Dinner club

For almost 35 years now the Phactors have been members of a dinner club.  The year starts with an appetizer/tapas and wine social to plan themes for the year, and it always ends with a brunch.  In between there are 6 dinners, each with a theme.  The hosts and co-hosts for each dinner plan a menu and then each participant (not all are couples) cooks one of the items for the group and the costs are divided evenly among the diners.  Right now a magnificent pan of osso buco is simmering on the stove and filling the kitchen with a wonderful herby, Italian aroma.  The taste tests indicate that something wonderful is cooking.  This is a wonderful way to spend an evening, and we certainly encourage people to consider forming a similar social group.  The hosts usually don't cook, but they supply the seats, the wine, and the bread.  The menus are sometimes ethnic, sometimes other themes, and you get to try a lot of dishes, a lot of recipes that you would not probably try by yourself.  This is a classic Italian dish, and having grown up in Italian NY, this is quite familiar.  My point is quite simple.  Life is short, we have to eat, so why not make it into a social event once a month, and don't give me this crap that you're too busy.  Our dinners are often quite spectacular and at a fraction of the price you would pay to get similar fare in a restaurant, and then without the company and socializing.  Of course the Phactor is forbidden from discussing, however intellectually, religion or politics.  Good thing the food is good. 

Life is tough

Tonight the Phactors are hosting half of our dinner group, a monthly social event for the past 33 years; our 8th social event in the past 9 days, and the 3d the Phactors have hosted. The season's theme is regional USA and this particular menu comes from The Virginian (Thomas Jefferson) in the Gourmet Magazine (September 2003), although exactly what about this is evocative of Jefferson escapes me. If any of this sounds good to you, the recipes can be found at epicurious. Here's the starters: fig and goat cheese crostini, Virginia ham and melon-apple chutney on corn bread rounds. The soup that the Phactor constructed earlier today is roasted tomato with Parmesan wafers. This is pretty iffy for Jefferson on a couple of levels. Wonder if Jefferson actually grew tomatoes? They are neotropical but did not become a common garden item until the early 1900s. Of course he could have run down to his local Italian deli and got the cheese (and the wafers are just great!). Ham and corn bread, OK, but the rest is a bit suspect for Jefferson. Mixed green salad with tarragon vinaigrette garnished with parsnip crisps. This seems possible, if salad was a menu item in Jefferson's day. Anyone know? The main dish is mustard and herb crusted rack of lamb and wild mushroom potato au gratin. Don't care how authentic this is, it sounds just plain great. The dessert is a pecan pie. This is a true southern confection, but hard to know its early distribution. A heritage cookbook has a Savannah pecan pie recipe, so it's quite possible in Virginia too. So there you go. None of this bothered the other menu planners who decided to go for it on the premise that Jefferson would have liked the recipe even if he'd never actually seen it in his life. For reasons quite unexplained, the Phactors are way ahead of the preparation game; maybe because the place remained pretty neat from an open house earlier in the week, otherwise it would be hell to pay for taking time to jot out a blog. Obviously the other participants cook all the other dishes, or this would be a very different story. Ta.