{gourmet potluck dinner}

 {everyone wrote their dish up on the kitchen chalkboard}

Since our weekends have been so busy, we have been having people over for dinner during the week much more and now weeknight dinner parties are quickly becoming one of my favorite things.  Last night we had two couples over for a gourmet "potluck" dinner with each couple in charge of one of the courses.  Dylan and Jeni brought curried cauliflower with chili and seared sugar snap peas with yuzu kosho as starters.  Chris and I did the main course which was orange + beet salad, cilantro lime potatoes with crema, and new mexico rubbed pork loin with bourbon ancho sauce.  Josh and Heather brought lemon yogurt cake with ricotta honey custard and cherry compote for dessert.  After dinner, Chris told me that the pork recipe he used from one of Bobby Flay's cookbooks (recipe here) was by far the best pork he had ever made.

 {chris with the cilantro lime potatoes & seared snap peas}

 {beet & orange salad, curried cauliflower}

 {chris, jeni & dylan with the ancho pork}

 {dessert}

A lot of people tell me they want to entertain more, but they are intimidated by the idea of cooking an entire evening's worth of food for their friends.  This potluck dinner was amazing and removed a lot of the pressure of cooking 4 or 5 different dishes. Plus everyone gets to talk about how they choose and cooked their dish!