stop dweedle dwaddling

so franz and I figured out that we hadn't had a dinner party in almost 3 months and panicked. And then quickly planned a summer themed one around a hamptons dinner party with southern inspired food. first thing we said?

"fabric, we need fabric"

"oh yes white fabric"

Obviously to build a garden party inspired tent in our living room. We then selected our invitees and created our menu which was as follows:

APPYS

cheese and bacon cornbreads

sausage and smoked gouda

MAINS

red snapper filets

roasted beets and potatoes

creole blackened shrimp

fresh salad

onion tarts

asparagus and green beens

DESSERT

chocolate mille-feuille with vanilla custard

pomegranate grantina

Three days before the event I started the patient task of making puff pastry from scratch. This was always something I knew I had to concur to fully call myself a good baker. Puff pastry is an art and science, and needs it's time to settle and glutenize. First step, whip up the dough and butter, both separate, roll em out and lay on top of each other. The next day I did my first folding of the two together.

Finally on friday I refolded the puff pastry 4 times (you can only do it once every 2 hours) while I chugged white wine and Franz began his onion tarts. I quickly made a pie dough for him so it could chill overnight while he began the caramelization of red onions. I won't even begin to mention how many onions he chopped but the process of cutting and cooking took till 1 am... so he's taking a break from onions.

we also should mention that we spent the first 2 hours after work on friday getting new plates and decorations, which we then ended up carrying all the way home in the muggy hot weather we have been having lately. On the day of, we woke up bright and early and headed to a fabric store, where as per usual I was slightly hungover from Brent's birthday the night before and not much use as Franz held up random frabrics. He had a better tent vision then me so we finally settled on one and got outta there before we began to mess up our schedule. We came home and did the brutal mistake of turning the TV on and napping while watching Jersey Shore. Needless to say we began grocery shopping close to 2 pm and got home at 4 pm and began a mad rush to decorate and prep all our food before guests arrived at 6 pm. I also invented another Julia-ism by saying "we need to stop dweedle dwaddling". Whatever that means.

I began by baking the pie dough for Franz's tarts and then we prepped the potatoes and beets, who looked gorgeous.

We also had to cook our onions tarts with our delicious cornbreads that we kind of just improvised and they turned out great! As well as the yummy, yummy onion tarts.

Our guests started arriving so we quickly put on Brigitte Bardot and I put out my spiked lemonade which was very refreshing and didn't make you realize how much booze was in there. Sugar, lemon juice, citrus vodka and citrus club soda. As Ina Garten would say, how good is that?

As guests mingled in our beautiful tent decor courtesy of Franz...

I prepped the snapper to bake with butter, dill, garlic, onion and olive oil.
I also decided 5 minutes before we sat down to quickly blacken my shrimp so they wouldn't be overcooked. I had dry rubbed them with typical creole spices of paprika, garlic and onion powder, cayenne pepper, thyme, oregano and kosher salt. Of course as soon as they hit the pan epic spicy fumes flew up in the air and made everyone cough. But man were they good! I had to finish the fry outside the window to stop choking my guests. Alexis kindly helped.

Dinner was beautiful and everything fit so well together, the flavors were excellent. Also the setting wasn't bad either. For a second, we truly did feel like millionaires in the Hamptons. Franz's center pieces also helped.

It was time for dessert and oh my god I was praying the whole time I was eating that my puff pastry was baking correctly in the oven. I had made the granita and custard earlier and they were chilling. As our guests enjoyed wine, I pulled out my puff pastry and almost burst into tears at how perfectly it had risen. Franz and I had a mini freak out in the kitchen of how awesome we were getting at this. I cut into the pastry and there were all those beautiful folded airy layers. Bliss!

We then used the custard to build some mille-feuilles which would be served with the granita. The combination of airy butter pastry, creamy custard and tart cool sorbet was to die for.


We enjoyed more wine and Richard's bourbon and after everyone had left and franz and I enjoyed one last drink under our make shift tent, the fading sounds of glen miller on the stereo, we really did feel like a cooling down summer night in a lush garden. All that was missing were fireflies. Epic success!

Ta!

Julia gulia