Choosing the Recipes

The recipes for The Dinner Party Cookbook needed to match all of the dinner party aspects, Starters, Mains and Desserts.

I chose to split 4 starters, 5 main dishes and 4 desserts in order to give choice for an actual dinner party, as people have different diets and like different things.

A lot of the recipes I found were from BBC good food, and a ‘dinner party’ communicates to me more of a ‘classy’ affair so the food needed to match my own connotations of a dinner party.

When researching recipes, BBC good food inspired me by their inspirations tips and ideas they provide with preset menus and ideas.

From this inspiration I knew I needed a variety of dishes so for the starters I split them into: Smoked Salmon Canapes, Creamy Garlic Mushrooms, Asparagus wrapped in Prosciutto and Butternut Squash Soup. These dishes were all suggested through BBC Good Food and they give a variety of the typically associated dinner party starters for their quick and easy preparation and actual cooking.

Jamie Oliver- a well known chef also inspired me with his own website reccomending recipes perfect for a dinner party.

Like the starters, the mains also had to give a variety of meat, fish and veggie options and as my book is branded for the millennial, the recipes needed to be quick and easy to make with not much complication, due to millennials being branded as ‘lazy’, it made sense to choose recipes that were ‘easy’ but still impressive.

Therefore my mains chosen were Roast Chicken, Lasagne (which has the option at the end to make veggie), Paella, Creamy Mushroom Tagliatelle and Salmon and Potatoes, to try give a variety of veggie and meat options. These recipes are mostly time efficient taking under an hour or just above depending on the previous preparation.

Dessert needed to be split into different pallets likes, such as chocolate based, toffee based, and a lighter fruiter dessert, which gives variation on guests likes/dislikes and gives option. Therefore the desserts chosen were a Cheesecake, Chocolate Mousse, Eton Mess with Strawberries and Sticky Toffee Pudding.

These recipes I feel give variety towards the different likes and dislikes and would be able to be utilised in a dinner party setting. Taken from the inspiration and sources such as BBC Food, BBC good food, Jamie Oliver and Mary Berry, well known chefs with easy recipes to follow.