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| Tender chicken drizzled in a honey-mustard dressing and served with salad |
What do you serve your Book Club for supper? They love books, which means the company is erudite and delightful. They talk a lot, wave their hands around in the air a lot and laugh a lot. They are also ladies, which means they are looking for a light meal, rather than a heavy one.
All things considered, I decided on the following:
Fresh, and light
Plated (as in pre-served), which also meant that you can just sit and eat
Cold as opposed to hot food
Healthy - as in salads
When you have a lot of talkative ladies coming to supper, you also don't want too much fuss and bother, so even the snacks need to be ready and out when they arrive.
I thought I'd put a flower on each person's plate, as a welcome:
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| A flower face floats up from a plate as welcome |
However, my daughter had other plans for the flowers, and taking them from the plates, she ran out to welcome each lady with her orchid. What a warm welcome. After all, it is Spring our side of the world.
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| A welcoming smile accompanies the flowers |
The crudites were welcomed as a pre-dinner snack, and I put them out on the coffee table, together with the bottles of wine I'd already opened:
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| Fresh celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and tomatoes with olive hoummous |
For the main meal, I decided on chicken with a leafy green salad, with honey-mustard dressing. However, you want your chicken soft and tender, which means you should brine it.
Brining chicken is simple. However, it was my friend, Annari, who taught me how to do it.
Place the chicken in ice-cold water with salt added, in the following proportions.
2 Tablespoons salt (37 grams)
1 litre of ice-cold water (2 pints)
Leave it to soak for at least one hour.
Take the chicken out, pat dry well. Then fry in butter over a low flame, as shown below.
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| Pan-frying the brined chicken in a pat of butter |
For salad, I did not want a crispy outside, but that the chicken should be meltingly tender. Although the chicken looks fairly anemic and white, once you have left it to cool, then sliced it up and drizzled over the honey-mustard dressing, and sprinkled a few almonds on top and placed a couple of tomatoes on the side, it looks more than palatable enough.
Making the honey-mustard dressing is simple: take mayonnaise, mustard and honey and mix until you are satisfied with the final result.
Next up, was the salad:
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| The greater the variety of leafy greens, the healthier your salad |
I decided the salad would look best in one of my husband's beautiful bowls, this one to be precise:
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| Turned wooden salad bowl sealed in walnut oil |
With all the leafy greens and purples, it looked good enough to eat:
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| Fresh, leafy green salad in turned wooden bowl |
Having decided to plate the meal, it then made for a very festive presentation. It also means that, if you have a friend who is vegetarian, that you do not have to place the chicken on his/her plate, thereby ensuring that the same meal can provide equally well for the non-vegetarians as well as those who eschew meat products.
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| Pre-plating your salads makes for a beautifully presented table and saves time and effort |
For dessert, strawberries with whipped cream and vanilla castor sugar was on the menu:
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| Fresh strawberries, lightly dusted with vanilla castor sugar |
Finally, coffee was served with chocolate on the side:
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| Chilli, intense orange, 70% cocoa and sea salt chocolate were a huge hit |
The meal was perfectly simple and palatable.
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