Menu ideas: Casual dinner party

Due to my intolerances, eating out has been rather rarer occurrences, with a more than probable chance of "backlash" and all other manners of unpleasantries. Instead, we would have friends over for meals quite often, in my attempt at keeping some semblance of social normality. As I have, very ego-maniacally, been shoving my duck and thyme blog down my friends' throats, they rather feel obliged to ask me for dinner menu suggestions when they themselves have guests over - not because I throw good dinners, but in fear of me taking offence in not being consulted and, in revenge, poison them.

In my defense, coming up with a menu is not always easy (at least not to me and we are only talking about casual dinners rather than dinner parties) and depends on the occasion, the guests, the season, weekend vs week day, the manner of invitation, the hosts, etc... It is also never a good idea to try a new recipe when you have more than 6 dining, unless everyone is forewarned and given time and unblindingly obvious opportunity to back out politely. I did this with dessert, with expected outcome: http://duckandthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/review-of-choccy-bean-cake-alla-rachel.html?m=1

We recently had a couple of friends over for dinner on a Friday night. Since it was a work night and as part of me turning away from my die-hard habit of overfeeding, I decided (read, the Italian forced me) to take the approach that not everyone needs a kilo of meat and pasta to be satiated. I was wrong. Rather, he was wrong. For the first time, I decided not to do a starter and stick to only a main course and dessert, and lo and behold, the strategy fell flat on my face. We ran out of food. Some habits are die-hard for a reason.

Example of a casual week night menu:

Stuzzichini - Kale crisps & homemade hummus (this hummus is really, really, really worth doing) served with carrots and bread

Stuffed Lamb L'albigeoise, 

couscous, spinach and avocado salad

Rachel Khoo's Chocolate Bean Cake

French and Italian cheeses minus crackers

Alcoholic digestives to finish

For stress free hosting, prepare lamb the day before and reheat at 200 degree C for 20 minutes. 1.4kg of lamb stuffed with 0.8kg of sausagement is just not enough for 10 adults, without a starter. I'd increase lamb to about 2kgs and sausagement to about 1kg. 

We were actually expecting 11 adults. Now, that would have been a tragedy.