A Thai-Inspired Dinner Party

Listen to Chrystina talk you through how she put her menu together for her thai-inspired dinner party – it was easier than you think – in Episode 03 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.

A few months ago I wrote a blog post about how to host monthly dinners with your friends. Last Monday it was my turn to cook again. Usually I find it to be a complete pain in the butt to choose a menu for a dinner, but this time it came together flawlessly – all based on the fact that I had some thai iced tea laying around I’ve been meaning to use.

The rules we set were that you have to serve an appetizer, entree, and dessert, but you can cop out of cooking one of them. We still all joke that one day one of us is going to cop out of cooking the entree and just order pizza. It’s probably going to be me. I’m okay with that. This time though, as I said, it all miraculously came together.

If you’ve been following along on my blog for a while you know that I think the key to any successful party is choosing a theme, no matter how loose. And planning this dinner party was no exception. Once I realized that I wanted to make thai iced tea, making a noodle dish, an Asian salad, and a dessert featuring rice all fell into place.

Food to serve at your Thai-Inspired Dinner Party

Dinner started with an asian cucumber salad thanks to Krista from Joyful Healthy Eats. It had just the right amount of heat from the red pepper flakes.

I made this thai iced tea recipe from Sharlene on Food.com. It was delicious. Better than the thai iced tea I get in the restaurants. Probably because it was steeped with cardamom and cloves. What I learned from browsing recipes is essentially there are two different methodologies for making thai iced tea: you either sweeten the tea and then add non-sweet milk or make plain tea and add sweetened milk. Also, note to self: you really need to buy a pestle and mortar.

For the entree I went to a link I had pinned a few months ago called, “10 one-pot vegetarian recipes even non-vegetarians will love.” On this list I found one pot peanut sauce noodles thanks to Vegan Richa. I was so nervous to make thai food, guys. As an Italian who grew up not really cooking – especially not with more than a few flavors – this was totally out of my wheelhouse. This recipe made it so easy though. I highly recommend it. Once you chop all of the ingredients it’s really just all about putting it in a pot and cooking it all together. So easy.

Here’s all the stuff - and what it looks like when it’s all in the pot:

For the dessert, I decided to make rice pudding. My dad has a go-to vanilla bean rice pudding recipe from Epicurious Magazine. It’s absolutely delicious, especially when served with some cinnamon on top.

It was a great line-up (if I do say so myself), so all I had to do was go through the recipes and buy enough ingredients to make six servings of each. Here’s more about how to make it happen:

The Timeline for your Thai-Inspired Dinner Party

The night before:
Make the base of the thai iced tea, but make sure not to put the milk in it until serving. Make the rice pudding, the recipe says you can make it 2 days ahead.

Around lunchtime the day of:
Make the cucumber asian salad so it has time to marinate in the dressing.

Two hours before:
Start making the one pot peanut sauce noodes. (If you want to get a jump start on this the night before you can cut all the vegetables ahead of time the night before.)

As you serve:
Add the milk to the thai iced tea. Feel free to add some whipped cream to your rice pudding too!

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And that’s it. I was really proud of it. Next time? I think I’m going to take on the challenge of artichokes. I got the recipe from my aunt this past weekend. My favorite instruction (which I scribed as she spoke) is “ram the cut off side into the corner of the counter.” Always an adventure with cooking, isn’t it?

Do you have a go-to dinner party recipe? Please leave it in the comments below, I’m always looking for new ideas! (Especially cheap and simple ones that look really fancy. Not to be picky or anything. K thanks.)