Whether it be Passover or Easter, the special
meals that these important family holidays include can be overwhelming
– especially for first-time hosts or hostesses.
Happily there is a wealth of resources that can ease the complications
of entertaining so you can focus all of your attention on delighting
in your company rather than being tied to the stove – or worse,
to the sink.
Disposable decor
At A Perfect Setting (140 Atlantic Ave. at Henry Street) owner
Jennifer Baron has amassed a carefully chosen collection of high-quality,
attractive, yet disposable goods that make a gorgeous table while
saving you clean-up time.
Forget the plastic, transparent cups of old. Their wine glasses
($2.75 each, four for $10), replete with stems, will twinkle
in the candlelight, but they’re still plastic so you can pitch
them in the garbage when dinner’s over. (And when your tipsy
relative drops it on the tile floor you’ll just laugh and call
them a cab, rather than cursing them for breaking the family
crystal.)
Similarly, the lovely dinner napkins can be discarded, negating
the need to be washed and pressed before and after use.
If you’re not ready to let your guests eat a three-course holiday
dinner off paper plates, why not use pretty paper dessert plates
($3.25) with coordinating napkins ($3.95) for a sweet ending?
Maybe this will be the first year you actually sit down and share
dessert with your guests.
Want a festive table runner by the buffet without worrying that
your hungry charges will drip and stain it? Try table runners
($8.95) made of banana fiber. With six and a half yards of "material,"
you can cut it to fit the center of your table and a few other
places, too. It’s discretely disposable, so there’s less cleanup
and more chitchat.
The perfect finishing touch to any table is the centerpiece.
For a wonderful springtime bouquet, Storm Mortensen Flowers (194
Court St. at Wyckoff Street) offers fresh, colorful, fragrant
bouquets to dazzle your guests (or perhaps to create an attractive
diversion from your burned main course that’s smoldering off
to the side).
Your Storm Mortensen bouquet will be delivered in a substantial
vase, so you don’t have to worry about the arrangement or the
presentation, just the limits of your imagination when you place
the order. These ultra fresh flowers are guaranteed to last for
18 days to a month after your event – serving to remind you of
your entertaining triumph in the days to come.
For more information about A Perfect Setting, call (718) 222-1868.
For more information about Storm Mortensen Flowers, call (718)
643-3205.
Organize, organize
Experts agree that when planning a dinner for a large group,
your sanity on the big day rests on your ability to plan. If
you really plan ahead, you can hire Gravesend personal chef Roberta
Roberti to cook the meal for you in your home, so that when the
guests arrive you need only heat the pre-prepared meal in the
oven. You still have the joys of entertaining at home, without
all of the resulting pots and pans.
Roberti’s year-old company, A Whisk in Time, offers these services
year-round, whether clients want healthy, fresh meals for their
families during the week, or for special occasions.
If you insist on going it alone, Roberti has a few important
tips:
"Organize; take stock of what you have and what you need;
make a game plan; if you can prepare anything ahead of time,
do that; if it can sit in the refrigerator a week, then make
it," she says.
"The first thing I would do is create a menu. Give yourself
as much time as possible. Make a list of everything you need
and check to make sure you have it Don’t go assuming, and when
you go shopping, stick to your list," she says.
Roberti suggests breaking up the meal preparation over the course
of a week rather than trying to cook everything that morning.
"Know what you’re going to do a week in advance, three days
in advance, the day before, the day of, etc. Don’t wake up in
the morning and have 50 things to do," she says. "Make
sure to enjoy your guests. You don’t want to run around kitchen,
sweating and tiring yourself. This way everything is done."
For a dessert that will make a great impression, Roberti says
that in her Italian family a semifreddo ice cream dessert is
always a hit, and a frozen recipe can be kept in the freezer
for a week.
But, she warns, don’t try anything new.
"If there’s something you want to make, try it out first,"
she says. "Recipes can be very deceiving. They can be harder,
or more time consuming or not quite what you’re expecting."
For more information about Roberta Roberti’s A Whisk in Time
personal chef service, call (718) 791-0799 or e-mail awhiskintime@personalchef.com.
Easy menus
Park Slope cooking instructor Jennifer Herman Clair is well versed
in coaching novice cooks and says that this week she will even
help one client through a dry run of the menu she created for
her large Greek family so that she can flawlessly run the kitchen
on the big day.
This former Martha Stewart food editor says the key to any holiday
is preparing at least one or two dishes ahead of time, which
is especially possible for Easter or Passover.
"For Passover, I do a lot of briskets," says Clair.
"You really have to make them a couple of days ahead of
time. You just put it in the fridge in the pot and skim off the
fat, then pop it in the oven when guests arrive."
For Easter, Clair says that while maintaining family tradition
will make most of your guests happy, any braised meat is a great
timesaver. "Meat in the oven is not something you have to
deal with," says Clair. "It’s not on the stovetop,
for example. It doesn’t have to be constantly stirred. You can
leave them almost totally unattended. They improve with age,
especially osso bucco or beef bourguignon."
Ham is also an easy Easter main course says Clair.
"Most are cured and you just have to slather on a sweet,
yummy glaze."
Clair agrees with Roberti that dessert is another course where
time can be saved but not at the expense of taste.
"A chocolate torte, like meat, improves with age,"
says Clair. "It can be made up to two days ahead of time,
and a flourless chocolate torte is perfect for Passover."
Even better, Clair recommends taking advantage of the many Brooklyn
bakeries – ranging from the mom-and-pop to the hoity-toity –
where you can buy your style of dessert, and skip that baking
altogether. (Clair is a fan of the new Blue Apron Foods gourmet
store at 814 Union St. at Seventh Avenue.)
Clair says that although vegetables do have to be prepared on
the day of, they can still be pre-cooked that morning to save
you time later.
"You can blanche asparagus or string beans ahead of time:
put them in boiling water for 3 minutes and then run them under
cold water so they stay bright green. Wrap them in Saran Wrap,
and then just heat them in a pan, with olive oil or butter and
lemon juice, right before serving."
And last but not least, says Clair, don’t be afraid to delegate.
If your relative wants to bring a salad, let them. Holidays are
about sharing time together.
After all, as Baron says, they’re your family and they’ll still
love you if the wine glasses are plastic and the tablecloth is
paper. With all that’s going on in the world, these times spent
with family are more precious and meaningful than ever.
For more information about Jennifer Herman Clair’s private
cooking classes, call (718) 783-0048 or visit her Web site at
www.homecookingny.com.
For Blue Apron Foods, call (718) 230-3180.
