The Pom Wonderful Dinner Party
As some of you may know, the marvelously generous people at POM Wonderful recently sent me an unconscionable number of pomegranates (44!) and a very risque apron and a cutting board in hopes that I would do something wonderful with these things.
Well, I’ve done my best, and here is the best rehash I could muster. Much of the description of the party is in the captions of the pictures in the facebook album but a cohesive narrative never hurt anyone. I wish you could taste tastes through the internet. Sorry.
This was my first ever real live dinner party and it was very hectic and everything took a lot more time to do than I had counted on, but ultimately everything turned out wonderfully. I started my preparation two days before the party. I went to three different supermarkets, on the phone with my mother practically the whole time, comparing prices on string beans, figuring out the difference between various cuts of meat (I was a vegetarian for eight years; what do I know?) and trying to decide which varieties of POM juice would taste best in what (The answer: plain pomegranate in almost everything, pomegranate cherry in sangria, pomegranate nectarine in my mouth).
I picked out the nicest steaks I could find and bought mushrooms for the vegetarians. I got cream for the gelato. I wanted to serve sugar snap peas, but seeing as they were out of season and so looked pitiful shrink-wrapped on a styrofoam tray AND cost $10 a pound, I went with three pounds of string beans for 11 people instead, which somehow ended up not being enough. How many string beans to people eat? A lot, apparently. I mean, the things are really light so three pounds looks like BIG HUGE BAGFUL. My parents always make way too much food and I criticize them for wasting, but now I see why they do it. I almost never see anything completely devoured from the table and it was a strange feeling to see them all go. As much as I want my parents to stop overbuying, I think I’ll err on the side of caution a little more next time. In other words, I’ll buy another pound of beans, just to be on the safe side.
I started cooking the night before. I made the pomegranate glaze with onions and herbs and let it cool overnight.
I boiled the cream, sugar, milk, juice and Drambuie for the gelato and stashed it in the freezer. I wanted to make lace cookies but decided to bake my father a birthday cake instead. I mixed the sugar, Pom cherry juice, red wine and citrus fruits for the sangria to rest overnight. I added the apple pieces and pomegranate arils the next day so they would be crisp and fresh.
The morning of the party, I bought an ice cream maker (I thrive on the thrill of the last minute, as my submission of this form attests), took it home, washed it and stuck it in the freezer. My boyfriend came over with a box of powdered sugar for my frosting and brut champagne to mix with the pomegranate nectarine Pom juice for bellini. Together, we marinated the steaks and peeled and cut up sweet potatoes and baked the two layers of the ginger cakes, which I modified from this recipe as follows:
1/4 cup fresh grated ginger
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup butter
2 1/2 cup flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground clove
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp Drambuie
1 cup milk
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
He put together my new ice cream machine and we made the gelato, which we couldn’t help but taste. We died.
We also mixed up a recipe for pomegranate-orange sorbet which we didn’t end up making until a week later, but it was delicious too. I still have some in my freezer. When my parents came home, we went into INSANE PRODUCTION MODE. My mother masterminded the appetizer, and my father set the table under my direction. Mom came up with fresh boiled shrimp and crafted a delicious lime vinaigrette with chives from a little clay pot we keep in the garden that has a man’s face on it and a placard that reads GRUMPY.
My sister cut the ends off the string beans and my dad mashed the sweet potatoes with browned butter and brown sugar. Aunt Nancy and Uncle Mike arrived early (go old people) and I started mixing Pomegranate Grapefruit Sidecars in my adorable two-serving cocktail shaker. Sam arrived and helped crush and toast the pecans for the string beans. When everyone but my perpetually late friend Steve had arrived, I gave a little demo on how to open a pomegranate in the kitchen, and used the (literal) fruits of my labor to sprinkle on everyone’s appetizer plates.
In the mean time, people had gotten impatient waiting to eat until I had done my spiel (Uncle Mike kept asking when the sales pitch was coming; things that are free confuse him) so I put together an impromptu cheese platter complete with a big wedge of pomegranate to whet everyone’s appetite.
My mother and I grilled the steaks and vegetables outside.
Thanks to global warming, seasons are pretty much irrelevant now, so November brings perfectly acceptable barbecue weather to New York; I’ll be happy about it until there’s an ice age. Dinner was amazing and I thought it would come to blows over the last of the string beans.
I finished up the cream cheese icing while my friends helped clear the table and wash the appetizer plates for dessert; even our dishes are all about multitasking. We surprised my dad with a pretty pink birthday cake and then everyone freaked out over the gelato. It was a beautiful thing. Finally, I handed out the gift bags which contained POM recipe cards, wrist bands and coupons for a free bottle of Pom juice. I had left these for the end as a surprise, and people got really excited because really, who doesn’t love presents? I love presents. Also, since I had nearly an entire case of pomegranates left over, I gave one to each of my guests to take home.
I want to thank Pom for giving me the opportunity to act like a grown up. As much as I’d baked pretty great cakes and cookies for everyone ever, I’d never put together a whole dinner party before and I couldn’t have done it without the vote of confidence that comes with someone being kind enough to ship TWO GIANT CRATES of pomegranates to my door. I also couldn’t have done it without my parents, my sister, my boyfriend and my wonderful friends. I always thought that my mother turned into a raving crazy person around Thanksgiving because she enjoyed that sort of thing, but now I see what it’s like to have everyone’s satisfaction resting on your shoulders and I know how much she really needs the help that we give her leading up to every holiday meal.
I learned a lot from this one meal and, if nothing else, consumed enough antioxidants to become immortal, probably. Thanks, Pom!
1 year ago