What do you think?
Rate this book
The Dinner Party: A Chef's Guide to Home Entertaining
The Dinner Party is the ultimate guide to sophisticated home entertaining from fine dining chef Martin Benn, featuring nine expert menus for memorable feasts from relaxed gatherings to glamorous celebrations. Martin Benn (Sepia, Society) is one of Australia’s most accomplished chefs, but his passion is hosting impressive meals at home with his wife and creative collaborator Vicki Wild. In this beautifully photographed and designed cookbook, Benn applies a lifetime of culinary knowledge and technique to the Saturday night supper, offering over 70 recipes for showstopping starters, memorable main courses, stunning sides and dazzling desserts.
Discover how elements can be prepared in advance – from sauces to stocks, cocktails, wine matches and music playlists – to make hosting a breeze, with menus such as Family Knows Best, The Italians Are Coming and Fancy Schmancy. Dress up, anything goes! The Dinner Party will help you create a fabulous night to remember.
Discover how elements can be prepared in advance – from sauces to stocks, cocktails, wine matches and music playlists – to make hosting a breeze, with menus such as Family Knows Best, The Italians Are Coming and Fancy Schmancy. Dress up, anything goes! The Dinner Party will help you create a fabulous night to remember.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published September 12, 2023
2 people are currently reading
63 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 4, 2024
2/5 stars.
The focus of my inaugural cookbook club dinner party was an unexpected disappointment. Recipes were not trustworthy and overly complex for the resulting food. In many instances we were required to use our own culinary brains to modify and change up recipes such that the final menu was more of a 'loosely based on ..." rather than "recipes directly from...".
Mushrooms cooked in butter infused into rice.... questionable. Toothfish to be marinated in miso and salt for 4 days.... obviously too salty to eat on its own. Blackened chicken to the point where the skin is burnt.... kingfish sashimi paired with spicy nduja paste... king prawns with rhubarb ....sigh a waste of quality ingredients (not when kingfish is $78.50 per kg I am not dousing it in chilli salami paste not in this economy thank you martin)
The collection of recipes was disappointing, some recipes comprised of chopped vegetables and a dip or chopped loaf of bread + garlic smeared between....huh.
The flow of this book is also confusing. Its divided into dinner party menus making navigation difficult and unintuitive- unsuitable for home cooks who want inspiration to make a meal or select a few dishes to whip up and treat friends. Even though Martin at the start says that readers have a choice to select recipes from different menus or apply a full set menu it makes it difficult when ingredients span across different seasons taking spices or seasonings which take a whole afternoon to make 1kg only to use a smattering in a dish. Very impractical.
Overall "The Dinner Party" is more suited as a coffee table cookbook, one where visitors to your house would think "ooOOoohhhh what is this you must be fancy and an established cook" - the recipes are one dimensional, impractical and not necessarily one that appeals to my palate.
The focus of my inaugural cookbook club dinner party was an unexpected disappointment. Recipes were not trustworthy and overly complex for the resulting food. In many instances we were required to use our own culinary brains to modify and change up recipes such that the final menu was more of a 'loosely based on ..." rather than "recipes directly from...".
Mushrooms cooked in butter infused into rice.... questionable. Toothfish to be marinated in miso and salt for 4 days.... obviously too salty to eat on its own. Blackened chicken to the point where the skin is burnt.... kingfish sashimi paired with spicy nduja paste... king prawns with rhubarb ....sigh a waste of quality ingredients (not when kingfish is $78.50 per kg I am not dousing it in chilli salami paste not in this economy thank you martin)
The collection of recipes was disappointing, some recipes comprised of chopped vegetables and a dip or chopped loaf of bread + garlic smeared between....huh.
The flow of this book is also confusing. Its divided into dinner party menus making navigation difficult and unintuitive- unsuitable for home cooks who want inspiration to make a meal or select a few dishes to whip up and treat friends. Even though Martin at the start says that readers have a choice to select recipes from different menus or apply a full set menu it makes it difficult when ingredients span across different seasons taking spices or seasonings which take a whole afternoon to make 1kg only to use a smattering in a dish. Very impractical.
Overall "The Dinner Party" is more suited as a coffee table cookbook, one where visitors to your house would think "ooOOoohhhh what is this you must be fancy and an established cook" - the recipes are one dimensional, impractical and not necessarily one that appeals to my palate.
Displaying 1 of 1 review