Making a FUN Dinner & Tablescape for My Book Club! Easy Recipes!

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining me again. So my book club is having its monthly meeting here on Friday. I am hosting. I'm doing drinks and nibbles and then we will discuss the book and have dinner. And the dinner main course is chicken tikka masala that I will serve with rice and maybe some naan. And dessert is a frozen blueberry yogurt pie. It's a no-baked pie that I developed way back in 2013. It's on my website. Everyone who has tried it has loved it. And I have the blueberries right here from my garden. I will link the recipe for this dessert in the description below so you won't have to write anything down. To start, grease a 9-in spring form pan with non-stick spray. I'm using avocado spray here. To make the crust, combine almond flour, light brown sugar, and melted butter in a small bowl. [Music] Press the mixture into the bottom of the spring form pan. Easy, easy, easy. This goes into the freezer. You can make this dessert several days ahead of time or even a week ahead of time. Going to put these things away and then we will make the filling. To make the blueberry yogurt filling, pulse blueberries and sugar together in a food processor or blender. [Music] Transfer the puree to a small bowl. [Music] By hand or by machine, beat room temperature cream cheese until it becomes smooth. I'm using my standing mixer here. Then beat in pure vanilla extract, confectioner sugar, plain yogurt, and the blueberry puree. [Music] In a separate bowl, beat heavy cream and confectioner sugar until they turn fairly stiff. And here's the fun part. We need to fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture. And to do that, you simply plunge your spatula down to the bottom of the bowl and then turn the spatula up so that you are bringing what is in the bottom of the bowl up to the surface. So, although we used three electric gadgets to make this dessert, it is indeed a very simple dessert to make. And if you don't have a food processor, you can always puree the blueberries in an electric blender, but I would do that in two batches. And you could certainly whip the cream with nothing more than a copper ball and a wire whisk. and a very strong arm. And here it is. And we simply pour this beautiful mixture over the crust. Smooth out the top. And I love how we can see the specks of blueberry throughout. So, this is a perfect summer dessert because it requires no baking whatsoever. Plus, it's light and creamy and super refreshing. I'm going to pop this into the freezer. And you want to freeze the dessert for at least 4 hours. And after 4 hours, you can cover it with cling film and freeze it for up to a week. I'm going to pop this into the freezer and then I will see you on Friday when we make the chicken tikka masala. Good morning. It's Friday and this evening is our book club dinner. I'm just plugging in my Instant Pot because the main course is chicken tikka masala and I'm going to make it in the Instant Pot. The recipe comes from a website called Wellplated and I will link the recipe in the description below. I need chicken, which I already cut into bite-sized pieces. This is chicken breast. And following the directions, I need to salt the chicken. Give it a toss. And along with the chicken tikka masala, I'm going to serve brown rice. I was going to make naan today, but and one of the people in the book club is on a gluten-free diet, so I thought better to do the brown rice. There we go. Going to pop this into the refrigerator again while we move on to the next step. So, I need to set the Instant Pot to sauté and add butter. And while the butter is melting, I need to chop up some garlic. Now, this recipe makes six servings, and that's exactly what I need because we have six people coming for dinner. That garlic paper sticks to everything. Then I need onion. You and I already chopped up several onions for a big freezer cooking meal that we did the other day, but which won't air until next week. So, I'm going to add onion to the pot. Then, I need some fresh ginger. So, we can grate right into the Instant Pot. Store my ginger in the freezer. Then I need spices. Quite a bit of garam masala, ground chili powder, ground cumin, and ground turmeric. And of course, the turmeric is going to give this sauce a beautiful color. Now, the recipe says that cayenne pepper is optional if you like a little heat. I do, but I'm not sure that everyone in my club does. So, only going to add a whisper of it. And then we can let these spices toast. while the onions soften. Smells wonderful already. And finally, the garlic. Then we can add the chicken. And I'm going to stir the chicken so it becomes coated with the spices. And then we will let it brown for about 4 minutes. Now, I should explain why I am making this main course many hours before our book club party. It's simply because I like to be present when I'm hosting guests. So, I like to prepare the food well ahead of time. And once the chicken tikka masala is fully cooked, I will transfer it to a Dutch oven, pop it into the refrigerator, and shortly before serving time, we can put it on the stove top and just let it heat very gently. This way, I'm not running around like a crazy person trying to cook dinner and be a host for my guests. You might be able to do that, but I don't multitask very well. My chicken has color on it, so I'm going to add plain tomato sauce. A little extra salt. And then I need to pressure cook this for eight minutes. Make sure my steam vent is turned. And after 8 minutes, I will do an immediate pressure release. And while this is cooking, going to put all of my spices away. [Music] [Music] I'm going to garnish this chicken tikka masala with cilantro. So, we might as well get that ready. Now, I think I've mentioned in previous videos that when I was a kid, I did not like the scent of cilantro. Now that I'm not a kid, I love it. [Applause] Pressure is released. We can take the lid off. This