Formal dinner parties can be a complete nightmare, particularly if you are out to impress someone important like your boss, or possibly even worse, your new in laws! Of course there are times when there is no choice but to be formal. In this situation you may still benefit from this article if you think of it as a buffet of ideas, and pick only the parts that are useful to you.
I’ll qualify this a little more by saying that in an informal situation some of these ideas will work for you, particularly if you are entertaining close friends and family. This will even work as an alternative to barbecue if the weather is poor. If you are entertaining eight or ten people you won’t find yourself stressing and should be able to join in and enjoy yourself.
One of the easiest ways to entertain friends, when the weather is good, is to have a barbecue. This isn’t possible of course if the weather is very poor. What we can do however, is have a form of barbecue indoors. I don’t mean that you should bring the charcoal BBQ indoors, this could have fatal consequences. No, I’m talking about Teppanyaki style grilling. For those who have not seen or heard of these grills, they usually have a good sized flat surface area that is typically non-stick and is heated by an electrical element.
So, what is Teppanyaki? The short version is this. In Japanese ‘Teppan’ means iron plate and ‘Yaki’ means broiling, grilling or pan frying. This is more ammunition for your dinner party when people ask, and they will.
To reintroduce the ‘dinner party’ aspect of all this, there is no reason at all why this informal dinner party variant can’t be a sit down affair around a table. If your table is large enough the Teppanyaki could claim pride of place in the middle of the table. This is very much a ‘self service’ meal, so here is how it works.
First things first. We are going to hold any vegetables in a small bain marie to keep them warm, so they can be prepared before the ‘event’. The salad is going to be generous, but not so much that you become wasteful. Now so far, we have a very impressive salad and vegetables for those that want them. What now?
It’s time to start the Teppanyaki grill. The different meats can be added to the grill according to estimated cooking time, allowing your guests to ‘graze’. Part of the beauty of this type of cooking is that your guests can choose when the meat is ready for them. Additionally, in different circumstances you may wish to grill vegetables as well as meat.
Teppanyaki grills come in many different sizes, many of the larger ones look very impressive. There are also variants that have both flat and ridged cooking surfaces. This is a laid back way of entertaining a group of people in an informal but very enjoyable way.