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make your job easy
Alan your menu after you know whether you can have help with the cooking and/or serving. If you can have no help at all, be sure you offer a meal which will permit you to spend most, if not all, of the cocktail time with the guests. Plan a meal of few courses, so that changing plates is at a minimum. And here are a few don'ts to remember: Don't plan a main course of steak. If it's to be cooked properly, your absence during part of cocktails and perhaps the soup course will be inevitable. Don't plan a souffle for dessert. Don't, in other words, plan any "short order" food or any food which requires constant attention during all of its cooking.
You can cope with rare roast beef better than with steak because you can time it accurately so that it comes out exactly as you want it. This can be done with only the necessary initial preparation and the later carving and serving. The same is true if you substitute a chocolate bread pudding for a chocolate souffle. (Don't, please, turn your nose up 62
at the thought of serving a bread pudding to guests. If it's beautifully made, it is a proper rival of the best souffle, and it won't proclaim its humble ingredients.)
If you're your own cook, then cook what you know you can do well. There's no sense testing your cooking ability for a party. Even practiced cooks don't risk previously untried dishes on their guests and you'll find it safer not to unless you've tried it out first on the family.
piece de resistance
In planning any meal for guests decide first what the piece de resistance is to be and plan the rest of the meal around it. It may be, for instance, that one of your great specialties is vichyssoise. If you plan to start a summer dinner with this, which is made with potato and cream, among other things, then no matter how excellent your asparagus or broccoli or artichoke Hollandaise, you should not serve it at the same time with the vichyssoise. Whether your knowledge of the caloric content of foods and nutrition be great or small, plan your meals with never more than one rich food in each, with a proper balance of colors and variety of flavors, of hot and cold, attractively served. Then they are likely to be good for people as well as good to eat.
If, on the other hand, the great specialty of your house is a superb green salad, and you always make it for any luncheon or dinner, you have great latitude in planning around it. You will add something Tich to the meal instead of trying to avoid it.
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