Yes, I have been Slacking and I blame grad school... But a bonus of grad school is I am not ashamed to continue to take advantage of Birthright and have them front the bill on delicious eats for me and my beautiful friends. I got ambitious this time around and decided I could cook for 12 people all on my own which meant it was an all day cookout while I jammed out to some Sly and the Family Stone radio on Pandora. In my mind it looked something like this, but with a spoon in my hand:
In reality, I probably looked a lot more like this chick:
I was expecting a vegan guest (ewwwww) so I decided to be accommodating and make a couple of vegan dishes he could enjoy. The menu I came up with:
Drinks
Margaritas, Strawberry Margaritas, wine and beer
Appetizers:
- cheese (Delice de Bourgogne)
- Homemade guacamole
- hummus and pita chips
Main course:
- Black bean salad (vegan)
- Potato salad (vegan)
- BBQ chicken sandwiches (not-so-vegan)
- coleslaw
Dessert:
- Peach crisp with vanilla ice cream
First thing I had to do was cook the potatoes for the potato salad. The potato salad ingredients are:
- 12 red or yellow/golden potatoes
- one red onion
- 6 celery stalks
- balsamic dressing
- salt and pepper
I used a mix of red potatoes and golden potatoes to make it more colorful. These potatoes have less skin and boil easily, perfect for a delicious potato salad. I 'cleaned' them off then put them in a pot of water on the stove and turned up the heat. I let them boil for about 30 minutes or until I put a fork in them and they were soft, but not falling apart soft. I then drained the potatoes and let them cool. Once they had cooled down enough for me to touch them without burning my fingers I chopped them into nice bite sized pieces (not too small, but small enough to fit in your mouth), and threw them in a big bowl. Next I diced the red onion and celery and threw them in as well. While the potatoes were boiling I prepared my home-made balsamic vinaigrette. For this I usually take an old jar, put a large spoonful of Dijon mustard (preferably Grey Poupon cuz' we classy), then pour in enough balsamic vinegar to cover the mustard. I then throw in a dash of soy sauce, salt and pepper, a minced clove of garlic, a little honey, and for this potato salad I decided to throw in some dry thyme. I then add about 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Put the lid on the jar, and shake until it is all mixed in. Do a taste test and make sure you got your measurements right. The last step was mixing the dressing into the potato mixture and adding some salt and pepper to taste, and voilà delicious 'vegan' potato salad. Weirdly this is an old family recipe and it never occurred to me it was vegan. I have always loved this salad, it is delicious and refreshing, and you don't have to get weighed down by tons of mayo.
The next dish was the black bean salad. I have always loved black bean salad, but never tried making my own so I decided to give it a go. I found a recipe online and worked from there. The ingredients (serves 12):
- 15 ounce can of black beans
- 4 ears of corn (or a 10 ounce can of corn)
- 8 green onions
- 2 jalapeños
- 1 yellow bell pepper
- 1 avocado
- 3 tomatoes
- 1 cup of chopped cilantro
- 1 lime
- italian style dressing
Basically all this took was throwing everything in a big bowl and mixing it up. It turns out its super easy! :) The only complication was that I decided to use real corn instead of canned corn so I boiled some water in a pot and threw 4 ears of corn in there for 4-5 minutes. I cut the corn off the cob and threw it in the bowl with the black beans, diced onions, minced jalapeños (add less if you are sensitive to spice/make sure you remove the seeds from these babies). I used a yellow bell pepper instead of the recommended green because I like them better, but use whatever color you like. The only note I would make is to add the avocado at the end so that it doesn't get super squished, or leave it out and make guac instead, all good options. For the italian dressing I improvised a bit and made a dressing with some rice wine vinegar, a little chili powder, garlic, italian herbs, and olive oil. I thought it was delicious. One thing is that I dressed it before everyone arrived, I would wait until you are going to serve it so that it doesn't get too watery. The lime juice you can squeeze on whenever you feel like it. It is a pretty little salad, and yes vegan friendly for you egg and dairy haters out there.
The final step was the coleslaw and BBQ chicken sandwiches. These were incredibly easy as well. First the coleslaw:
- 6 cups shredded cabbage
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- 3/4 cup scallions/green onions
- 4 tbls mayo
- apple cider or white vinegar
- 2.5 tbls. spicy brown mustard or dijon mustard
- honey and optional horseradish (although if you use dijon this has horseradish in it)
I got the shredded carrots and cabbage at Trader Joe's so other than that I just diced some onions and dressed the stuff. Easy-peasy.
The chicken too was simple:
- 2 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken breast
- 1 large thinly sliced white or yellow onion
- 1 18oz bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (or preferred BBQ sauce)
- Hamburger buns
Basically I just put the chicken in a pan, covered it with the chopped onion and BBQ sauce and threw it in the oven. The only problem was that by the time I decided to put the chicken in the oven, I had had a few beers and some margarita so instead of setting the oven to the recommended 325 degrees I set it to 250 and by the time I realized this it had already been about 30minutes so instead of taking like 1h10min to cook, it took like 2hrs, no big deal.... It turned out delicious anyway, but if I did it again I might use a little less BBQ sauce or a less-sweet variety. This is what it looked like before going into the oven:
Let's just say I forgot to take a picture of the final product. Everyone was pretty hungry by the time I took it out of the oven and it went fast. So while dinner was delicious try not to be this girl when you are hosting a dinner party of 12:
Or maybe do, she's kinda awesome... But don't be like me and forget to make dessert. The crisp ended up as sliced peaches with ice cream because I was just hella tired after cooking all day, let's be real.
Happy eating ya'll!
