Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

$50 Dinner Party

By Sally Sampson

The subtitle of Sally Sampson's The $50 Dinner Party pretty much sums up the book: Twenty-Six Dinner Parties That Won't Break Your Bank, Your Back, or Your Schedule. And boy, does she deliver.

This is a no frills cookbook, as spare as you can go, and is a sleek beauty as a result. Sampson opens with a chapter of little bites, dips and the likes, with innumerable suggestions for variations on their themes. Then it's right into the menus. She typically discusses the menu items on the opening page for each of the 26 dinners. There's a sidebar for timesavers. But then she simply drops right into the recipes, and leaves the rest to your imagination. This suggests, of course, that you are already comfortable in the kitchen, that you speak the language of recipes, and that you know how to time a meal to get the food out and onto the table when your guests are ready to sit down. Sampson leaves the marching orders to you. Her job - and she's brilliant at it - is stimulating your planning imagination with a lush array of possibilities for delicious dinners for six that she feels will come in under $50, sans wine, coffee, and tea.

A couple of examples: Roasted Chicken Breasts with Dried Figs, Apricots, and Prunes; French Bread; Mixed Green Salad with Red Onions and Toasted Pine Nuts; and Rice Pudding. Or, Grilled, Marinated Flank Steak with Soy, Sherry, and Dijon; Potato Cake with Garlic and Olive Oil; Salad of Arugula, Avocado, and mango; Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce.

Sally Sampson deserves some kind of medal for taking the worry and guesswork out of dinner entertaining, all the while watching the purse strings.
Schuyler Ingle ...