Well they are friends the other days of the week too, but as it turns out Friday night was the night we invited these particular friends to dinner. I love looking forward to a night of basking in the company of good friends. It is a celebration, a happy time to enjoy one another’s company.

Of course, I like it even more when the meal practically makes itself. Whenever I make my favorite lasagna, I make two, then I bake one for dinner and freeze the second one for later. This particular Friday as luck would have it, I pulled a lasagna out of my freezer. I usually make sausage lasagna, but once in awhile I make a vegetarian lasagna. To compliment the layers of vegetables & cheese, my friend brought a pile of sausages for us to grill on the barbecue. It is a nice trick if you have a mixture of friends who are both vegetarian and non.

Because the main dish only needed to visit the oven before being done, I had time to focus on making a sampling of appetizers, a more exotic salad, and to try my hand at a new grilled rosemary flat bread recipe. To be honest, this menu would be perfect with only one or two of the appetizers/tapas and a leafy green salad (like the one I tried the other day: romaine lettuce with just fresh dill and blue cheese dressing). You could even skip the flat bread and buy your favorite artisan loaf, cut it up and offer oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping. Voila!

So invite your friends over already!

Dinner Menu
Sangria
Simple Summer Tapas
Yellow Beans w/Leeks & Prosciutto
Endive Walnut Salad
Vegetarian Lasagna (guess you will have to wait for this recipe)
Grilled Sausages

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Mixed Olives
Mac n Cheese
Roasted Romas
Pesto Pea Salad
Tiramisu

No, no my friends are not Italian, but they are vegetarian and I chose to cook an Italian inspired meal. Mostly, I needed an excuse to try my hand at Tiramisu and enough mouths to help me eat it! (Both the Tiramisu and the Pesto Pea Spinach Salad are inspired by Ina Garten in Barefoot Contessa Family Style and her most recent book, Barefoot Contessa at Home, respectively).

Sometimes when I cook for vegetarian friends, I make a simple pasta dish and add sausages on the side for the carnivores at the table. In this case, the macaroni and cheese—a gourmet version made from scratch—is substantial enough on its own. Instead of needing a meat like accompaniment, all it needs is a pile of oven roasted tomatoes to refresh the palate and cut through all that rich flavor.

I love this macaroni and cheese dish—it can be frozen, heats up nicely for lunch and keeps for days in the fridge.

As for the olives: I sometimes buy them fresh from my local deli or favorite shop. In a pinch I use a jar of pitted kalamata olives (I keep a stash in my pantry), drain them and mix in 1-2 Tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of Italian herbs (fresh or dried) and a big pinch of kosher/course salt.

The pesto salad is a pile of spinach, lightly toasted pine nuts, a fistful of Parmesan cheese, another fistful of peas and 2-4 T of my pesto mixed with 1-2 T of olive oil (depending on how much dressing you like and how many people you are serving).

And if you are like me, please feel free to add in some chianti or other lovely red wine, and perhaps some port, grappa or sambuca/ouzo to go with dessert. I love that idea: a toast to start the meal and a toast to end it: Salute!

(Click on the red highlighted menu items to find a given recipe).

Aha! I have your attention. You already know that I am a sucker for impressing palates at a dinner party, and my top secret is that I love doing so with minimal effort: implementing short-cuts and kitchen secrets. I feel like a criminal skulking through the shadows, knowing I am about to pounce—with well-accorded flavors—on the unsuspecting bystander. I feel spy-like in my guarded [and incomplete but painfully curious] knowledge of gastronomic short-cutting. It feels almost dishonest to impress guests with food that appears to have taken strategic planning, special imports or secret—kitchen—weaponry.

But my kitchen-wide operation is to keep things more simple than suspected, to trounce with culinary surprises (and an occasional sabotage) to deliver bigger than expected flavors to otherwise innocent palates. I am stealth in my preparations, laying plans as far in advance as possible. I am always on the lookout for secret tips, tools of the trade and the next best recipe.

In a recent feast with guests, I piled on the ammunition:

MENU a la AMMO
Terra Beet & Sweet Potato Chips
Mixed Olives
Mixed Greens & Goat Cheese Rounds
Dipping Sauce & Artisan Bread
Roasted Potatoes and Squash
Malabar Hanger Steak & Gingered Carrot Puree
Homemade Orange Vanilla Ice Cream
with Orange Chocolate Brownies

The menu inspiration is this: I am increasingly impressed with the new trend in chips, my current new favorite being Terra’s Sweet Potato and Beet Chips. Move over trans fats, hello low sodium, plus iron, fiber, calcium, Vitamins A & C. These are SO going in my children’s lunch—and are worthy to tip off the front end of an American Bistro meal, simultaneously negating the singular place holder at Mexican meals of the classic chips and salsa. Add in some mixed olives and red wine and the meal has started. News from the bunker: I was sitting enjoying the food, too.

The salad is one of my better kept, well-filed secrets: easy to make, lending itself to multiple lunches in the days that follow (the recipe will be coming soon to a blog near you). I was craving the steak and carrot puree, having made it just a few weeks ago, and knew that it was kid-friendly (considering: my kids and guests with kids) while at the same time guest-worthy.

The dipping sauce that I pair with the bread is my secret handshake t0 taking the bread experience up a notch; during the meal we refilled the dipping bowl four times—bread loves to be noticed as would any four star general.

I love roasted vegetables, and had potatoes and squash on hand. I lubed them with olive oil, salted them and threw them in the oven for half an hour at 400. Caramelized and delicious.

The dessert was ice cream I made in my humble little Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, and the orange brownies were compliments of a bake-it-yourself box from Trader Joes. A perfect vehicle for orange flavored ice cream.

Menu inspiration is a strategic operation, involving selections that are complimentary yet personal, a consideration of color, balance of food [group] factions, food & drink alliances, and ideally balanced in preparation time and effort. A well planned menu packs a serious punch.

I will not pretend to be an undercover five star chef, nor even a contender for Top Chef, and in fact so many bloggers blow me away with their regular portrayals of all things food. But I will say, I am happily armed if I have a spy-chest full of mouthwatering recipes, cocktail concoctions, unusual desserts and appetizers and families to come over who are ready to feast. Families whose life is commonly frantic and mission-oriented, who tend to eat food in the trenches: and whom adore slowing down if just for an evening, nestling into a meal that has been prepared just for them. And I myself rounding up the food, massaging miles of flavor, flirting with menus, making a lineup of my favorites and sitting back watching all my usual suspects enjoy a captain’s table full of good food.

Beware of skulking, self-proclaimed, undercover gourmands armed with hand-selected and adored recipes secretly lined up in soldier style to march upon your palate.

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Mozzarella Prosciutto Skewers
Olive Tapenade & Bread
Walnut Grape Salad
Grilled Roma Tomatoes
Sausage Cream Pasta

It is true, the tomatoes turned out like CANDY. It was all I could do not to throw them on ice cream and gobble them down (okay, that might be gross, but you get the idea). The BBQ is an amazing thing: turning my garden tomatoes into sweeter than sweet gems to plop on top of Sausage Cream Pasta. The pasta is so rich and filling, you don’t need a big portion. Perhaps a little ground pepper, some fresh parmesan but hands down those candylike Grilled Roma Tomatoes only add presence to this rich, creamy event of a meal. Did I mention the pasta is EASY to make?

Beyond the tomatoes and pasta—before the candy and cream—I served Olive Tapenade with artisan bread (recipe below) and Mozzarella Prosciutto Skewers.

My favorite appetizers are easy, easy, easy. As in, around 3 ingredients and no prep time (my brother Kerry would like that: he and my sister-in-law Donna have a joke about a cookbook they own whose title includes “Quick and Easy.” In reality, they figure the author has 3 full-time sous chefs chopping, stirring, assembling and reducing sauces and ingredients for a good hour before the ‘chef’ steps in to make the ‘quick and easy’ meal. Makes for some good humor when you are trying to feed small children on the fly).

The Olive Tapenade appetizer is simply a store-bought jar of tapenade (Trader Joes in my case); I filled a coffee scoop with tapenade, placed it in the middle of a plate, surrounded it with olive oil and cut a few leaves of basil on top (chiffonade a la scissors). If you cannot find tapenade in a jar or don’t have it on hand, you can pulse blend 1/2 c. kalamata olives, 1 T olive oil and a pinch of salt in a small blender for tapenade; add a few drops of your favorite vinegar and a pinch of basil, parsley or oregano if you feel the urge. Any extra will keep for 1-2 weeks covered in the fridge. It is great on sandwiches or paninis.

To lighten the richness of the meal, a salad is a perfect fix. I added in my Walnut Grape Salad; just when you thought things couldn’t get better, this salad walks through the door.

I confess, not many desserts round my table mid-week. A truffle or nibble of chocolate is all I need with my already half-full glass of red wine or on a good day, a decaf cappuccino. More fanciful desserts make a happy appearance on weekends and at dinner parties. Oh and by the way, good luck with tonight’s dinner—go knock their socks off.

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Grilled Steak Skewers
Grilled Potatoes
Steamed Edamame
Fresh Fruit

I was at a hotel and had the late night munchies, so I took it upon myself to order grilled steak skewers to my room. It came with a custard dish full of blue cheese dipping sauce; if I had had a spoon in my hand I would have thrown all the steak right in the sauce and renamed it soup on the spot—it was that good. When I returned home I made Grilled Steak Skewers w/ Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce.

Steam edamame—soybeans—right in the shell for a few minutes, then toss with big grains of kosher salt (or blacksea salt, hawaiian red sea salt, etc.: big grains of salt are all the rage these days). Use your teeth to slide out the beans and discard shells/skins. Perfect for healthy eating AND that salt-fix, I first enjoyed steamed edamame at one of my new fave swank restaurants in Seattle: Bal Mar. (Instead of Steamed Edamame you could make Sauteed Edamame). For fresh fruit, I had on hand watermelon and seedless black grapes. A light vanilla ice cream, fruit sorbet or simple sugar cookies make a nice, simple dessert.