A Quick and Easy Dinner with Friends

There are different ways to plan for dinners and it depends on the type of cook you are and the type of friends you have invited for dinner. This past Saturday, I'd invited good friends over for dinner, but was handicapped with a hangover. After a rough night out the previous night, a long day of preparing elaborate food for dinner was not on the cards.

I started shopping at about 5pm and by 8pm I had prepped most everything for dinner. Here's the menu:

Hors d'Ouevres 

- smoked salmon on buttered brown bread with lemon and cayenne pepper 

- smoked anchovies
- marinated anchovies (boquerones) 

Entree 
- roasted chicken thighs with thyme
- broccoli gratinata
- mixed mushroom and pea risotto

Dessert
- apple and blackberry crumble with vanilla gelato

Wine

- Luneau-Papin 2005 Muscadet Sevre et Maine L D'Or
- Zarrak-Berri 2008 La Costa Guipuzcoana
- Produttori del Barbaresco 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo