time to thai one on!

We had a particularly delicious Supper Club dinner earlier this year. This time the theme was coconut milk--I mean, "dishes from Thailand"--and they were rich and flavorful! Appetizers included Thai-spiced pickled veggies and deep-fried fish balls. Here's one of the main courses, chicken with veggies and coconut milk,

and perhaps everyone's favorite dish of the evening, shrimp curry with coconut milk (both prepared by Cynde and Todd).

Or perhaps Katie and Aaron's velvety coconut milk chicken soup was the favorite?

Mr. Tart and I provided dessert. Our lemongrass sorbet never quite froze, so I called it a "lemongrass icee" and served it in glasses,

but the sticky rice with, yes, sweet coconut milk sauce and mango was a success!

egg on our face

Okay, so this is embarassing to admit: this post refers to a Supper Club dinner party from ten months ago. And I'm not going to try to cover it up, because it was an egg-themed potluck at Easter time and here's the bunny we saw outside the hosts' house and took a picture of because it seemed like a good omen for the meal! So here we go.
Cynde and Atley (Katie and Aaron's daughter, who was docile and not walking then, but is now a drama queen toddler) think happy thoughts about the cholesterol-filled repast awaiting them:

We all went overboard on the appetizers this time. Katie made garlic-stuffed olives wrapped in pastry dough (they're egg-shaped, see?) while my contribution was a plethora of international eggy hors-d'oeuvres. For example, we had several types of deviled eggs: Indian (pierced with pieces of pappadam and served with tamarind sauce), Mexican (flavored with jalapenos and cumin and decorated with tortilla chips), and plain old American.

Then I made mini-quiches with broccoli (French) and Scotch eggs (hard-boiled eggs wrapped in a sausage-bread crumb mixture and deep fried).

Unfortunately, none of us can remember the main dish in any detail, other than it was a kind of egg casserole. Oh well! Dessert also exploited eggs to their fullest, in Katie's sweet, custardy "Bob and Andy pie" from an Amish cookbook.

Full tummies, happy friends--yet another successful themed potluck dinner party!

so much more than Swedish meatballs!

Meet Tucker, Cynde and Todd's baby, born last summer. This was his first dinner party with us and Katie and Aaron (our three-couple Supper Club)! He's making a face because he doesn't approve of the hors-d'oeuvres at our Scandinavian-themed potluck.

But who can blame him when confronted with caviar in a tube?

Fortunately, the other appetizers were more appetizing: Danish blue cheese and home-smoked salmon (Todd's first attempt with his in-laws' smoker turned out quite well!).

And while Katie's canned goodies included quite a few jalapenos (she's a Spanish teacher, after all), she correctly pointed out that Scandinavians are all about pickling. (I liked her pickled green beans the best.)

Side dishes included rye bread (from Schmidt's Bakery and Deli in Loveland--geniuses with flour) and lingonberry jam,

plus potatoes swimming in cream and more pickled veggies (beets this time).

The main dish--whose name I can't recall--was like a big ol' Swedish meatball in a pastry crust. After all that good food, we were ready for a long winter's nap, but wait! There's still dessert!

We concluded the meal with the creaminess of rice pudding and the crunchiness of Swedish rosettes, which I fried in hot oil on our deck just like my mother used to do every Christmas. (Now I understand why she stopped--they're really time-consuming and don't last till the following morning! That's a lot of work for something so delicate and ephemeral.)



Other than the grody caviar, it was another delicious and inventive dinner! We try to get together like this every two months or so, sometimes with their kids, sometimes just us grown-ups. We always pledge to experiment with new recipes (and we always go overboard and end up with way more food than we can actually eat). We used to do Iron Chef-style meals, where we all had to prepare dishes using the theme ingredient (eg squash, tomatoes, fondue, aphrodisiacs), but now we're moving into regional cuisine instead. Stay tuned for an egg dinner post followed by Indian food! I'll try to get caught up before our next dinner: raclette in March.

there's even tomatoes in the dessert!

Mr. Tart and I recently had a delicious Supper Club dinner with our foodie friends Cynde & Todd and Katie & Aaron. We try to get together every few months for an Iron Chef-inspired meal, where we all contribute dishes using the theme ingredient. In honor of late summer's bounty in our gardens, this time it was TOMATO.

The appetizer was my perennial favorite, fried green tomatoes. Thick and tart with a spicy cornmeal crust, they just say "summer" to me. Our first course--as you can see above--was a tiered chilled soup of avocado and chicken broth and sour cream, topped with fresh tomato puree, decorated with chopped cucumber and shallots. My mother-in-law found the recipe in Sunset magazine and shared it with us (the long chives masquerading as straws were a last-minute inspiration).


