Does Losing Control Scare You?

One of the scary variables of supper clubs is control. Most supper clubs involve the delegation of the food preparation to spread the work. The more you delegate the less you control.

It is an interesting dynamic. Most people are pretty good cooks. It isn’t rocket science. Some people are not good cooks, but they like being in a supper clubs because they like the socialization. Others who are not good cooks are in clubs because they want to learn. Sometimes the bad cooks/slow learners can make people sick with bad cooking.

We once had a supper club where I delegated a salad. A friend who is a bad cook/slow learner brought the salad. He mixed the salad with the dressing hours before the dinner. By the time we started to serve the salad was brown and wilted. I was worried about food poisoning and swapped out new lettuce for old to save the day. I also put my friend on the list to bring a bottle of wine instead of make a dish.

Check out the recipe

Cooking takes common sense. There are some people that are really smart, but don’t have common sense. I know this guy who is a brain surgeon (really smart) and is into doing things himself around the house. He installed his own chimney when adding a wood stove to his den. The house caught on fire twice from the poorly installed chimney. He is a smart guy with no common sense and a bad guy to delegate cooking to.

OK, I will confess, I can be a control freak. I do want my food to look and taste certain way. Quite often I wind up doing too much of the work because I want to control. I have found that there are people I really trust and there are people I trust to do certain things. My son Brian and my brother in law Bobby are guys I really trust. (Check out the blog about “My favorite communist”) My friend Kathy who isn’t a great cook, but is really smart and has great common sense is a person I trust to do certain things.

The key to supper club control is to try to give people things they can handle. Some people can cook and some people can bring a bottle of wine

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.

A Few Tricks To Replace Fat And Salt.

Adding a little fat and salt is a great way to add flavor to your supper club menus. It just isn’t the healthiest thing for you. In working with some great scientists and chefs at Kraft I have learned a few tricks. For me the key is cutting back and finding healthier alternatives.

A great example of this is a “Beurre blanc” sauce that I make. The traditional French recipe calls for adding butter at multiple stages of preparation. The butter gives the sauce the rich, creamy flavor and mouth-feel. They key is the addition of butter at final stage as a thickener.

What I do is replace butter with olive oil to sauté the shallot and garlic at the first stage. In the final stage instead of using butter I use cornstarch as a thickener. The starch system is not at flavorful as butter and delivers a wonderful mouth feel. The net result is that sauce is lighter and really good.

In the 1990’s my wife was trying to cut back on the fat our children consumed so they were brought up eating Philadelphia “Free” no fat cream cheese. One day our daughter came back from a sleepover at girlfriend’s house and she was irate. Her friend’s mom served her real cream cheese with her bagel and our daughter realized that mom had been giving her the crappy “Free” product for years. She got over it and “Free” disappeared from the market.

One great way to reduce the salt in a dish and still have it pop with flavor is to add a little capsicum. Adding pepper, white pepper, cayenne or even a little Tabasco really helps reduced salt dishes. Capsicum is the component in pepper that delivers the heat. A little spice/heat goes a long way to replace salt’s impact on a dish.

The attached recipe uses my version of a “Beurre blanc” sauce that uses no butter and wasabi powder. The heat (capsicum) in the wasabi allows you to cut back on the salt and still deliver a very flavorful dish.

Check out the recipe

Fat and salt deliver flavor. Moderation is the key to healthiness. There are ways to deliver great flavor to your supper club menu. The tricks outlined above are ways to make your dishes healthier.

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

Tricks To Add Flavor

When preparing for a supper club dinner party there are two key tricks you can use to add flavor to your dishes.

  1. Add a little fat

  2. Add some salt

Adding a little fat is one great way to add flavor. The French are better than good at adding flavor. That is why there is so much butter in French foods. There is a great recipe for what I call Pommes Maccarre that uses the triple crown of a ‘little’ fat: butter, cream and olive oil.

Check out the recipe.

In a previous life I was head of Marketing for Kraft Food Ingredients. Entenmann’s in the 1990’s was a sister company that had developed a fat replacer called MX. I was charged with marketing MX fat replacer to other food companies. Working on the project with me was as senior scientist that was an expert on fats and oils. As part of the development effort we tasted all kinds of foods that used the MX. With each tasting I asked the elderly scientist what he thought. Repeatedly he said: “Needs a little fat”. The scientist knew that it is true, fat delivers flavor.

Back in the 1990’s when Kraft came out with its line of “Free” no fat products the key fat replacer was a derivative of cellulose that was basically wood fiber. The joke at Kraft was “Save a tree don’t eat free”. It is no coincidence that these products were not a success. They gave the consumer what they wanted “fat free products”, but they didn’t taste very good.

The other key way to boost the flavor impact of a dish is to add salt. Having worked with quite a bit of cheese research and development at Kraft I can tell you that most American consumers equate “cheesiness” with “saltiness”. This is true with cheese as well as many other foods. Throw in that salt is cheap and that is why there is so much salt (sodium) in prepared foods.

Food manufacturers are bad, but restaurants are worse. A chef once told me that at Culinary school they were taught that if they didn’t get one or two complaints a night about salt the chefs wasn’t adding enough salt to their dishes. The salt in a dish intensifies the flavor and a broad consensus of consumers will say they taste better.

Adding a little fat and salt will certainly boost the flavor in your dinner party dishes. Adding salt and fat is great when you are entertaining. In tomorrow’s blog I will talk about some ways to cut fat and salt especially for your everyday dinner and still have it taste good.

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