How to Make Easy Party Food for a Garden Party

On Sunday, we invited our neighbors to a garden party. With our garden in bloom as our backdrop and easy party food for refreshments, we celebrated the start of summer.

A Provençal Party Theme

Our small garden has been landscaped three years ago, with a gravel path, fig and olive tree, junipers, and lavender. Still reeling from the pandemic as the time, we were creating Provence in our own backyard.

For the party, I enhanced the Provençal ambiance with tablecloths from the south of France and a French music playlist. Although not yet in season, we found sunflowers, the iconic flower of Provence, at Trader Joe’s.

The Invitations

With Canva (free or by subscription), I created an email party invitation using a photo of our garden. I also made name tags to facilitate introductions, since we were meeting some new neighbors for the first time.

I bought blank Avery name tags (non-smearing and with a dependable adhesive) and used the company’s free template to customize them.

The Party Drinks

We chilled the wines in a French flower bucket filled with ice. Soft drinks and water were stashed in a picnic cooler. There was also a pitcher of lemonade.

To Make Lemonade: Make simple syrup by combining equal parts of sugar and water in a pot, heat until the sugar dissolves; then cool. Start with 1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice with 1 cup simple syrup and 6 cups water. Adjust flavor by adding more juice, syrup, or water, to taste.

Menu: Simple Party Food

I worked the menu around no-cook, easy-to-assemble dishes supplemented with a few cooked and baked items that I could prepare in advance:

• Charcuterie board
• Crudité platter with hummus and aïoli dips
• Crostini with tapenade and a garlic herb cheese spread
• Curry Chutney Deviled Eggs
• Grilled Orange Shrimp
• Powdered Sugar Poundcake
• Chocolate Cupcakes baked ahead and frozen
• Walnut Tea Cookies also called Mexican Wedding Cakes

Easy Party Recipes

Here are recipes for some of the dishes I made.

Hummus (Chickpea Dip)

• 1 15-ounce can chickpeas
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup tahini
• 1/4 cup finely chopped onion
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Drain chickpeas, reserving liquid. Combine chickpeas and tahini in the bowl of a food processor and purée until smooth, adding reserved liquid as necessary.

Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Adjust seasoning. Serve with vegetables or pita wedges.

Makes about 2 cups.

Recipe adapted from my friend, Holly Chute, former Executive Chef of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion.

Curry Chutney Deviled Eggs

I could never peel boiled eggs easily and cleanly until I learned to steam them.

• 12 large eggs
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons Major Grey’s chutney
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cook and peel eggs following these steaming directions. Slice eggs in half lenghtwise and remove yolks. In a medium bowl, mash yolks with a fork. Add mayonnaise, chutney, curry powder, and salt; mix throughly to blend. Adjust seasoning.

Using a pastry bag or a spoon, stuff eggs with filling. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to serve. Deviled eggs can be made up to a day ahead. Makes 24 deviled eggs.

Tapenade, Provençal Spread

• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 cups pitted kalamata olives
• 5 anchovy fillets
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Freshly ground pepper

Start the food processor running and drop garlic cloves through the feed tube to chop roughly. Stop the processor and add olives, anchovies, lemon juice, capers, and rosemary. Purée until chunky. With machine running, slowly pour oil through the feed tube and continue to process until smooth. Season with pepper. Makes about 2 1/4 cups.

Host a grandkids’ tea party!

Herb Garlic Cheese Spread

• 8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
• 4 ounces (1 U.S. block) butter at room temperature
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon dried dill
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a mixer; beat smooth. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate or freeze. You can line a mold with plastic wrap and mold the cheese if you like. Makes 1 1/2 cups

Recipe from my friend, Holly Chute, former Executive Chef of the Georgia Governor’s Mansion.

Crostini

• 2 baguettes
• About 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Freshly ground pepper

Heat oven to 350°F. Slice bread ¼-inch thick with a bread knife. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush olive oil on both sides of bread slices. Arrange on two large rimmed baking sheets in a single layer, season with pepper, and bake about 15 minutes, turning bread slices once, and rotating the baking sheets midway through the baking time.

