A Quick and Easy Dinner Party for $30: Holiday Edition

$30 Dinner Party is a Monthly Column that lays out a detailed 3-course meal (appetizer, entree and dessert) for a dinner party of four for under $30. With a detailed listing of ingredients (and their cost) and super easy recipes, along with budget wine pairings, you’ll never have to put off socializing due to budget restrictions again.  Recession be damned! Read more

$30 Dinner Party: Autumn Style

$30 Dinner Party is a Monthly Column that lays out a detailed 3-course meal (appetizer, entree and dessert) for a dinner party of four for under $30. With a detailed listing of ingredients (and their cost) and super easy recipes, along with budget wine pairings, you’ll never have to put off socializing due to budget restrictions again.  Recession be damned!

Cucumber, Tomato, and White Bean Salad

Amuse Bouche, or “mouth teaser” when translated from French, is the best way to describe what an appetizer really should be. The first course should make your guests both salivate and gasp. The combination of dill, mint, and garlic serves as a fresh and savory decoration for the stunning gastronomical architecture of the strings of julienned cucumbers tossed with tiny cubes of diced tomatoes. The tiny white Italian beans add a meaty texture, and save you from having to chop an entire bushel of cucumbers just to make sure that your serving dish doesn’t look empty.

A grumpy Israeli man first served this salad to me outside of Milan, where he complained to me, “In Tel Aviv, I would use parsley, but here they grow their parsley too big so I have to use mint.” He then pirouetted on his way back into the kitchen, yelling back at me, “Maybe it’s not so bad a curse- the mint is my daughter’s favorite.”

Wine Pairing under $12: Look to the Loire Valley (northwestern France) if you want white wine; they use mostly Sauvignon Blanc, and they make sure it is crisp, herbal, and citrus-driven, which are aromas that all go well with the light flavors of this first dish. If you want red wine filled with light, tart berry flavors, then ask for something made with Gamay grapes; they grown natively in Beaujolais, and they’ve found a second home in the Loire Valley.

Ingredients
3 cucumbers    $2.00
1 can of beans   $2.00
2 tomatos    $3.00
3 clove of garlic
dill
mint
olive oil
1 lemon (the juice of)   $0.50

Recipe: Rub your serving/mixing bowl with the smashed garlic cloves. Julienne the cucumbers if you can. You will need a mandolin to do this, but if you don’t have one, an extremely fine dicing of the cucumbers will work, too. Dice the tomatoes. Rinse and add the can of beans. Drizzle olive oil over the entire bowl, and cover with a generous shake of dried dill. Sprinkle dry, crushed mint until you can just barely smell it through the mint. Toss everything together. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

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Creamy Crab and Pea Linguini

The hardest part of cooking this dish is the waiting. I suggest you have at least one good friend and one good bottle of wine to split between the two of you while you simmer this dish’s ingredients down into a chewy sauce.

The most important step is adding the frozen peas at the very end of cooking so that they are still a luminescent green when they hit your guests’ bowls. For budget conscious gourmets such as me, it’s the green in the peas more so than the sizzle in the steak that matters most.

Wine Pairing $15 or less: Ask a friend to search out a bottle of Muscadet, and you’ll be able to pair your dish with a wine that tastes like lemons, limes, and green melon sprinkled with salty, crushed seashells. If for some reason you really want to drink red with crab, please, don’t be upset if your local wine merchant gives you a snobby scoff, but do insist that the merchant helps you find a fresh, light Valpolicella so that you can at least brighten up the dish with some tart, cherry-driven acidity and fresh, herbal notes.

