Here is one of my do-as-I-say not-as-I-do dinner party rules: never serve more dishes than the number of people attending. If you look at yesterday's menu, you'll see I was aiming for 13 dishes for 12 guests.
Well, as it happened, I only made 12, which was about right.
There are two ways to get the number of dishes right at a dinner party. You can either get it right in advance, or you can edit on the fly. If you can't do either of those, you'll end up requiring your guests to wait wait wait until they're fed, or you'll still be bringing out dishes after they're full. My issue on Friday is that I had simply planned too many things, and I kind of knew I had, but I wanted a "mainish" dish that didn't have either pork or red meat in it. Then it turned out that I worked a full day (another dinner party rule note: Saturday is always better than Friday) and didn't get to do any of my makeahead work ahead -- rolling meatballs, stuffing dates, etc -- and when I was finally ready to bring out the third round of tapas at 9:30, the scallops got dropped.
The upside? My husband and I had some pretty awesome scallops for lunch on Saturday and Sunday.
I made the Seared Scallops recipe from Ad Hoc At Home (mmmm, Ad Hoc) with one exception: I used regular butter instead of clarified butter. And it worked beautifully. Look at that sear.
The orange stuff is sambal oelek dressing, and it is perfectly awesome. I adapted this recipe from the April 2010 Food & Wine. More sambal, no oregano, and served alongside scallops instead of atop shrimp.
Okay, so this is what people DIDN'T eat at my tapas dinner party. But what DID they eat? Tune in tomorrow.
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