In the restaurant business, I have spent my life hosting, attending and working my share of dinner and cocktail parties. Most, I’d call successful, pulled off without a hitch—while others needed a little help. The secret to a stress-free party where you’ll be serving food or appetizers, whether it’s for your boss and his wife, your girlfriend or your new neighbors— all lies in a little planning. Here are seven good rules to go by.

Tip 1. Have a menu and a budget BEFORE you go shopping:

Take the time to plan a menu that will not break your bank. If you like, decide on a theme—like tapas—and stick to it. Many websites, like epicurious.com, provide menus and recipes for almost any theme. Also, have a list of all your necessary ingredients, mixers, plates, cups, etc., when you go shopping, so you don’t end up running to the store at the last minute. Have a budget and stick to it. A party shouldn’t hurt!

Tip 2. Stick with what you know.

The mainstay of your party fare really should be dishes you’ve made before, and which you are confident in making. If Aunt Betty’s Savory Meatloaf has always been a hit with you and your family, then cook that for your dinner party, supplemented with a couple of new and adventurous side dishes. At the very least, try out your new recipes BEFORE you serve them to your guests. Then, you can make any necessary changes or additions in a relaxed atmosphere, not the day of the party.

Tip 3. Double the alcohol, cut the food in half:

This is a cardinal rule of many catering companies. So, you think you’ll make five pounds of chili and buy a case of beer for your party on Saturday? Consider cutting the cowboy beans down to about two and a half pounds, and buying more beer: a couple of cases. You don’t want to resort to serving your guests your Game Day beer, or worse, to run out, completely. Also, here’s a good rule of thumb when planning your munchies: Each guest will eat about three appetizers, each.

Tip 4. “Ice, Ice Baby”:

Here’s a small but essential detail that is commonly forgotten. Make ice the first item on your shopping list.

Tip 5. Make time for yourself:

Start your preparations early, to factor in some down time. Give yourself a chance to relax—at least thirty to forty minutes. Use that time to check for anything you might’ve missed (like those extra bags of ice!), and also to take a little break. That way, you can welcome your guests into a relaxed party atmosphere, rather than a kitchen knee-deep in prep.

Tip 6. Rent The Essentials:

Renting equipment may sound a little pricey, but having a party is all about fun, and if your budget allows for it, renting takes that much more responsibility off your shoulders. A number of companies, such as Tablescapes (tablescapes.com), rent out everything, from flatware to dance-floors, and many will even give you helpful tips, on things like tablecloth-sizes and the color of your dishes.

Pick up the party essentials or have them delivered. The best part is that there are no plates and forks to wash afterwards; the company will pick up the rentals when you’re through.

Tip 7. Expect the Unexpected:

From the guests who bring their two cousins to your dinners, the ones who, it turns out, both can’t eat dairy; to the fallen soufflé, most events we host are going to run a little less than 100 percent perfect. I consider the advice of one of my chief mentors, a successful head chef at one of Atlanta’s top restaurants. A former Marine, his motto—which he drilled into the heads of all of us who worked in his kitchen—was, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.” You can add some of your own ingredients to recipe that doesn’t taste as wonderful as the cookbook promised, or supplement a jar of grocery store salsa when the dip you made runs out. But for any gathering, from a wedding reception to a pizza party, rather than allowing setbacks to stress you out, in the end, the most important rule is to just roll with it. Remember to have fun. Besides, what’s a fallen soufflé, but an excuse to have another party next month, to try it out again? Enjoy yourself. And happy planning!

Chef Alekka

I had always learned that white wines should be chilled.  Whenever I went to a restaurant I saw people sitting around with their chardonnay, sauvignon blanc or riesling tucked into buckets of ice.  Of course there is the classic picture of tuxedo-clad cool guy, Cary Grant or George Clooney depending on your generation, suavely lifting a bottle of champagne from a silver, ice-filled bucket to pour the wine into a tulip-shaped glass while being adored by a doe-eyed beauty.  So, I thought all white wines should be frosty.