The crostini are done when the bread is golden, dry and crisp, but with just a tiny bit of softness in the center. (Gently squeeze a slice between your fingers. If bread is still spongy, it is not fully toasted. Partially toasted bread will turn tough and chewy.)

Serve crostini warm or cool to room temperature. These toasts can be made in advance, up to a week ahead, cooled completely, and stored airtight until needed.

Makes about 60 crostini, depending on the size of the baguettes.

Grilled Orange-Garlic Shrimp

A takeoff on a recipe by Chef Gale Gand, we marinated large peeled shrimp in a mixture of extra-virgin olive oil, minced garlic, chopped flat leaf parsley, orange zest, salt and pepper. Marinate at least 3 hours or up to 24 hours.

Using small (3 1/2-inch) flat bamboo skewers, thread a shrimp tail followed by a small wedge of orange, then the shrimp head so the orange is encased in the curve of the shrimp, finish with a 1-inch cube of bell pepper.

Grill about 3 minutes per side, until shrimp turns pink and opaque.

Some Food Preparation Notes

• Charcuterie board: choose from various kinds of salumi, cheeses, toasted nuts, fruits, cornichons, and crackers. The trick to arranging a charcuterie board is to create some height: fold some of the meats and pile them, instead of laying all of them flat. Add grapes to connect the disparate elements on the board into a unified design.
• Aïoli dip: use commercial mayonnaise as a base and stir in lemon juice, pressed garlic and whisk in some olive oil, dribbled in slowly, to incorporate.
• Making vegetable containers for dips: Hollow out a purple cabbage, keeping the outer leaves intact. Rinse out cabbage bits. Dry the cavity using paper towels to prevent the cut edges from bleeding; you don’t want it to color the dip. For a pepper container, select a pepper with a firm base and a nice stem. Slice off the top and scoop out the insides. Set the cap at an angle over the pepper.

• Create a variety of vegetable shapes: Cut the vegetables for the crudité basket in a variety of shapes. Long sticks of baby carrots; diagonal slices of cucumber. For other shapes, introduce cherry tomatoes, radishes; and sugar snap peas. Add height by standing celery sticks and green beans in glass cups.
• For the poundcake, use a heavy bundt pan like Nordic Ware, which ensures easier release of the cake from the pan. If any bits of cake stick to the pan when you unmold, carefully scoop up the bits with a skewer and while the cake is still warm, patch them back onto the cake, pressing in place gently with fingers. A dusting of powdered sugar will cover most sins.

Plan a summer kids’ party.

Food Safety Concerns

• Keep food in the shade or under umbrellas. Follow these food safety tips from the FDA.
• Use commercial, bottled mayonnaise instead of homemade; it’s the safer choice.
• Do not keep shrimp or other seafood out at room temperature more than an hour or two. Check out these seafood safety guidelines. After an hour on the table, I refrigerated the shrimp and brought the dish back out again towards the end of the party.

Wish I’d Done That…

We used to host big holidays parties every year where I would be cooking for 60 or 70 people, but I’m long out of practice.

• I’d forgotten that no matter how prepared I think I am, the last hour before guests arrive is madness. Fortunately, Steve, my sons, and the grandkids all pitched in to get us ready on time.
• While I had predetermined what dishes I would use to plate the food, I hadn’t given any thought to the serving utensils until the night before, at which point it was too late to buy or borrow anything I didn’t have. I ended up using ice tongs for the charcuterie board.
• Never having had a party in the garden before, I didn’t properly anticipate the flow of guest traffic. If I were doing a party in the garden again, I would move all the outdoor furniture along the sides of the deck and group all the food tables together in the middle.
• I wish I’d taken a photo of all the guests with their name tags for reference later, as well as to serve as mementos of our first garden party.

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