Dinner party cheat

I’m naughty. I cheated. Tsk, tsk – I know. But before you go ahead and judge, let me explain.

Last weekend I had a dinner party for a few friends, co-hosted by the lovely AW. The thing is, because it was at AW’s beautiful 2-bed Notting Hill flat and not my rented Holloway abode I was able to:

• Not do much prep work or cleaning
• Simply direct our main course (goulash) virtually since it needed to be prepped the day before
• Rock on up 2 hours prior
• Sneak away late-night leaving poor AW and Studd a cacophony of dirty dishes (I blame this entirely on the heated debate over the Kindle Reader which took us way past midnight)

So yes, I claimed equal parts glory on what was an absolutely lovely evening and meal – but let’s be honest my role really entailed:

• Steaming some green beans and roasting some potatoes (not exactly climbing Everest here)
• Dancing around to some fabulous 80s cheese, funk, and jazz and voting yay or nay for our dinner party play list
• Reducing and doctoring the goulash sauce (not exactly rocket science but of considerable value add since we needed to work with a whole lot of acidity) … brown sugar really is a miracle worker
• And last but not least, making and serving up one of my new favourite desserts…which if you replaced the butter with a non-dairy substitute would even make the recipe vegan (not that I’ve any strong desire to use anything else besides delicious lightly salted French butter)

It was a really fantastic night – filled with great banter and of course lovely food. I’m looking forward to the next AW / DB dinner party. I’m even happy to host in Holloway, as long as we have that amazing playlist!

Fig (lounge) Bars

So this was actually the second batch of these lovely ladies I’d made during a six-day period. The first I’d just done for a bit of fun, convincing myself they were healthy (oats, figs, nuts) and hence didn’t need to feel bad about eating 2 a day for 5 days straight.

Seeing as it was a Saturday night out, I wanted to gussy them up a bit - I figured that if I could wear something that made me sparkle – well so could they.

Unlike earlier in the week when they were just unwrapped from a bit of tinfoil, when serving them for the dinner party I cut them into larger rectangles, heated them back up in the oven ala fig-crumble like, and plated them with some lightly-sweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. That night AZ made a comment to one of her friends about my modesty when it came to my baking, which I actually found quite sweet (and funny). Now, I’m the first to admit when I’ve made something and it just hasn’t turned out quite right – but there was no error in these little gals. I actually do believe there was moaning (of the good variety) around the table upon consumption.

If you can - use real butter and please, swap out those unattractive walnuts for toasted pecans. Other than that, the reheating and whipped cream is entirely up to you.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Oatmeal-Fig-and-Walnut-Bars-356871