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The $50 Dinner Party: 26 Dinner Parties that Won't Break Your Bank, Your Back, Or Your Schedule |
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The $50 Dinner Party: 26 Dinner Parties that Won't Break Your Bank, Your Back, Or Your Schedule |
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by: Sally Sampson
Dewey Decimal Number: 642.4 EAN: 9780684842288 ISBN: 0684842289 Label: Fireside Languages: Manufacturer: Fireside Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 240 Publication Date: November 11, 1998 Publisher: Fireside Studio: Fireside Editorial Review: Product Description: Are you a victim of fear of entertaining? Do you break into a cold sweat at the thought of planning a menu? Do you think you have to take out a loan when you invite friends to dinner? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need The $50 Dinner Party. Do your guests have all-American tastes? Satisfy them with Grilled Marinated Flank Steak with Soy, Sherry and Dijon; Potato Cake with Garlic and Olive Oil; a Salad of Arugula, Avocado and Mango and Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce. Feeling in a tropical mood? Try the Caribbean Spiced Chicken, Coconut Black Bean Risotto, Cucumber Salad with Yogurt and Mint and Key Lime Mousse with Toasted Coconut. Looking for something simple and elegant? Then serve Grilled Salmon Steaks with Citrus and Thyme, Pan-Steamed Spinach, Leek Mashed Potatoes and Engagement Brownies. And for a meal with a pan-Asian flavor, treat your guests to Spicy Scallops with Cashews, Steamed Basmati Rice, Watercress Salad with Orange Segments and Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Peaches and Gingerroot. Each of the menus in The $50 Dinner Party will feed six people for fifty dollars, not including beverages. And if you want to treat your guests to a little something extra, try one of the dozen dips with some crackers and crudités, and a plate of "$50 Cookies" with your coffee or tea. Whether you're a new cook trying to coordinate a balanced dinner on an unbalanced budget or an old hand looking for new ideas that don't require spending a fortune at the market or hours in the kitchen, you'll find the perfect dinner in The $50 Dinner Party. Amazon.com Review: The subtitle of Sally Samson's The $50 Dinner Party astutely sums up the book: Twenty-Six Dinner Parties That Won't Break Your Bank, Your Back, or Your Schedule. And boy, does she deliver. This is a no-frills cookbook, as spare as you can go, and is a sleek beauty as a result. Sampson opens with a chapter of little bites and dips, then it's right into the main menus, with detailed discussions on each of the 26 dinners, plus sidebars of information for clever timesaving ideas. A presumption is made that you are already comfortable in the kitchen, that you speak the language of recipes, and that you know how to time a meal to get the food out and onto the table when your guests are ready to sit down. Sampson leaves the marching orders to you. Her job--and she's brilliant at it--is stimulating your planning imagination with a lush array of possibilities for delicious dinners for six that she feels will come in under $50, sans wine, coffee, and tea. A couple of wonderful meal examples: Roasted Chicken Breasts with Dried Figs, Apricots, and Prunes; French Bread; Mixed Green Salad with Red Onions and Toasted Pine Nuts; and Rice Pudding. Or, Grilled, Marinated Flank Steak with Soy, Sherry, and Dijon; Potato Cake with Garlic and Olive Oil; Salad of Arugula, Avocado, and Mango; and Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce. Sally Sampson deserves a medal for taking the worry and guesswork out of dinner entertaining, all while watching the purse strings. --Schuyler Ingle Related Items:
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - I never leave for work without this book!I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves to cook for friends or family. I spend most of my time cooking for strangers on private boats but I always receive fabulous feedback on any recipes from this book. Bake "Dain's Grandmother's Carrot Cake" for your next gathering with friends and you will be the star of the meal! The recipe is incredibly easy and sinfully good. I make it in a sheetcake pan and it slices up nicely for dessert portions. Rating: - Be famous for your dinner parties!Go out and buy this book and you will be famous for your dinner parties. I have had this book for a while and I have cooked almost everything in it. The lasagne is to die for and there are even recipes for drinks. There is everything you need to be a successful dinner party host. Sally Sampson takes all the anxiety out of having people over for dinner. Rating:  - a great jump startThe idea behind this cookbook is great -- take some of the mental obstacles away from entertaining by getting money and time out of the way. In the end the author accomplishes this goal. This book is great for inspiration to 'just do it' when it comes to dinner parties. That being said, her cooking definitely has its limits. There are 26 menus, all including a main course, side dishes, either an appetizer or a salad, and a dessert. Personally, my cooking focuses a lot on desserts, so I couldn't help but notice that she totally cops out on the dessert portion of the book. There are several cookie recipes in the back of the book and she falls back on those for a number of her 'desserts.' Meanwhile, in trying to list easy dessert recipe, there's not a single pie!! My advice: don't serve cookies for dessert. Just get some fresh fruit and cream if you don't want to think about it. Or substitute your own favorite dessert recipes for hers. One minor thing: she mentions that she and her food processor are attached at the hip, and she does use her food processor in a lot of recipes. If you have one, great. If you don't, mostly you can get around it, no problem, but just be aware. Nonetheless, the book is good. Her philosophy of making things ahead and understanding that the real reason for a dinner party is to have friends over is great, and she sticks to the philosophy in her recipes. The carrot cake as mentioned in another review is good. As is the chicken saltimbocca, the sherry flank steak and her mashed sweet potatoes. also i like the butternut squash with apples and walnuts, etc. Some good recipes. If you need a bite sized way to jump start your entertaining aspirations, this is a good place to start. Also, you may find inspiration in thinking "I can do better than this!!" as I did. Go for it! If you don't mind doing a little more reading and a little more of your own thinking, there are some great easy menus and a similar philosophy to be found toward the back of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. Also there's Barefoot Contessa Parties -- a similar philosophy but with a much more experienced author, great recipes and lots of pretty pictures. However, it doesn't have nearly as many menus as $50, so take your pick. Rating: - the best dinner party cookbook for those on a budgetTry the incredible chocolate-bread pudding, yum!! Amazing. This is just a fab cookbook for those people who want to entertain, who want to impress their friends' taste buds, but just don't have the time or the cash to do so Martha Stewart fashion. The menus I've tried all work so well together. This is my one cookbook that gets heavy usage, eventhough I've got all those Silver Palate ones too. Also having the menus makes it so easy to plan a dinner party, the recipes work very well together, saving you the time of searching cookbooks trying to figure out what goes well with what.
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