            When my interest in wine was in its late infancy I would purchase a bottle of white wine, usually a California chardonnay, and put it into the refrigerator.  When my wife and I drank it the wine always disappointed.  It seemed to be harsh, flavorless, and bitter. I remember one January, when friends were coming to dinner, I decided that the problem was that the bottle was not cold enough, so I took my three bottles of Kendall Jackson Reserve chardonnay and put them into a snow bank by the front porch thinking that the extra winter kick would yield a truly awesome experience.  It was terrible… harsh and flavorless.  The wine was so bad I thought that we had gotten defective bottles, inhabited by some level of antifreeze and better suited for the radiator of my car than my guests’ glasses.  We grimly finished only two bottles.

            I put the surviving bottle in the refrigerator thinking that it would be better suited for cooking than drinking.  A week or two later we took the bottle out of this cold prison and decided to give it one last redemptive chance.  For some reason my wife and I did not drink it immediately but waited about half an hour, perhaps longer before eating.  To my surprise the wine burst with flavor.  Epiphany!!!  White wines do not have to be arctic-cold.  We experimented that evening and discovered that cool, not cold was the answer.

            I now understand that there is a distinct difference between ‘cool’ and ‘cold’.  Most white wines taste best at a temperature around 58^○ F.  The typical refrigerator compartment is designed to operate at about 38^○.  I had mistakenly confused cool with cold.  I had been drinking wine about twenty degrees colder than its optimal drinking temperature, hence the harsh tasteless slush I had given myself.  I have learned that it is OK to chill the typical white wine in the refrigerator (about an hour) or to keep it in the refrigerator and remove it forty-five minutes before serving.  This waiting time took the bottle to about the right temperature.

            Of course, this does not work of all white wines.  Champagne should be served cold, not chilled, and some sweeter, wines can survive being colder than its brethren and sisteren.  If you have been disappointed in your white wine, check its temperature, the problem may be in the fact that it is chilling out too much.  This is especially a problem in many restaurants where the white wines are kept in walk-in refrigerators, twenty degrees too cold, and then presented and served with an ice bucket.  You can tell if this is the case if the wine comes to you beaded with condensation.  It will be too cold.  I have learned to hold the bottle in my hand.  If it feels as if it kept company with the butter and carrots I know that it is probably much too cold.  I let it sit at the table for a while, and send the accompanying ice bucket back to the kitchen.

"Tomatillo (pronounced toe-mah-tee-yo), a primary ingredient in Latin American green sauce (salsa verde), means "little tomato" in Spanish — but these beauties pack a lot of flavor into their small containers. With a distinctly tart, almost lemony flavor, tomatillos enhance a broad range of dishes, from guacamole and appetizers to stews and steaks."

Beef Chiquiles

Yields- 6 servings

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds fresh tomatillos husked, rinsed and halved

2 large garlic cloves

1 large jalapeñohalved lengthwise, stemmed and seeded

1/4 cup packed cilantro

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon coriander

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 1/2 cups shredded pepper Jack cheese (6 ounces)

1/2 cup queso fresco

1 scallion, sliced

One 6-ounce bag tortilla chips (8 cups) * We like the El Milagro brand of chips- very study, not too greasy

1/4 cup sour cream

1 pound flank steak- marinated and grilled*

*For the marinade:
4 garlic cloves, minced and mashed to a paste with 1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons olive oil

Make the Marinade
In a large bowl whisk together the garlic paste, the lime juice, the cumin, and the oil.

Add the steak to the marinade, turning it to coat it well, and let it marinate, covered and chilled, for at least 1 hour or overnight. Grill the steak, drained, on a well-oiled rack set about 5 inches over glowing coals or in a hot well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderately high heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, or until it is just springy to the touch, for medium-rare meat. (Alternatively, the steak may be broiled on the rack of a broiler pan under a preheated broiler about 4 inches from the heat for 3 to 4 minutes on each side for medium-rare meat.) Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let it stand for 10 minutes.Slice the steak thin across the grain on the diagonal and reserve

Make the Chilaquiles

Procedure

1. Preheat the oven to 450°. In a blender or food processor, puree the tomatillos, garlic, jalapeño and cilantro until smooth. In a large saucepan, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the cumin and coriander and cook over high heat until fragrant, 30 seconds. Add the tomatillo puree, bring to a boil and cook until the sauce loses its bright green color, 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. In a medium bowl, toss the beef with 3/4 cup of the pepper Jack, the farmer cheese, scallion and half of the tomatillo sauce; season with salt and pepper. In another bowl, toss the tortilla chips with the remaining sauce.
3. Spread half of the chips in an 8-by-11-inch baking dish; top with the beef and cover with the remaining tortilla chips. Don't pack the chips down. Dollop the sour cream over the chips and sprinkle with the remaining 3/4 cup of pepper Jack. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cheese is browned. Serve at once.

