconut cake was adapted from a recipe by Simone (Simca) Beck, best known as Julia Child’s co-author on “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” She called it “Gâteau d’Hélène: a white cake filled and iced with coconut cream and apricot.” The recipe, published in Ms. Beck’s 1972 book, “Simca’s Cuisine” (Lyons Press, 1998), capped what she called a “carefree lunch” because it could be made ahead. Indeed, this cake is best baked, filled, frosted and refrigerated for at least an hour (or up to two days). Kind of like a madeleine, its layers are purposefully a bit dry, as they need to hold a dousing of orange juice and rum. The whipped cream filling and frosting is soft and dreamy. It’s an elegant celebration cake.
Roasted Chicken Provençal
This is a recipe I picked up from Steven Stolman, a clothing and interior designer whose “Confessions of a Serial Entertainer” is a useful guide to the business and culture of dinner parties and general hospitality. It is a perfect dinner-party meal: chicken thighs or legs dusted in flour and roasted with shallots, lemons and garlic in a bath of vermouth and under a shower of herbes de Provence. They go crisp in the heat above the fat, while the shallots and garlic melt into sweetness below. You could serve with rice, but I prefer a green salad and a lot of baguette to mop up the sauce.
Slow-Roasted Turkish Lamb
This lamb must be cooked until completely tender and succulent, but if time is a concern, it may also be prepared well in advance and reheated in the pan juices to serve. Shoulder is the best cut to use, or lamb shanks. It’s finished with a bright garnish of pomegranate seeds and sliced persimmons. Small Fuyu persimmons are delicious eaten firm and raw, like an apple, unlike the larger Hachiya type, which must be ripe and soft to be palatable (and would not be suitable here). Lacking persimmons, use more pomegranate. Serve it with rice pilaf, if desired.
Rice Pilaf With Pumpkin, Currants and Pine Nuts
A well-made rice pilaf may be prepared in advance and reheated, covered, in a medium-hot oven. In Turkey, short-grain Bomba rice is preferred, but you may substitute Arborio, or long-grained white rice if you wish. Be sure to rinse the rice well, which will help the grains to remain separate, not clumped together.
Momofuku’s Bo Ssam
This is a recipe to win the dinner party sweepstakes, and at very low stakes: slow-roasted pork shoulder served with lettuce, rice and a raft of condiments. The chef David Chang serves the dish, known by its Korean name, bo ssam, at his Momofuku restaurant in the East Village and elsewhere. He shared the recipe with The Times in 2012. Mr. Chang is known as a kitchen innovator, but his bo ssam is a remarkably straightforward way to achieve high-level excellence with little more than ingredients and time. Simply cure the pork overnight beneath a shower of salt and some sugar, then roast it in a low oven until it collapses. Apply some brown sugar and a little more salt, then roast the skin a while longer until it takes on the quality of glistening bark. Meanwhile, make condiments – hot sauces and kimchi, rice, some oysters if you wish. Then tear meat off the bone and wrap it in lettuce, and keep at that until everything’s gone.
Pulled Pork Sandwiches
This recipe takes a good deal of time, but it yields a lot of sandwiches, more than enough for a sloppy, spicy dinner party feast. You’ll roast a dry-rubbed pork shoulder in the oven until it’s pull-apart tender, 3 or 4 hours that you can spend doing other things while your kitchen fills with the aroma of the cooking meat. Then you’ll assemble a quick slaw and simmer a tangy barbecue sauce for about 10 minutes before putting it all out on the table with soft rolls. Serve the combination warm, at any time of the year, for a weekend project well worth an afternoon’s work.
Baby Back Ribs With Sweet and Sour Glaze
This sticky baby back ribs recipe needs just two things: time in the oven and a jammy, savory sauce. Inspired by old-fashioned cocktail meatball recipes from the 1960s and ’70s, this sweet and sour glaze — a shellac of Concord grape jelly, soy sauce and rice vinegar — lacquers tender baby back ribs that cook from start to finish in the oven. Whether you serve these with beer at a party or with white rice as a fun dinner, you’ll probably need napkins.
Citrus Layer Cake With Orange and Chocolate Frosting
This cake appeared in The Times in 1954 as Halloween Cake, the centerpiece for a children’s party. When you strip away the original instructions for decoration (dyed yellow frosting and a black cat of piped chocolate), you’re left with a luscious citrus cake that works for any occasion, All Hallows’ Eve included.
Cassoulet-Style Lamb Shanks and Beans
This is not a full-blown cassoulet, chock-full of sausages and duck confit, but it is so satisfying nonetheless. It takes a couple of days to put together because you have to cook the lamb and cook the beans, combine them, and bake them twice. The result is a dish of enchanting deep flavor. (Simmering the seasoned lamb results in a delicious broth.)
