Grown-up Party Tricks: Keeping the Food Warm and the Kitchen Clean

We love entertaining, but one of the biggest headaches about throwing a dinner party is serving the food on time and while it's still hot.  This is an especially big challenge for me, because the Emma Pillsbury in me likes my kitchen to be relatively neat and clean by the time guests arrive.  Recently, a friend asked me for some suggestions on how to make a dinner party work.  I told her that I'd share some of my tricks and ask you to share yours.

Before our guests arrive, I prep as much as possible and always load all of the pots and pans and assorted dirty dishes into the dishwasher so that I can run it during the party.  I also set up my mise en place and lay out the serving dishes.  (In the photo above, you can see that I have the plastic chopping board and all of the ingredients out for my miso-glazed brussel sprouts; the wood cutting board out for the roast chicken; and the salad bowl and tongs at the ready.)

For foods that need reheating or finishing in the oven or stovetop, I like to put a post-it with the oven temperature and heating time on the dish itself.  This way I can put away all the recipe books ahead of time and have all of the important details at the ready.

For occasions like Passover and Chinese New Year, when a meal is going to last a looooong time, we use this relatively inexpensive chafing dish to keep the food warm.

As you can see, I also try to do much of the set-up in advance, so that all I have to do the day of is finish making the food and placing it on the appropriate serving vessel.

I'm afraid that these are all the tips I know.  What are your favorite techniques for keeping everything organized and delicious for a dinner party? Please share!

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Doubly Happy Chinese New Year: The Food

For all the fuss I made over the decor for our Chinese New Year party, I knew probably like two of our guests would notice.  Let's face it, when people come over to our house, what they want . . . need . . . expect is food.  Lots and lots of food.

And I wasn't about to disappoint.  Though there was a small part of me that didn't want to sully my "tablescape" with actual food, we put together a menu of symbolic foods that would bring on good luck for the new year.

We ended up purchasing most of the food, but I couldn't not bake something.  So I made Hong-Kong-style Portuguese egg tarts (recipe to come later this week).  Eggs are a symbol of fertility.

From a Chinatown bakery, I bought custard buns and lotus-filled moon cakes.  The latter are usually eaten for the Mid-Autumn Festival, but some also serve them for New Year, in honor of the lunar year.  I also got nian gow, sweet sticky rice cakes, which I fried up with some eggs a la minute.

We also served noodles (for long life), mixed vegetable moo shu (for family harmony), scallion pancakes (a sub for green onions, which signify an everlasting life), and egg rolls (which, because they look like gold bars, symbolize wealth).

We also served veggie dumplings and mandarin oranges, which both also symbolize wealth.  Chinese people are real serious about wealth!!!  We served everything with some ice cold Tsingtao beer and lots of Chinese candy.

Part of me wishes I had the time to make more of the food, but I have to admit that it was pretty awesome to have a party where I didn't have to spend days in the kitchen beforehand to ensure that people were fed.  And clean-up was also super easy, with nothing more than a few cupcake tins and a pan or two to worry about washing.

I wasn't sure whether a Chinese New Year party would be fun or stressful, but I have to admit that I had such a fun time planning and executing this with my husband.  He was so excited (sometimes overly so!) about this, and I'm so touched that he was so passionate about celebrating both aspects of our Chewism. I can't wait to plan the next one!

Happy 4079 everyone!!

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Doubly Happy Chinese New Year

One of our Chewish goals is to have a gathering to celebrate each of the three New Years: Jan. 1st, Chinese New Year, and Rosh Hashanah.  This weekend, ten days into year 4079, we finally had our Chinese New Year party.  (Better late than never, right?)

I've been busy with work, so we decided we'd order most of the food from a local Chinese restaurant. But there was no way I was going to contract out the funnest part of party prep -- the decor!

The cold temperatures made it difficult to get fresh branches, so I used artificial branches from Pier One for our money tree.  They're so much sturdier than real branches and were perfect for hanging the ornaments I imported from Hong Kong.

I also hauled a ginormous bag of candy from Hong Kong: chocolate coins (like Hanukkah gelt, but with Hong Kong coin denominations); adorable little plastic pineapples, fortune cats, pigs, and gold ingots with chocolates inside; and red firecrackers with little candies inside.

As with Rosh Hashanah, Chinese New Year tradition is to eat lots of sweets.  My mom sent along some peanut and sesame candies from LA, and I added some giant chocolate Pocky.

I made a few simple red tissue poms,

hung a "Happy New Year" pennant, and got a giant paper dragon from the local party supply store.  I started to realize I might have been getting a bit too much into the decorating thing when my husband looked up from his computer and observed that our living room seemed to be shrinking.  What can I say?  I lack self control around pretty things.

Next up: the food.

Are you an over-decorator when it comes to parties?   Come on, surely I'm not the only one who gets a little cray-cray around tissue paper?

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