Yeah, it’s another food-related post from me. Little-known fact: my LJ posts are 1,200 calories per serving, but low in saturated fats and sodium!

So last night’s dinner with friends was a chance to nail down some of the side dishes that we are going to be serving at the this coming weekend. New York strip steaks on the grill are a given, but the question was, what to serve with that?

First off, I wanted to provide a nice starch. Potatoes grilled in foil packets work pretty well. Last time I tried it, though, the seasonings were lacking, so I tried a different approach this time: I placed garlic cloves, fresh rosemary leaves, olive oil, salt, and pepper into the food processor and pureed until I had a nice paste. I then took the potatoes, washed them, cut them in half, and fed them through the food processor’s 4mm slicing blade (unpeeled, ’cause there is no way in hell I’m going to mess with peeling 30 lbs of potatoes!). The sliced potatoes are then tossed with the garlic/rosemary oil mixture and portioned into foil packets and grilled for 30 minutes.

I wanted another vegetable component, and zucchini are cheap and plentiful this season, so they seemed a good choice. As I mentioned earlier, I had cobbled together a reasonable facsimile of an Asian peanut sauce out of random things from our pantry. I was tickled to be reading through an old food magazine and came across a recipe for an Asian coleslaw that contained the majority of the ingredients I had used, plus a couple more (ginger and soy sauce) that would really improve the flavor. This also is relatively easy preparation: You make the sauce ahead of time in the food processor, then set it aside. I peeled the zucchini, cut it in half crosswise, then cut it into 1/4″ planks. Those were then tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then grilled until they were sort of floppy and had nice grill marks on them. Off the grill, they were tossed with the Asian peanut sauce just before serving.

Finally, I thought that a nice bread would go well with the meal. Cook’s Country has a nice recipe for a yeast-batter dinner roll that is cooked in muffin tins (yay portion control!). These are pretty easy, though the fact that it requires two short risings (the first for 30 minutes in the mixing bowl, then second for 15 minutes in the muffin tin) complicates things somewhat.

Aside from these dishes I was testing, I brined some boneless, skinless chicken breasts for an hour then coated them with a tangy spice paste that was just excellent.

So, what did I learn?
Potatoes: Wow, foil packets take up a whole lot of grill space! Don’t expect to be grilling anything else while cooking the potatoes. Pureeing the seasonings and the oil together works extremely well, though a little more salt would have been good. Although it’s a little pricier, the Reynolds nonstick foil will be necessary here, because otherwise we’re going to be trying to pry scaldingly-hot potatoes off of tinfoil into serving trays.

Zucchini: It’s OK to toss the zucchini in oil, but salt draws water out of zucchini. By the time I got around to grilling the zucchini, there was quite a respectable pool of water in the bottom of the bowl. Be careful not to put too much dressing on, otherwise the flavor of the zucchini gets drowned out. This dish can be served lukewarm to room temperature, so it’s a good one to cook first.

Dinner rolls: This is a very tasty recipe, though I think I overbaked them slightly. Everyone agreed that they would be much better warmed slightly, so we can put them into foil packets and toss them on a grill right before we start serving.

All three of these were a huge hit, and I think are going to be a great addition to the meal. Additionally, there’s the apple slab pie for dessert; one pie is supposed to serve 18-20 people, and I know I’m making at least two of them. I think I may go ahead and make three of them just to make sure there’s enough to go around. Unfortunately, that means 21 pounds of apples to be peeled and cored on Thursday night, but I’ve ordered a little something to make life easier in that regard.

Still to do tonight: finish laying out all of the tasks required, scheduling them, and figuring out who’s going to be doing what.

And you know what? This is fun! 🙂