Ingredients:
3 cans of crab   $6.00
1 package of linguini   $1.00
1 bag of frozen peas   $2.00
1 small onion   $0.50
¼ cup of olive oil
¼ stick of butter
Dill
Tarragon
2 cups of milk or 1 cup of cream

Recipe: Make the pasta so that it’s just barely done, drain it, and set it off to the side. Dice the onion and sauté it in the butter, olive oil, and (salt & pepper to taste) in a large pot (it can be the same pot you cooked the pasta in). Add the milk or cream and reduce over medium-low heat until it has soft, creamy consistency; this could take up to 30 minutes so be patient, or have a friend, some music, and a bottle of wine on hand. Add the peas and cook just until heated through- the point of adding the peas last is that they turn out a bright green color that wows your guests. Dust the sauce with equal portions dill and tarragon- it should smell both savory and sweet after doing this step, and be generous because, unlike a strong flavor such as basil or paprika, it would be hard to overdo it with delicate herbs like tarragon or dill.

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Roasted Acorn Squash Rings filled with Sweet Couscous

It’s amazing how just turning the oven on and waiting an hour can make you look like a superhero. Your oven can make your meals feel like warm hugs from friends where stir frying or sautéing might leave you feeling like you just fumbled through a slick handshake from a new acquaintance.

Sweet, starchy circles of green, brown, and orange serve as brilliant frames for a soft mound of dessert-style couscous. Burning the acorn squash is key. Otherwise, the raisins and brown sugar will swing the dish from wonderfully sweet to jarringly saccharine very quickly.

Also, don’t worry if you don’t end up making this dish after all the cooking from the first two; the uncut acorn squash will stay fresh in your fridge for many weeks to come; there’s a reason why you see these vegetables in every cheesy painting of Pilgrims’ Thanksgivings!

Wine Pairing $15 or less: Ask a friend to bring a dry Viognier if you like white wine better so that you can combine the wilted flowers, tart apricots, and warm nutmeg flavors of the wine with the woodsy toast and sweetness of the dish. If you like red better, then look to an Italian Primitivo for jammy red berries and flowers along with the same warm, brown baking spices of the Viognier would add.

Ingredients:
2 Acorn squashes  $3.00
1 small onion  $0.50
1 handful of raisins  $1.00
2 cups of couscous  $2.00
Brown Sugar
Olive Oil
Butter
Salt & Pepper
Allspice
Cinnamon

Recipe: Rub a cookie sheet with butter and olive oil. Use a sharp, serrated knife to cut (start from the pointy ends) the squashes into ½ inch to 1 inch thick rings. Arrange the rings over the cookie sheet and lightly sprinkle them with salt, pepper, and allspice (allspice is a very strong spice so go slowly if you have not used it often in the past). Put the cookie sheet into the oven in the middle rack at 400 degrees for 45min to 1.5hrs. The secret is to cook the squash to a level that may actually seem as if you’ve burned it- you want very dark brown edges on the squash. While it cooks, mince the onion and sauté it in olive oil, butter, a little salt, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Add 2 cups of water and bring to a boil, then stir in the couscous, turn off the heat, and cover for 10 minutes. Stir in a generous sprinkle of brown sugar, and when then squash is ready scoop in a mound of the couscous into the center of the squash rings. Sprinkle the whole dish with brown sugar and place back in the over for 2 minutes to crystallize it. Serve warm.

Total Cost of Meal: $23.50 (excluding wine — the guests can bring that)

M. Cole Chilton makes videos about, teaches classes on, and makes a living from tasting and talking about wine. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and drinks three cups of coffee a day.  You can check out more of his musings at Porter’s Wine.

A Quick and Easy Dinner Party for Under $30

Let it be known that I am 100% gourmet. I taste wine for a living and spend my days making videos and writing articles about wine and which foods to pair with it. If you come to my house for a dinner party, it would be embarrassing for me to do anything less than impress you.

Of course, right now, we’re all in a recession, and at any given point – perhaps when you’re counting the days between your rent check being cashed – you might be in a personal depression. However, when I’m fiscally down, I still get a big pick-me-up from being around friends and sharing gourmet food with them.

The secret of creating a gourmet menu for $30 or less is utilizing a small number of simple ingredients and a small number of very aromatic herbs and spices, most of which should already be in your spice rack or be in the spice rack of that beautiful, interesting upstairs neighbor that you’ve been meaning to find an excuse to talk to for the past six months.  Below, you’ll find my go-to dinner party menu.  These dishes are what I break out when I’m trying to show off my culinary skills to new friends, without regretting it when I look at my bank statement.