The main course consisted of Cook's Illustrated extremely-picky-but-quite-successful ratatouille recipe. I spent much of the afternoon draining and pressing and roasting and pan-frying each type of vegetable separately, but when they came together, each one asserted its own flavor and texture instead of turning into Provencal mush. We served it with polenta (made from corn meal) with four ounces of goat cheese and some sun-dried tomatoes thrown in. Cynde brought a side dish of tomatoes baked with couscous, raisins, and cinnamon--adding to the Mediterranean feel of our meal--and a green salad with tomatoes.


Katie had the night's biggest challenge: dessert. She prepared crepes with a sweet, creamy filling and topped them with homemade tomato preserves which had been cooked with sugar, ginger, and lemon. Mr. Tart and I confessed later on that we were a little suspicious of the idea of sweet tomatoes, and Katie grimaced as she ladled them out, telling us we didn't need to eat them if they tasted nasty--but once we tried them, we all were hooked!


And Katie was kind enough to give each couple their own jar of tomato preserves, suggesting that we use it as a glaze on meat as well as on top of desserts. I'm thinking it might also go well with a quiche (my mom always serves a sweet raspberry salsa with hers). We'd welcome other suggestions from loyal Three Tarts readers!

Too many aphrodisiacs?

Mr. Tart and I recently had another themed potluck dinner with Cynde, Todd, Katie, and Aaron (and their urchins, Atley and Noah). In honor of Valentine's Day, this month's theme ingredient was "aphrodisiacs." Here's what we came up with:

Cynde's appetizer: Dried figs stuffed with bleu cheese, some wrapped in prosciutto. (Todd called them, inelegantly, "crammed figs," but seeing the speed with which they were crammed into people's mouths, perhaps he ended up more descriptive than he anticipated!)

Salads: "Love apples" with red onion and homemade croutons (from Cynde, recipe courtesy of her brother, a chef in Hawaii and also a member of Mr. Tart's Boy Scout troop in high school) and "The World's Sexiest Salad" with mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, cantaloupe, and prosciutto (Katie).



Katie's main course: Grilled chicken marinated in white wine and fruit nectar (apricot?), served on top of baby spinach with grilled figs caramelized with demarra sugar and a reduced nectar-wine sauce. And yes, it was as good as it looks. (Well, it's Valentine's Day! Of course you're going to get food porn on this blog!)

My dessert: Peach and raspberry crepes with lavender in orange syrup (you've read about this disastrous recipe already). That's Noah helping me garnish. Katie and Aaron provided Godiva white chocolate liqueur to sip with it.

So do these reputed aphrodisiacs live up to their notoriety, or is it just a bunch of hooey? Well, I'm not one to kiss and tell! Too many aphrodisiacs at one meal? Never!

Iron Chef a la Colorado

Remember adorable Noah, the budding three-year-old gourmet? Well, he's back with zucchini!

Cynde, Katie, and I--and our hubbies--decided that our next group Supper Club effort would be a Harvest Dinner to celebrate autumn in Colorado and that all dishes had to include the theme ingredient of ... squash! Both winter and summer squash would be acceptable. Here's what we came up with:

Appetizers: Breaded and baked zucchini and yellow squash rounds with three dipping sauces: ranch, pesto, and tomato sauce. (This has turned into my favorite recipe for summer squash--it gets me my fried food fix without actually counteracting the benefits of fresh veggies by deep frying them. Thanks, "Cooking Light" magazine!)

Main dish: Savory flan made with winter squash. (Cynde, you'll have to remind me which squash it was and what its delicious but funny-sounding sauce was called.)

Side dishes: Zucchini bread and summer squash ribbons.

Dessert: Pumpkin custard. (Ack--no photo! Sorry, Katie.)

So was the harvest meal a success? Let's ask Noah!

Noah, pre-zucchini bread:

Noah, post-zucchini bread:

Next up: a dinner in December with ginger as the theme ingredient. Stay tuned!

Noah's First Fondue

Mr. Tart and I recently joined some friends from grad school for a fondue dinner. We brought the chocolate dessert fondue, very traditional, and Cynde and Todd provided the swiss cheese fondue with bread and veggies. Our fearless hosts, completely undaunted by the prospect of serving fondue for the first time to a French teacher, decided to experiment a bit to avoid that whole meat-dipped-in-boiling-oil thing for the main course. Katie found a recipe for grilled steak brushed with pesto dipped into a blue cheese cream sauce (which made Mr. Tart a very happy man). Doesn't it look good?

We all loved all of it. The biggest fan, though, was perhaps two-year-old Noah, who delighted in the fruit and chocolate. We thought it dangerous to give him a fondue fork, seeing as he doesn't yet have the manual dexterity for something so long and pointy, so Katie just put the pre-dipped food on his plate:

Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen at the dinner table? His enthusiasm soon spread:

And here's the "after" picture. The dinner party was clearly a rousing success! After all, nothing says "good party" like chocolate up one's nose.