How do food companies make decisions on product formulas or recipes? They rely on food panels or groups of trained flavor panelists to tell them what they like. In many ways Supper Clubs are like food panels. The menu developer and the cook are looking to their dinner party guests to tell them what they liked. And, what was a bad idea.

A few weeks ago I developed a menu for our local supper club based on Tapas. This last weekend there were 3 dinner parties in our neighborhood where 27 people were flavor panelists telling us what they liked and what they did not. Supper Clubbers by nature are nice. It is pretty hard to get real, critical feedback directly. You might hear though the grapevine that somebody didn’t like something. But it is rare.

The one theme of feedback that I hear is that my menus are too hard and too complicated.  GUILTY! I developed the original menu with 12 items and had the goal to get it down to 6. We had a trial run dinner party and my flavor panel (aka dinner party guests) argued long and loud to keep it at 10. This translated into a 13 page menu/recipe packet. There is no question that the sheer volume of recipes was daunting. The good news is that with 8 to 10 people at the dinner party there was plenty of opportunity to delegate and share the workload.

The story that is often told in this blog space is that I am a trained flavor panelist. The truth is that I have been trained 3 times. One of the reasons for going through training three times, is that I am not very good. A truly discerning palette is rare and a gift. For example, I worked in the chocolate business and we had a senior Sales Manager named Bill who thought he was the expert on chocolate. Well after training and testing it turned out that Bill couldn’t hold a candle to his secretary Sharon. Poor Bill never recovered.

Another reality is the old marketing line we used to use for our Flavors of Cooking line of products at Kraft Food Ingredients: “Nothing influences that flavor food more than how it is cooked”.It is so true. Our friend that hosted the dinner party that we attended, explained to me why she is intimated by hosting a party where the author of the menu is a guest. She reminded me of the time where 3 groups of dinner parties were merged into one house. So 3 different cooks prepared each item. Most of the dishes looked completely different. My friend was worried that the dishes at her party would not look anything like what the author had intended. The good news was twofold:

1. Everything I saw looked exactly as it was supposed to.
2. It doesn’t really matter if it looks like what the author intended as long as it tastes pretty good.

Did your flavor panel like it? That’s all that matters!

 

Tapas Menu

• Tortilla Espanola 
• Fried Peppers with Prosciutto 
• Baby Kale Salad With Serano Ham & Mancheco
• Crispy Squid With Capers
• Apricot BaconWraps 
• Ravioles De Espinacas
• Spanish Meatballs 
• Flank Steak with Goat Cheese on Toast 
• Shrimp With Garlic
• Dessert
  • Crème Caramel

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.

Tapas menus are great for supper club dinner parties because they promote interaction. I am in the process of writing a Tapas menu and we had a trial run party this week in preparation for three dinner parties for our neighborhood supper club. The party was a lot of fun because:

• Everyone helped out
• The food was great
• Tapas require interaction
• I got good feedback on the menu
• The menu brought back great memories

Tapas Menu

• Tortilla Espanola
• Fried Peppers with Prosciutto
• Baby Kale Salad With Serano Ham & Mancheco
• Crispy Squid With Capers
• Apricot BaconWraps
• Ravioles De Espinacas
• Spanish Meatballs
• Flank Steak with Goat Cheese on Toast
• Shrimp With Garlic
• Dessert
  • Crème Caramel

Involvement Is Key

Most people like to help. If you are in a supper club chances are you like to cook, and even if you don’t, you want to help. The way the party worked was:

• The mise en place had been prepared and the goal was to get the cooking out of the way and serve the Tapas all at once.
• As people arrived we gave them a drink, showed them the menu and told them what their responsibilities would be.
• After a “drinks-worth” of direction, the whole group went to work.
• We set up work-stations with ingredients and cooking apparatus:
  • Annie had the oven station to warm the Tortillas and bread.
  • Jim and Kim had the two stove top stations:
    • Gambas. Peppers & Salad
    • Meatballs & Tomato cream sauce

• Steve dazzled us with his skills at the fry station:
  • Calamari
  • Ravioli
• Linda had the wine station
• Susan was in charge of coordinating serving dishes and utensils
• Mom had responsibility for dessert
• I acted like a clueless camp counselor and bounced from station to station pretending I knew what I was doing.
• In an amazingly short order everything got cooked to perfection and was served all at once.

We started with 10 items and I had intended to cut it down to 6, but the group only wanted to cut one item. The kale salad (the only item close to healthy) didn’t make the cut. (shocking) The crispy squid (Calamari) was a big hit, but I cut it because it is difficult to  make without a sizable fry station.

I made several other changes to make it a better fit for a supper club.  I will make the spinach ravioli and provide them frozen to all three dinner parties. Making ravioli requires having a pasta maker and ravioli mold that most people don’t have. The recipe called for fried ravioli which is easy with my fry station, but boiling water is easier and safer for the average cook.

The Tapas brought back memories of our recent trip to Barcelona. Linda and Steve just happened to have been in Barcelona at the same time as us and we had a  real Tapas dinner together there. It was one of those nights where the waiter and chef took over and we were smart enough to just shutup and let them do their magic. We had had tapas before, but never quite like the real thing we had that night.

Tapas are fun, whether you are in Barcelona  Spain or Bartlett TN

(Steve, Linda, Susan and Paul in Barcelona with a wonderful array of Tapas)

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.