Once you've planned your Cooking Event, invited your friends and purchased the needed ingredients, you are ready to welcome the guests to your home.
Welcoming Your Guests
While your friends will be working in the kitchen, remember that they are there as your guests. Therefore, welcome them into your home with a glass of wine or your favorite libation. As people arrive, let them wash their hands with a cleansing scrub before gathering everyone to discuss the meal plans.
Introduce your guests to the selected menu. Share with them the overall dining concept, such as a Parisian Picnic, Gypsy Fare, or *1950’s Americana Diner* food. Follow up with a complete description of the menu items and the preparation tasks for each recipe. Divide up the prep tasks amongst your guests, and let them get started. You will be the Iron Chef and they will be your sous chefs. Your job will be to manage the meal preparation, balancing the start times, cooking times, and counter space. Believe it or not, this job does require more finesse and planning than one could imagine. So be overly prepared and don’t forget to keep your sous chefs content by refilling their wine glasses!
Dinner Time
As the main course is finishing up in the oven, seat your guests at the table and get them started on the first course. This should be pre-plated by your sous chefs. While the guests are finishing their first course and conversing, you can get the main course and side dishes ready for serving. Family style service is appropriate for this dining experience --- the guests have already worked for their meal, they have made the social connections working side by side, and sharing in the joint creation is a perfect service style.
Sweet Endings
In addition to treating your guests/sous chefs to a delightful finish to their engagingly productive evening, the dessert can set the stage for an upcoming Cooking Event. For instance, if your meal had been a Parisian Picnic, you could serve a light tiramisu for dessert and connect the sweetness to the announcement of your next Cooking Event --- perhaps a Night in Venice. While you could plan to host the event yourself, this would be an opportune time to ask one of your sous chefs to host the Italian night at her home. In doing so, you will tip the first domino in setting up a traveling, self-perpetuating dining event for your friends.
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