Classic Banana Split
The key to a great banana split is a combination of textures and temperatures. There’s the velvety cold ice cream, the pleasingly sticky hot fudge and the crunchy wet walnuts (here, made with maple syrup and honey), all nestled in a sliced ripe banana and topped with whipped cream. You can use any ice cream flavors you like: classics like chocolate, vanilla or strawberry, or get creative with your favorite varieties — maybe even a scoop or two of fruity sorbet. Naturally, banana splits are meant to be split between two (or three) people, so find some friends to share the sweetness.
Queso Gravy
This is a slightly looser version of a traditional Tex-Mex chile-cheese dip, appropriate for use on chicken-fried steak (or plain old fried chicken), as a topping for enchiladas or simply as something into which to dip chips or crisp vegetables. It scales up nicely if you'd like to double it for use at a party -- just keep it warm in a low slow cooker, set up on a sideboard. Increase the number of jalapeños to taste.
Beet Salad With Goat Cheese Toasts
A beet salad can be spectacular if you roast your own beets, specifically fresh ones, not vacuum-packed or canned. They take at least an hour to cook so it’s a good idea to make them early, even two days in advance. Then, this tasty salad can be assembled in a few minutes. Choose any color beet, but the golden ones make an impression.
Romesco Egg Salad
There’s mild-mannered egg salad, and then there’s this one, feisty with tang, crunch and smoke by incorporating elements of romesco, the Catalan sauce. Soft-boiled eggs are cut into chunks for pockets of richness, then tossed with oil, vinegar, smoked paprika, sweet peppers, almonds and parsley. Ingredients are left in hefty pieces for contrasting textures and bites, but if you prefer a homogenous salad to mound in a sandwich or onto your plate, just stir vigorously; the yolk and oil will emulsify and bind everything together.
Pumpkin-Butterscotch Custard With Spiced Whipped Cream
Butterscotch pudding gets an autumnal makeover with the addition of pumpkin purée and a fluffy, spiced whipped cream topping. To make this dish supremely festive, it’s baked in one large dish instead of individual custard cups. And because it needs to be prepared almost entirely in advance, it’s a perfect dinner party dessert. Serve it scooped into bowls, with some crisp cookies on the side.
Almond Cake With Saffron and Honey
This is a lovely moist cake that keeps well and may be made several days in advance of serving. Stored well wrapped and at room temperature, its flavor only improves. For best results, grind blanched almonds to make your own almond meal. If you wish, accompany with a little whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Spinach and Feta Borek
In Turkey, savory pastries like these are made with hand-rolled yufka sheets, but store-bought phyllo dough makes a fine substitute. Often shaped into bite-size parcels, this large version may be cut into wedges. Serve it with a salad of sliced cucumber and radishes, and a bowl of olives, if desired.
Flaky Chicken Hand Pies
Everyone falls for the homey appeal of chicken potpie. This fold-over version made with buttery puff pastry takes the concept up a notch for an elegant lunch or supper. Store bought pastry makes it easy. You can do the cooking in stages, and even freeze the pies (either baked or unbaked) for a future meal. Serve with a green vegetable or leafy salad.
Roasted Broccolini and Lemon With Parmesan
Dumping cheese onto something, roasting it and calling it genius isn't the most original thought, but it’s worth mentioning how wonderful this recipe is. Maybe it’s the caramelized, jammy slices of lemon or maybe it’s the almost burnt, crisp, frilly ends of tender broccolini. Whatever it is, a version of this is worthy of every dinner party. While there is something special about the broccolini here (nothing compares to the tender stalks and those wispy ends), this technique also works with root vegetables like carrots, potatoes and parsnips, as well as other brassicas like cauliflower and brussels sprouts. (This recipe is adapted from "Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes" by Alison Roman.)
Harvest Tart With Pumpkin and Peppers
A savory, olive oil-crusted tart stuffed full of golden, roasted peppers, jammy onions and some freshly grated pumpkin is a great dinner party treat, although it's perfectly wonderful for a family evening repast as well. Salt the pumpkin ahead of time to draw out excess moisture, though if you are pressed for time you can skip this step. To perk up the caramelized intensity of the filling, it is helpful to fold in something zingy like olive or capers, or perhaps a good splash of lemon juice.
Greek Cabbage Pie with Dill and Feta
A favorite winter pie in the northern regions of Greece, this is a bit time consuming to make, but worth every minute. Serve it as a vegetarian main course at your next dinner party.
Fish Pie
To the uninitiated, fish pie has an uninviting name and reputation. But this is fish that is gently poached, then swathed in a white sauce and topped with buttery mashed potatoes and finished to a heat-bronzed finish in the oven. It is a dish good for children but can be made into unapologetic dinner-party fare by poaching the fish in a little white wine, making the white sauce with light cream rather than milk and infusing all of it with the eggy-lemony kiss of saffron. It’s an hour well worth spending.