smells just heavenly. So, I need to stir in coconut milk. Press the sauté button. And I'm going to bring this to a simmer while stirring occasionally until the sauce thickens. We have thickened up appreciably. So now I've turned the Instant Pot off and I can add some frozen peas. Then we can add some Greek yogurt. Now I want to transfer this chicken tikka masala to I said a Dutch oven but I'm going to use my le cruset soup pot. This is enameled cast iron. I think we can make this easier. I'm going to let this chicken tikka masala cool to room temperature. Then I will cover the pot, pop it into the refrigerator. And here is the brown rice that I cooked earlier. Going to let this cool to room temperature and then pop it into the refrigerator, but in another pot. And while we wait for these things to cool down, we can make a flower arrangement for the table. I really should taste this before I put it away. Oh, this is absolutely lovely. Takes a moment for all of the spices to hit your taste buds. I love this and I think my guests will love it as well. And when I serve this, I will serve it with the brown rice and then I will garnish it with the cilantro. So, let's head outside and gather some flowers. [Music] [Music] So, I think I have enough flowers to do at least two arrangements, possibly three. And the first one I'm going to do is with these reddish zenas. Now, I will admit that hot colors are not really my thing. I bought a mixture of zenia seeds. And of course, whenever you do that, you end up with mostly the color that you least desire. But I think these red zenas might show well all by themselves with some U branches in a vase and we could maybe place these zenyas in the parlor. I think we will do our drinks and nibbles in the parlor and then dinner will be in the dining room. [Music] This is what we have so far. And maybe this is enough. I added two more U branches and I think we can call this arrangement done. This could go in the parlor. It could even go in the music room. Next, let's see what we can do for the dining room. I have an old soup tine here and some hosta leaves from the garden. So, I have a nice Elizabeth and collar around this arrangement. Now, we can start adding snapdragons. And these are the snapd dragons that you and I grew together from seed last winter. And I feel so fortunate to have them. [Music] So, I just went out to the garden to fetch a couple more Zenyas. One more snap dragon plus this beautiful lark spur. I think we will give this lark spur a place of honor. Yes. [Music] And I think we have it. Here is the arrangement as created by definitely not a professional flower arranger. Now, my plan is to place this on that rectangular board that my contractor made for me last Christmas. And well, I'll show you what I'm going to do for the dining room. I'm going to clean up my mess here and then we can head into the dining room. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Since this is a book club meeting, I thought it would be fun to throw some well-loved books on either side of the flower arrangement. These are books that I have recently read. [Music] This is a very casual dinner. I will put the chicken tikka masala and the rice and the dessert on the sideboard so that guests can serve themselves. [Music] [Music] Hey, [Music] [Music] you're [Music] We still need to make our shakuchi board. But before we do that, I want to show you the book that our club is reading. It's the mating season by PG. It looks like Woodhouse, but I think it's pronounced Woodhouse. Now, Woodhouse was a very popular writer in I think the 1930s and 40s. His books are hilariously funny. I'll just read you something from the back jacket. When Bertie Worooster visits Devo Hall pretending to be Gussy Think Nautle, he finds himself in trouble. To begin with, there is the case of Esman Haddock, JP, the squire of King's Devo, and his surging sea of aunts. Then there is the problem with Quirky Perbrite, Constable Dobs, and and the dog. Anyway, all of his books are hysterically funny and in truth, I didn't actually finish this book because life got in the way, but I will have great fun listening to others discuss it at tonight's meeting. Now, if you've read any PG Woodhouse books, please let me know. Again, he was very popular in the 30s and 40s. Now, the shakuchi ingredients are the ones that you and I bought together during our marathon shopping trip the other day. And if you missed that video, I hope you will watch it. So, I'm going to do the shakutri on this round board here. But if there are any cheeses to cut up, I will do them on this other board so I don't make a mess of my round shakutri board. So this is roasted red pepper hummus. And we can add a little glamour to this hummus by giving it a quick sprinkle of paprika. I love to arrange shakuteri. Besides the hummus, I'm adding various cheeses, cured meats, champagne grapes, green grapes, and crackers to the board. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] My shakuterie is covered in cling film. This goes into the refrigerator or I might just put it in an air conditioned room. And then you and I need to decorate the frozen blueberry yogurt pie. I can tell you right now that this frozen blueberry pie received rave reviews. I decorated the top with fresh blueberries and mint leaves. [Music] Our book club dinner was a huge success. We enjoyed our shakuterie and drinks in the parlor while discussing the PG Woodhouse book. I didn't film any dining room scenes because, well, I was busy hosting, but I can tell you that everyone loved the chicken tikka masala. and the club went positively wild over the frozen blueberry yogurt pie. Thank you for spending time with me as I put together this very easy book club dinner. I will link today's recipes in the description below. In the comments, please let me know what you are reading these days. Again, thank you for being here. Thank you for being you. and I can't wait to see you next time. Bye for now, friends. [Music]