In the spirit of making friends and making full use of the spices left by previous tenants, the cost of dried herbs, spices, olive oil (or other things someone in your building really should have lying around to borrow if you don’t have them yourself) is not included in the grand total cost for this meal.

The Appetizer

The appetizer should take only 5 to 10 minutes to make, and it should taste great either served at a warm room temperature or served after sitting in an oven for an hour while your less-than-punctual friends commute from Astoria, Williamsburg, or wherever else they can afford to live. Tasting this dish feels like the freedom of having nothing better to do than sit in a café and talk about your first summer fling.

Dilled Summer Squash
2 Zucchini – $2.5
2 Yellow Squashes – $2
Dried Dill
Garlic Olive Oil

Cut two zucchini and two yellow squashes in halve and slice into ¼ of an inch thick half moons. Mince at least 4 cloves of garlic (or more depending on how savory you like your kisses). Sauté the lot in a large drizzle of olive oil until softened (3 minutes on medium high heat) and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a generous portion of dill. If you have extra parmesan lying around, it wouldn’t be wrong to treat yourself and sprinkle a bit on top of the dish once it hits the table.

The Entree

Almost any meat can be substituted for the chicken here, depending on what’s on sale.  Lamb will give the dish a Moorish flair, beef will add a French charm, and sausage will take you on a quick trip to Piedmont. Also, this is a great dish because every ingredient is going in the same pot, so if something is wrong near the end you can always add more of what is needed. When you eat this, remember that life can never be truly all sour, all sweet, or all dull; it will always be a mix of what you make it… and in this dish (and in life) you have the freedom to tinker with how much of each you put into it.

Sage & Mint Chicken Soup
2 lbs of boneless chicken thighs – $8
1 bunch of fresh mint – $2
1 large bunch of broccoli – $3
1 large yellow onion – $0.5
1 large (16oz) can of Garbanzo or white beans – $1.5
1 box of chicken stock – $2
Garlic (8 cloves)
Sage
Cayenne

Dice the chicken into ½-inch cubes, dust them liberally with sage and conservatively with cayenne and salt, toss them in a deep pot, and sauté them with olive oil and over medium heat until golden brown – only stir once the first side turns brown.

Dice the onion, mince the garlic, and chop the broccoli and half the mint. Toss it all into the pot along with beans and sauté along with the chicken until the chicken is cooked through.

Add the chicken stock and cook over medium-low heat until simmering.

Chop the remainder of the mint and add it to the pan. Add the mint to the pot and simmer for 2 minutes. In the meantime, taste the dish to see if it needs more sage, mint, and/or cayenne. The sage and mint should come through most prominently, and the cayenne should be present just strong enough to add a “kick.”

Dessert

Serve cool in the summer, warm in the fall, and piping hot in the winter. Try to serve this dish to a room full of people who don’t know each other well yet. Its flavors are simple enough that you can focus on having a wonderful conversation learning about each other, yet strong enough that you will forget neither the dish, nor the people you shared it with.

Savory Apple & Pear Dessert
3 large red apples – $1.5
2 large green or brown pears (Bosc, Bartlett, etc.) – $1.5
A handful of seasonal nuts – $2
Tarragon
Cinnamon
Brown Sugar
Butter

Core, quarter, and slice the apples and pears. Chop the nuts. Sauté the nuts in a small drizzle of olive oil and a quarter stick of butter (we said it was frugal, not slimming!) for two minutes before adding the fruit, cinnamon, brown sugar, and tarragon. Cook the whole of it until the fruit is soft on the outside but with the tiniest bit of crunchiness left on the inside. Upon smelling, the tarragon should come through strongest and the cinnamon should come through conservatively.

Total Cost of Meal: $26.50

M. Cole Chilton makes videos about, teaches classes on, and makes a living from tasting and talking about wine. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, and drinks three cups of coffee a day.  You can check out more of his musings at Porter’s Wine.