Today we’re going to talk about how we break our meals into courses without making extra work for ourselves. I find that eating meals in courses helps all of us to slow down and give our full attention to the dinner meal – to be fully present and to enjoy chatting with each other. It also helps the cooking to not be too hectic because things can be prepared or finished off a little bit at a time for each course. So, I’m going to talk about different ways that we do meals with courses. Sometimes it’s relaxed with an activity, and sometimes it’s formal. We’ll also talk about how we break down the meals.
The first way is to have a fun, relaxed evening when we’re tired and we want to do something like watch a movie. Last night, we watched Jurassic World Rebirth, and we ended up having four courses. Even though it wasn’t planned, it worked really well. We started the movie nice and early in the evening at about 5:30, and then we had some chopped orange melon. My oldest daughter chopped up the melon, and we all had a bowl full while we watched. My youngest two were watching something else because it’s a bit hectic for them, but we were all in front of a movie. We enjoyed that fruit and gave it time to digest.
Our vegetable for the meal was homemade cauliflower soup, which I mentioned in the previous episode. It’s made with bone broth, cauliflower, salt, and a bit of cheese and cream that we add after it’s blended up. It’s very delicious. We had a bowl of that at the table together and chatted a little bit.
Then we went back to the movie, and in the meantime we were warming up our cottage pie. After about another half an hour of movie time, we came back together at the table, got the cottage pie out the oven, and dished that up. We enjoyed another little chat. Having a bit of connection and being together is important so that the whole evening isn’t just about the movie. Also, we were eating slowly and helping our bodies to digest. We enjoyed that cottage pie.
It was getting quite late by that time, and our younger one goes to bed at eight. We had some pre-made chocolate mousse for dessert in front of the movie. Everybody had a bowl of that. Our youngest finished hers off and went up to bed, and then we ate slowly in front of the rest of the movie. That was a really nice slow evening with some good chatting and connection, and some good relaxing and watching a movie. The four courses worked really well because they were spread out through the evening.
Another way we like to do courses is in a very formal setting; an elegant evening. Sometimes on a Friday night, instead of pizza and a movie, we have Chinese food. That may not sound very elegant, but it can be. We’ll set the table with our beautiful under plates, lovely crockery, nice glasses, elegant folded napkins, and et cetera. Then we get some Chinese takeout that can be made into elegant food.
Firstly, we’ll get some corn soup. I have some little elegant soup bowls that we use, and we all eat some Chinese soup with Chinese soup spoons. The second course will be something like sushi or spring rolls on a little side plate. Between courses, we’ll chat a bit. Maybe we’ll have a specific conversation from conversation starter cards or a particular topic that dad picked, or we’ll just relax, laugh, and chat.
Then our third course will be something like stir-fried rice and stir fried chicken or sweet and sour chicken. It’s really nice because we’re not making anything, so nobody has to be in the kitchen for long. There are quite a few dishes which need to be cleared, but the takeout makes it really easy. Then, for the last part of the meal, we’ll have some kind of dessert.
So again, there are four courses. We’ll layer the plates on the table. We’ll set out extra knives and forks, and we’ll put out chopsticks and soup spoons elegantly. We’ll also choose drinks and have lovely glasses for those next to our water glasses. We just make an elegant evening out of it. We’ll have some soft music playing in the background, perhaps Chinese music, and enjoy it.
Another type of meal with courses in an everyday meal. Perhaps we’ll be having something like lamb stew for our meal. Then I’ll do something like steamed broccoli or corn on the cob as the appetizer course. That’s really easy- you steam it in advance, and then keep it in the pot, and it stays warm. It’s really simple. So, we’ll have some long stemmed, elegant broccoli with some salt, or some corn on the cob on the top plate.
Then we’ll clear that away and have a little conversation time. After that we’ll have our lamb stew, clear that away, and then maybe we’ll have some cheese and bread as our last course instead of a dessert. We’ll cut various types of cheese and put them on a little cheeseboard. We’ll add some crackers or sourdough with butter, or to be elegant, some olive oil with balsamic vinegar to dip in. Perhaps there’ll be some grapes as well. That’ll be our last course, which we’ll have after the stew.
When we do this, people take a bit less food for their main course. They know there’s another one coming, and it extends the meal so that nobody’s rushing off, and we’re together for a little bit longer. It’s nice to have finger food at the end, and the cheese is good for digestion. The grapes are nice, little sweet pops of something – it’s good to have a bit of fruit. So, that’s another fun way to do courses.
Another great appetizer if you want to make a meal into a few courses is salad. You can make them individually for each person, and put them on top of the main plate on a smaller plate. You can do this before grilling chicken kebabs – we do that sometimes. You can have it before any main course that goes well with a salad.
