Montserrat Mise En Place

The most important key to a supper club dinner party success is preparation. Catalonia is close to France and we saw a perfect example of Mise En Place during our day trip to Montserrat from Barcelona. Loosely translated, Mis En Place means: “put into place”. It is a key to meal preparation taught at culinary schools around the world and it was key to how a restaurant can feed 3 bus-loads of tourists all at once and keep everyone happy. See an earlier blog that explains Mise En Place in more detail.

Another key feeding a large group in a short period of time is having a menu designed for the occasion. The lunch menu at the restaurant in Montserrat was perfect for the occasion with:

Local breads
Cold tomato soup (Provided in a large pitcher so guest could serve themselves)
Salad platters (Lettuce, Carrot, Tomato, Cucumber & Vinaigrette)
Catalonian Cannelloni (Served hot)
Fruit salad for dessert

As the hungry group arrived from our tour of Montserrat, waiters set the table with bread, wine, salad platters and soup pitchers. Consequently, everyone could eat immediately with no lines and no delay. As our guide Borja said: “Perfecto!”. After a short time waiters came around and served the hot cannelloni that had been warmed in ovens and topped with a creamy béchamel. Again, “Perfecto!”.

The Catalonian Cannelloni is different from the more familiar Italian version. The big difference is that it uses a béchamel, or white sauce, instead of tomato sauce. Borja explained that it is a tradition to have this the day after Christmas. This makes a lot of sense as it is a dish that can be made well in advance and heated and served at the last minute. It also helps to have extra béchamel to add as you serve to avoid your dish being too dry. A problem with pasta dishes is that the pasta can act like a sponge soaking up the moisture. A last minute addition of sauce is easy and really helps the dish.

See the recipe

It never hurts to have a perfect setting. Having lunch at the vineyard with the hills of Montserrat in the background was beautiful. The picture of Susan pointing out why they are called the “Serrated Mountains”.

As we exited the restaurant the maître d’ thanked multinational group for coming and instinctively knew what nationality each guests was. How do they know? I sometimes think I wear a sign. I am an American. I remember traveling internationally in the 1980’s. It seemed that all American men wore a uniform of tan slacks and a blue blazer. Today, every nationality seems to wear jeans. I try not to be the Ugly American as we have a guy in Washington that has become the poster boy for it. He might not have invented the term, but the rest of the world thinks it of him. Now it is all a matter of guilt by association. All I can say is: this too shall pass.

After lunch we went to Oller Del Mas winery. Borja did a wonderful job explaining how the vineyard has been resurrected. The area had been been a major producer of wine before the Spanish Civil war, but the area and vineyard had fallen into disrepair. The current owners have rebuilt it resurrecting old strains of grape trying to bring the region back to historic levels. It was a wonderful afternoon and a perfect example of how Mise En Place and preparation makes things work.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

Barcelona Is “Perfecto”

“Perfecto”

I am now fluent in Catalan. What a fantastic word to describe so many things. The use of one word is so helpful when travelling the world. I went to Paris in high school with my French class and remember having a goal of getting through the day with one word: “Oui”. Again, it is a perfect word.

This story brings back the old joke:

What do you call someone who speaks many languages: Multilingual
What do you call someone who speaks two languages: Bi lingual
What do you call someone who speaks one language: American

The joke is sad, but true. We Americans are spoiled because in so many places around the world we can get by with our one language. On the other hand, I remember telling my friend in Holland how advantaged his children would be as they spoke: Dutch, English, German and French. He told me that he doubted that they were advantaged at all because the Dutch children were forced to spend a disproportionate amount of their intellectual energy on language versus American children being able to have more focus on math and science. Who knows what is true. I do know I love having one word to focus on: “Perfecto”.

Barcelona has been a great place to build on our supper club mission. We started our first night by having dinner with two old supper club friends from Memphis. Linda Stevens and Steve Cooper just happened to be in Barcelona with her sister and brother in law. We had a wonderful dinner at Patron. The waiter took the lead and kept up a flow of Tapas and sea bass prepared a few different ways. “Perfecto”.

