finals dinners @ lmf

i organized finals dinners this semester, which went pretty smoothly although i'm not sure if everyone enjoyed their cooking team. i hope they did. here's what we had:

lundi / anna-miriam-v : chicken tarragon (chicken with a tarragon-cream sauce), tofu tarragon, spanikopita, and a pear tart. i really like miriam's chicken tarragon, and also spanikopita. pears i'm not wild about since i'm slightly allergic to them, but the crust was this great almondy, buttery thing which i'm afraid i didn't eat enough of. i have extremely fond memories of eating chicken tarragon and rice for lunch during the next few days.

mardi / luis-marissa-v : gorgonzola risotto with balsamic tomato relish, roasted chicken, potato salad, fruit salad. i fully admit that the potato salad was just a result of the menu needing a vegetable and my yen for potato salad. i may have been the only person to eat it. it really would have gone better with wednesday's menu, but i decided to slightly abuse my power. anyway, we were intending to make a sponge cake a la jessica (who made carrie's birthday cake - a sponge cake filled with tokay-marinated peaches and iced with whipped cream) but we didn't know the recipe and i had been too far behind in errands to get it. instead, since we had leftover fruit from diner de noel (more specifically, we had intended to make a fruit salad but didn't), we made a fruit salad and whipped cream. i'm not a huge fan of fruit salad (various slight allergies), so i had figgy pudding with whipped cream, which is really a fabulous combination. the gorgonzola risotto was actually better in the vegetarian version (veg stock instead of chicken stock), and i was really surprised by the favorable reception that the risotto got, given that it had the gorgonzola (a mild blue cheese) in it. (as an aside: is anybody else bothered by the phrase "bleu cheese"? we are in the US, and we speak english. "blue cheese" is the phrase, not the mangled franglais "bleu cheese.") the chicken, well, roasted chickens always give me problems. i took the temperature and it was still 20 degrees off, but the juices all ran clear. i took it out anyway, but the chicken in a few cases was really underdone. on the bright side, the gravy was quite good and i made a stew out of the leftover chicken a few days later.

mercredi / alice-luis-marissa : baguette sandwiches with egg salad, chicken salad, tuna salad, or roasted peppers and sauteed mushrooms. all with condiments (onions, tomatoes, lettuce, etc) and chocolate chip cookies and ice cream (or chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches if you wanted to be adventurours) for dessert. with whipped cream. this was probably my favorite menu of the week because of the chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches. ice cream had been on sale at peapod and it was good ice cream - breyer's - so i bought three boxes of it. surprisingly, the ice cream lasted three days. this was a nice easy menu for three people, and went pretty far in terms of people it fed - we had high turnouts for all of the finals dinners.

jeudi / cindy-marianne-nina : green salad, garlic bread, spinach lasagna (with and without pesto), chocolate cake with ice cream and whipped cream. marianne's spinach lasagna is great, and who would have thought pesto would be so good in lasagna? ok, maybe many people have, but not enough. another good impromptu combination was the garlic bread (made from some nice chewy bread from trader joe's) topped with lasagna. mmm... i was tempted to have more figgy pudding and whipped cream, but having already had chocolate cake and ice cream, my stomach said no. it did not, however, say no to half a piece of bread topped with lasagna about 15 minutes later.