Enjoy and Happy Cooking!

Chef Alekka

My first experience with wine was one Thanksgiving over fifty-five years ago.  My grandfather had received a very lavish give from some French friends, a case of Cheval Blanc bordeaux.  As a treat he offered to share a bottle with the family. For me this meant about a tablespoon in a small glass.  My immediate reaction was “sour!”  I pretended to act sophisticated, suave, and urbane, but at twelve years old this was hard to pull off.  The lasting impact for me was that fermented grapes were equivalent to those other adult food follies: broccoli, asparagus, and liver.

Times and my tastes evolved.  In college, when my beer budget permitted, I tried on a debonair persona to impress my dates and, where Chapel Hill restaurants had wine, I ordered the only thing I recognized, Almaden rosé.  I found it to be tolerable, but, more importantly, thought that it made me look cool.  Coolness, not the wine, was the motivator.

After college I went into the Navy. This experience did not give me many opportunities to expand my wine vocabulary until my wife and I were transferred to Naples, Italy.  We lived there for three years.  Alekka, our pastry-chef daughter, was born there.  Now it is impossible to live in Italy without experiencing wine.  Indeed for the beginner there was a bewildering selection.  Wines we never heard of in the United States: Soave, Valpolicella, Amarone, Lagrima Christi, Barolo, Bardolino, and on and on.  It seemed that each village had its own wine and a festival to honor their local grapes.  I had no anchor other than Chianti; generally this is what we drank.  I do remember a Sicilian wine, a red Corvo that was tasty and had a more robust flavor, and the ubiquitous wines bottled by the Bolla company.  Overall, the outcome of this three-year experience was a fondness, not passion, for having wine with a meal.  Still, the breadth of my knowledge ranged to: white wine with white things and red wine with dark things.

On returning to the United States I found the beginning of the ground swell of the American wine passion.  I left the Navy and enrolled in graduate school.  My wife and I discovered Gallo Hearty Burgundy, a jug wine that fit both our tastes and budget.  We thought that we were drinking the equivalent to French burgundy, and no one told us otherwise.  Our guests thought we were pretty cultured, after all we had lived in Italy for three years.  Still, our preference for drinks focused on beer, bourbon, gin, and scotch.

Years passed and I cautiously expanded my wine vocabulary.  Slowly I recognized that I could distinguish between chardonnay and sauvignon blanc, and that zinfandel was distinctly different from merlot.  As I took these baby steps I started to understand that wine both enhanced and was enhanced by the food with which it was paired.  Having grown up in an atmosphere that treated family meals as an important event, I became more active in trying to learn about the nature of wine and food.  I  read, tasted, and experimented.  In the past ten years I have begun to develop some confidence in my taste in wine.  I cannot afford the top bottles costing zillions of dollars, but I have touched a bottle of Lafite-Rothschild bordeaux .  It cost $1,050.00. I have seen a bottle of d’Yquem sauternes; cost $650.00.  I can only dream about tasting some of these wines but never expect to do so.  

I have even started collecting wine, not as an investment, but as a way to learn about differing flavors and profiles.  Several years ago I got a small windfall and bought a wine cellar, a large temperature and humidity-controlled refrigerator for storing my purchases.  My price ceiling for an expensive bottle of wine is $70.00 but mostly they fall into the $30 to $50 dollar range.  These are the wines for special meals with friends.  Daily my wife and I drink less expensive stuff and have fun experimenting with them, trying to match the wine with the meal.

As a teacher I believe that the educated person is not the person who knows everything, it is the person who is aware of what he does not know and knows how to find out the answers.  As I write this I am still learning how to find the answers and am enthusiastically looking for the right questions to ask.