(Dick, Karen, Steve, Linda, Susan and Paul at Patron)

We spent a day with a Danny (www.inourbarcelonatour.com) touring the city. The works of Gaudi highlighted by La Sagrada Familia really stood out. Many of us have toured cathedrals, but this place is different. I had been to Barcelona 20 years ago and to see the progress and the beauty was special. The work has progressed enormously. So much so that one feels compelled to come back to see it finished. They say it will be done by 2026 (100^thanniversary of Gaudi’s death), but I suspect that a final completion is a long way off. The place is amazing. It is the only cathedral in the world where you have to pay to get in and people line up by the thousands every day. “Perfecto”.

There are two major supper club food themes that we are bringing back from Barcelona. Tapas and seafood are everywhere you look. The Tapas theme is fantastic for supper clubs as the sharing of food is a great way to socialize over a meal. The seafood of this city on the Mediterranean is spectacular. We had dinner last night at Botafumeiro restaurant and had some amazing seafood. “Perfecto”.

Tapas of grilled pork, sausage and codfish croquet

Razor clams with herb butter

“Une Femme D’un Certain Age”

You have to love the French. Not only can they really cook, but they have such a wonderful way with words. They would never say:

“He looks good for his age”
“He reminds me of my father” or worse: “My grandfather”.
“He looks so much older than his wife”

Instead they say: “Un home d’un certain age” (A man of a certain age). It sounds so much better. A problem our local supper club has is that a lot of members are of a certain age. Many have been in the club for over 20 years. Lots of our good friends have moved away. We are faced with the challenge of recruiting new members not of a certain age.

The key to the health of most supper clubs is growth. The supper clubs that last for a long time are the ones that are open to new members and actively encourage newbies, especially younger ones, to easily get involved.

Just about everybody likes to socialize over a meal, but many of us are daunted by the supper club challenges of:

Finding the right people?
How to organize?
How to host a dinner party?
What if i don’t cook?
How to recruit new (and younger) members?

Impromptu Friday Nights – A Guide to Supper Clubs (Available from Morgan James Publishing anywhere books are sold) addresses these concerns in detail. However, encouraging and recruiting new members is a key and more than worthy of a few meaningful, or at least humorous, thoughts.

Our neighborhood is in transition. The homes are 20 to 30 years old and many of the original owners have retired and moved away. The bad news is that our supper club membership has fallen off as the core group has aged. The good news is that it is still an attractive neighborhood with affordable homes near good schools and we have seen a significant influx of younger families. It is a perfect environment to attract new members to a supper club.

The key is to get younger people involved. Our club leadership has taken several steps to do so. Historically, the way we have gotten new people involved is as subs who come to a supper club when a regular member can’t. The good news is that subs don’t have to host and quite often didn’t even need to cook. They show up, have a good time and hopefully get more involved. The bad news is that as subs they would get called at the last minute and quite often couldn’t come because of scheduling conflicts. In an effort to get subs and younger people involved, we have started trying to recruit new subs in advance.

Coincidently, a wine club has sprung up in the neighborhood. Many of the participants are younger. The founder of the club developed a website and used it to get the club set up amongst her younger friends. We are trying to get the wine club set involved with the supper club and at the same time adapting some of the more casual features of the wine club into the supper club. For example, historically the supper club has been scheduled for Saturday nights. The wine club meets mostly on Sundays, but moves the dates around and is more flexible trying to get as many people involved as possible.

A classic example of Une femme d’un certain age was the French actress Simone Signoret in her later years (Pictured above). She was a great actress who was also married to the actor Ives Montand. Ives was famous in the U.S. for the movie he made with Marilyn Monroe Let’s Make Love. It just so happens that Ives was a first cousin of my International Sales Manager at Kraft, John Argiro. John told us the story of how Ives had an affair with Marilyn during the filming of movie. As John said: “Who could blame him, he was French”. Simone never divorced him. She just made him pay. The supper club moral of this story is that getting members not of a certain age involved is good. However, discretion is the better part of valor.