Educational Articles

A salad, an entr?e, or a dessert made from a wonderful restaurant recipe would be a welcome addition to any meal you might serve, but there are certain occasions when we feel the need to pull out all the stops in order to make the afternoon or evening memorable. Birthdays, anniversaries, and prom nights – yes, I said, prom nights – are times to set an exceptional table.

If you are giving a dinner party to celebrate a “silver” birthday, find out all you can about the honoree’s past memorable food experiences. If you are honoring a member of your immediate family or one of your grandparents, you have probably heard a slew of stories about the time they ate the most wonderful onion soup in Marseilles or that terrific piece of cheesecake at Bookbinder’s, etc. Such reminiscences are usually introduced by phrases such as, “Remember the time we stayed at…” or “The first time I went to Paris….” Try to find recipes associated with the eating establishments they mention with a smile. If this leads to a dead end, choose available recipes from other celebrated restaurants of the same regions and/or time periods. Food tends to be regional in character. To prove this true, one has only to dine his way across the separate regions of Italy. The taste preferences of certain eras are distinctive, also. A careful triangulation of time and place should help you find the restaurant recipes you are looking for.

To celebrate an anniversary, consider where the couple went on their honeymoon and what kind of food might have been served there. If they stayed at a hotel noted for its fine cuisine, there might be a hotel cookbook from which to select appropriate dishes to prepare. If the hotel is a historic one, certain foods will have become associated with it over time. If library and Internet research prove futile, place a telephone call to the hotel’s manager, who will direct you to the head cook or the chef. With him, you can discuss the establishment’s food history, menus and food preparation. While he might not give you his recipes or a spoon-by-spoon description of how to make his signature dishes, he will, at least, help you clarify exactly what you are searching for. From that point on, a reasonable facsimile of the restaurant recipe in question can be located.

Prom nights excite the young, but worry parents. A good way to keep your teenagers at home after prom is to invite them and their best friends for as elaborate a dinner as they might have eaten had they driven sixty miles away from home with the car CD player blasting. A friend of mine gave this kind of Prom Night party for her son, his date and two other young couples. Because Prom Nights should be memorable, she skimped on nothing. Strings of clear, miniature lights and candles in heirloom candelabra illuminated the dining room. The flower arrangements, which she made herself, contained an assortment of less and more expensive bought flowers bedded in a generous amount of greenery. Bathed in deep shadows, the room had the aura of a mysterious forest glade. As for the food – she performed pure restaurant recipe alchemy. Haute cuisine all the way.
Dressed in a pristine cook’s apron, she served her young guests as unobtrusively as if she had been a waiter at a fine restaurant. The teenagers were delighted.

Source: http://www.positivearticles.com/blog