The evening is winding down.  There is a cool breeze coming in from the kitchen window as I sit quietly to share with you, dear readers, the meal I prepared and served to a group of my friends and family.

I love the warmth and comfort of a house full of happy, well-fed people.  No matter how much work is involved, it brings me great pleasure to host guests for a home cooked meal. 

Tonight, my neighbors, Camille, Larry and Ian, my friend Lisa and my cousin Caryn came over for dinner for an informal dinner party.

I started dinner with a salad of mesculun greens and arugula, sliced mushrooms and halved cherry tomatoes in hand-made honey-Dijon vinaigrette.  I took fresh herbed chevre from a local organic dairy and rolled it into small balls, then coated it in hazelnut flour and lightly pan-fried it.

I took a whole grain French bread and sliced it thin and toasted it, making herbed garlic crostinis.

For our second course, I served steamed littleneck clams in garlic, fresh herbs and a white wine, lemon and butter sauce.  I also served a large semolina bread to soak up the clam broth.

For our main course, I roasted a chicken and made Lydie Marshall’s Eggplant Neapolitan, which consists of fried eggplant, sauce and cheese, topped with breadcrumbs.  To accompany the eggplant and chicken, I roasted some root vegetables – Brussels sprouts, onion, potato, mushroom and garlic (which I forgot to photograph) — oh asnd of course I made a white-wine reduced pan-gravy!

We went through three bottles of wine with dinner between the lot of us, each a different Chardonnay.  The first came from Burgundy, the second from California and the third from Australia.  I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that I preferred the burgundy to the other two wines.

After dinner, we drank vanilla black tea with dessert.  Ian made brownies, and Camille brought them with fresh strawberries.  I also picked up a box of hazelnut sandwich cookies from the French bakery, along wit chocolate covered apricots and almond Rocha from the chocolatier.