Party-time Part 1: Planning

Nick and I like to throw a few big parties every year. We use the excuse of a birthday or some occasion but really we just want to cook a ton of food, play music and hang out with friends we don’t get to see very often. To be honest I kind of hate the whole tired potluck thing, we love treating our guests to an indulgent gourmet (or at least our best effort at gourmet..), bougie, adult house-party night where they don’t have to worry about a thing.

The food has been lovely with anything from kale egg cups to mini fruit and cheese pastries and gougeres – but this time we are shaking it up a bit as the options seem to be abysmal for vegans (we love our dairy). Last time, our good friend Isaac (who should be in some kind of commercial for veganism the way he looks btw) only had bread and truffle oil to munch on. This time we were determined to show up for the veegs and have been polling and googling to no end. Here is the menu we arrived on (asterisk for vegan):

MENU

*Gazpacho
Endive cups with beet, blue cheese and caramelized walnuts
*Cauliflower croquettes with kale pesto
*Jamaican “beef” patties
*Cucumber, avocado sushi with carrot ginger “roe”
Nick’s bread with baked brie and fig jam
Radish+herby cream cheese rice crackers

Sweet:
Chocolate beet cake with hibiscus beet icing
*Avocado truffles

Drinks:
Mango lassi with rum
*Whiskey Ginger
*Ginger Pear mocktail

Outside of this we will have some tamari almonds, olives, spicy cajun snack mix and other little bits and bobs hanging around. There was once an peach ginger eclair, sadly it was nixed because as much as I love cooking, I’m not sure I want to spend my entire birthday in the kitchen. I would love to get some nice simple peach recipes as we are going to be hitting up a farmers market right before the party for some ingredients and I know it prime peach season so send em over if you have any! Peach mousse? Peaches and cream?

I think a good party menu should highlight some seasonality which is why we are going for a cold tomato soup. I wanted to be more risky here but found a NYT recipe that looked too good to pass up. We will also be throwing in some fig jam with figs freshly picked and preserved by my lovely mum. I also think it is crucial to have fun drink options and a killer mocktail. This time we are going for a ginger pear drink with a little skewer of candied ginger! Just like the candied ginger, so much of the menu is usually inspired by a fun ingredient I am itching to use hence the hibiscus icing- really I just want to garnish with those beautiful flowers so I was determined to find some way to work it in. Lastly we want to show how fun and varied vegetarian food can be so we are going for some familiar meat-y dishes that we are flipping on their heads – Nick will be tackling the jamaican no-beef patties as he is the master of dough (see here) and I will be trying my hand at sushi – with a mock roe! We are taking more risks and having lots of fun with this one so pray for us and look out for part 2 with the results!!