Better Than McDonald’s

On my first trip to France when I was in high school I had my first pommes frites (a.k.a. French fries) and I was amazed that they were better than McDonald’s. To this day there is probably nothing more popular at a supper club meal than homemade French fries.

Growing up my mother made French fries and to honest they were not great. She could never get them consistently crispy. Mom used an old stove top fry pot that was small and probably dangerous. I can never remember her having a problem with a grease fire but I do remember soggy fries and never having enough to keep her family of five happy.

The key to making a perfect fry is to do what the French and McDonalds do. You have to cook them twice. McDonald’s pre-cooks their fries and then flash freezes them. Then they pop the frozen fries into hot oil at the store to finish them up. Served hot they are the gold standard for fries. The classic French preparation is pretty much the same. You pre-cook them, let them cool and then cook them a second time to get the targeted crispness. While not everyone is a Francophile, just about everyone loves good French fries.

French Fry Recipe

The second solution to my mother’s quandary was quantity. I have built a fry station on my back patio using a propane fryer with an 11 quart pot (12″ X 5″). Combining a mandolin to cut the fries with the fryer has allowed me to keep a crowd of 30 well fed.

My neighbor Howard Johnson (His wife Jan still calls him HoJo) and I host an annual neighborhood Oktoberfest. Howard used to work for a company that made sausage casings. He had a ready source of bratwurst and I did the grilling. One year I added homemade French fries at the last minute. The next year I skipped the fries and almost had a neighborhood revolt. While folks liked the brats, they love the French fries.

Serve homemade French fries at your next supper club and you will make everyone happy.

If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the look out for my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Morgan James Publishing published the Kindle-Version on September 5, 2017 and the hard copy coming out January 30, 2018.

Forget Paris

I don’t care what Billy Crystal’s movie said one could never forget Paris. It has to be one of the culinary capitals of the world. The cover picture is a great example of the fact that you don’t need a fancy dining room to have a great supper club meal. All you need is some friends, some food, a park bench and voila!

We had a great group in this picture (from left to right) Steve Williams, Lucien Vendome, Paul Kenny, Susan Kenny, Jody Driver and Charlie Thelluson (Taking the picture). We were in Paris for a trade show and after the show we visited a nearby street market on a Saturday afternoon. The food options were unbelievable. Fresh Baguettes, cheeses from Aix en Provence, the sweetest grapes I have ever had, radishes, pates, jambon and rotisserie chicken with potatoes cooked in the drippings from the chicken. What an amazing meal.

Paris is truly one of my favorites cities in the world. People always say to me: How can you love Paris? The people are so rude”. I explain that I am from New York where rude is an art form. In Paris it doesn’t take very much for a Parisian to step out and be very nice.

A great example of this happened a few days before our trade show. We were trying to coordinate getting some cheesecakes made with a local baker and needed to connect via telephone. The good news was that there were phone booths everywhere. The bad news was that to use them you needed a special token that could only be bought at the post office or the tobacco shop. It was a Sunday and both were closed. Lucien got exasperated with a clerk at the supermarket as she was telling us we were out of luck. Up stepped a young teenager that was happy to practice her English and offered us her tokens. The day was saved. A friend was made and she wouldn’t accept any reimbursement no matter how hard Lucien tried.

It doesn’t take very much for a great supper club party. I will certainly never forget Paris.

When A Party Takes On A Life Of Its Own

Have you ever hosted a party that became larger than life? My wife and I hosted a neighborhood New Years Eve party for over 25 years. We started when we lived in Delaware and our Supper Club friends were an integral part of it. When we moved to Tennessee we continued the tradition.

The party started out at about 25 people. Our Supper Club and neighborhood in Memphis is a lot larger. I should have known we were in trouble when during the course of the year we got alcohol induced queries about what someone needed to do to get an invite.

Credit to my wife. She saw the storm coming and wanted to curtail our efforts long before I did. My theory has always been the more the merrier. I “say” I can cook for 50 as easy as 15. But I was wrong. The party got up to 40 people and simply, got out of control. There were people there that we barely knew and Susan felt she wasn’t able to enjoy the time with her friends.

To get an idea of what the party was like here is a menu:

The logistics of pulling the party off was a challenge that I liked. Organizing the food prep, renting tables/chairs (one long table wound through the house), renting China (who has China for 40?). Susan being smarter than me was quick to point out that we were out control. Not to mention the cost. One might guess why the party was popular. It was certainly a lot cheaper to go to the Kenny’s than restaurant options.

Finally Susan put her foot down and said the party needed to kept to 20 people. That was fine but the unintended consequence was that there were over 20 people that got cut from the list that didn’t quite understand and are still mad at us today. Oh well.

Four years ago our niece’s wedding saved us. The wedding scheduled on New Years Eve forced us out the NYE party business. It was sort of like the Chinese bamboo shoots under the fingernails. Boy does it feel good when you pull them out. Now we are just thankful not to be hosting the NYE party.

As final message to Supper Clubbers:
• Listen to your wife. Woman’s instincts on people are probably better
• Beware of unintended consequences
• Apologies to those who got cut. You are right. Susan is a sweetheart and I am an asshole.

If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the look out for my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs due out from Morgan James Publishing on January 30, 2018.