Category Archives: Blog

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

Would You Like A Beer Or A Glass Of Wine?

This is a major supper club question. Socializing over a meal at a supper club dinner party usually involves beer and wine. Historically supper clubs have been more wine centric, but with explosion of craft beers that can change. Picking the right craft beer is a lot easier for millennials.

In my neighborhood in Germantown we have been blessed with a great beer guy.
My buddy Tom Schoelkopf has worked for Anheuser Bush and other beer companies. He has always been a great guy to bring a selection of beer. Beer has really changed over the last 30 years. I grew up in the Lite era. Today the variety of flavor you can get form the myriad of craft beers is great. Tom has been the lead guy to educate us. He also likes my grilled pizza.

Check out the recipes:

Another beer story comes to mind. I used to run a company in the Philippines. Once I was at a cocktail party at the U.S. Embassy in Manila and got in a conversation with an Embassy staffer. He said he rated the countries he had worked in by the quality and quantity of the beer in the country. He said Pakistan was the pits. Past the Muslim aversion to alcohol, beer was really expensive. In the Philippine beer is pretty good and really cheap.

The kicker to that story came ten years later. I was walking through the Department Agriculture offices in Washington DC and recognized that former staffer walking down the hall. I couldn’t help myself. Unannounced I walked up to him and said: You are the guy that rates countries based on the quality and quantity of beer. The guy knew he was “the guy” but didn’t have clue who I was. I probably scared the political daylights out of him.

For me, a beer or two at the start of a dinner party is great. With my meal I prefer wine. The beauty of supper clubs is the group gets to decide and should have lots of fun in the decision making process.

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.

Are You Afraid To Invite A Chef To Dinner?

One of the challenges of a supper club is when one of the guests is a chef or is the one that wrote the menu. This can be intimidating to some hosts. Consequently, quite often chefs don’t get asked to dinner.

I am not a chef. I have been lucky to work with great chefs so I know what I am not. I have been cooking for years and have written this book so people think I know what I am doing. I also know that I intimidate some people when it comes to food. I will even admit that I can be an asshole, hopefully a good asshole. I certainly don’t want to make people nervous.

A good example of this involves Lucien Vendome. He is a world-renowned chef, a brilliant guy and my good friend. We used to work together at Kraft and Susan and I would invite him over for dinner. At first, I insisted that he not cook at my house. My thought was he was my guest and I didn’t want him to cook. This didn’t work. Lucien was more comfortable cooking. Cooking together worked really well.

Lucien was a central to the original “Impromptu Friday Nights” crew. We got into the routine of him stopping by my office around 3 pm on a Friday afternoon. He would ask: “Are you and Susan in town this weekend?” To which I would respond: “The usual suspects?” After getting clearance from the war department (my wife Susan), Susan would call four other wives to invite them. Then Lucien and I would start planning. There were three amazing things that would happen:

  • Susan would get the house ready. The fact that she would agree to hosting a dinner party on such short notice was amazing and a credit to her flexibility.

  • Nine out ten times the four couples that got invited at four would show up at seven. These guys all had big corporate jobs that had them traveling the world. Somehow it was serendipity. Whenever we would host an “Impromptu Friday Nights”, everyone would show up.

  • Lucien and I would pull together an amazing meal in very short order. We would make things like chicken Milanese that could be made “a la minute” or very quickly.

  • Check out the recipe:

While inviting chefs and authors can be intimidating it can also be a lot of fun and chances are you, like me will learn something.

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.