So, put out the number of plates that you’ll need in the kitchen. For us, that’s seven. Add a little chopped lettuce, some cucumber, tomato, maybe some pine nuts, feta, some avocado, red pepper, and anything that you like for your salad. Then everybody’s got a pretty little plate of salad to start with. You can finish making your next course after that. This way, everybody has a bit to eat, and they’re not too desperately hungry while you finish cooking your main course, or grilling your meat or whatever.
Another great way to start a meal is a charcuterie board. If it’s just an appetizer, it doesn’t have to be as comprehensive as it would be if it was your whole meal. You can use a few different types of cheese, some crackers or sourdough, some fruit like grapes, chopped apple, et cetera, and perhaps some nuts. Just do a few odd things that people can enjoy. Maybe add some dips, or some cheese like Camembert that’s all melty and you can dip in. Or you could have a cream cheese bowl, or whatever you’d like.
You can vary the contents of the board – sometimes you can have cold meats like salami. Any Italian meat works great. Then everybody can have a small side plate, and they can help themselves while you have your appetizer course. You can sit around and enjoy it, and then enjoy your main meal after that.
Another great start to the meal is soup, as I mentioned in the previous episode. You can do this instead of having a vegetable with your main, or you can have it as well as a vegetable. For example, we sometimes have grilled barbecue chicken with some ratatouille, but still start with a cauliflower soup. This helps fill people up, and they eat a bit less meat. It’s also good nutrition because there’s bone broth and vegetables in there. We make a cauliflower soup or a butternut and sweet potato soup a little earlier in the afternoon, and then everybody has some soup as the appetizer. After that, we’ll have a little break, and then we’ll finish off the main part of the meal.
Then we’ll have a dessert. Sometimes my oldest son likes to make crème brûlée, panna cotta, or chocolate lava cakes – something like that. Those are very elegant, and can go nicely with a fancy meal. Somehow, when you start with a soup, it suggests an elegant meal.
So, make the table beautiful. Stack or layer your plates – put the main plate, then the side plate, and the soup bowl on top. Add all the relevant cutlery. You can set up some lovely music like Italian bistro or French bistro music. Then sit down to enjoy your meal. If the table is set beautifully and you know there’s going to be courses, somehow it’s easier for everybody to relax into the meal, and to know that they’re here to stay for a while. Then the conversation flows more freely. It’s not like a quick sit-down-and-jump-up, and that was dinner, but it’s a time together; time to be present, to chat and to connect with each other, a time to find out about how your day’s been, and to slow down.
Obviously, it’s also so much better for our digestion to eat slowly. Sometimes for fun, when we’re doing a formal meal, we’ll have some lemon or mango sorbet in between the appetizer and the main course to cleanse the palate, as they say. This is like what they’d do in a fancy restaurant. It adds to the fun, and it also definitely does cleanse your palate so that you can enjoy the taste of the next course.
Another appetizer that we sometimes do is shrimp cocktail. I usually buy cooked shrimp, which is much easier than trying to cook them myself. It’s hard to get them to the right degree without making them tough. So, we buy some cooked shrimp, chop them up, and add a little lettuce or cucumber and some shrimp sauce.
Shrimp sauce is made of mayonnaise mixed with a little bit of tomato sauce, some lemon juice, and some salt. Add that to your shrimp. You can do the same thing with crab sticks – chop them up and add them to the lettuce with a bit of that shrimp sauce. That makes a very elegant appetizer as well.
You can do that when you’re going to have fish, maybe oven-baked fish like salmon, or anything that you like. You could have some kind of potato with your fish. You could do baked potatoes, or halved baked potatoes where the edges get nice and crispy, or you could do “crashed potato”, where you squish the potatoes with a potato masher, and add cheese, feta, and a bit of oil and herbs. There are lots of other potato dishes that you could do with this.
So, just think about what you normally eat and what you can enhance it with without making too much extra work. Break up the meal into the vegetables first, then the meat and starch, and then some kind of dessert. You can even just have the sorbet for dessert, or you could have a cheese platter. Having something at the end makes it special, and makes it a slow, enjoyable, good time of connection.
I hope that you have an idea or two from this. Don’t feel overwhelmed, like “Oh no, now I’ve got to cook another course!” Rather, look for ways to slow down and break up your meal to make it more interesting and fun, without making a whole lot of extra work.
We have our Easy, Elegant Appetizers cookbook for sale on familyfoodformoms.com/shop if you’re interested in that. There’s a PDF version and a print version. It’s got some very easy five-ingredient recipes that you can try for your appetizers if you need some ideas.
