Last Monday was my last night in Austin, and I decided to celebrate an incredible trip catching up with friends with a Recession Recipes Dinner Party for some of my favourite girls: Ashley G, Ashley M, Becca, Emily, and a new friend Meera. The challenge was to throw a killer dinner party at Ashley G’s house, without breaking the bank, but still sharing delicious and fresh food with my friends while Ashley took beautiful photos of the evening for the blog.

I had no idea what to make for the dinner party, especially since I had wheat, dairy, and red meat dietary restrictions to take into account. I decided that I would go to the Austin Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning and check out what was in season and let the produce shape my menu. Wow, after attending the Las Vegas Farmers’ Market, the Austin Farmers’ Market looked like produce heaven. There were tons of stands filled with incredible looking produce, cheese, meat, and eggs, so I was totally spoiled for choices.

I decided to head to our old favourite stand of Tecolote Farm because not only did they grow beautiful produce, but it was always sold with a smile and friendly recipe suggestion. After reading last year that they were perhaps going to close down due to their well drying up, I was very relieved to see that the farm was still in business, and still growing their wonderful produce.

They had some really nice looking beets and baby carrots, which I bought even though at that point, my mind was still racing as to what exactly I should do with them all. Thankfully the previous night I had eaten a great dinner at Texas French Bread, partly cooked by my grad school friend Stephanie, of a roasted beet salad with goat cheese and chicken chasseur with polenta. I had really enjoyed this dinner, so I decided that this was the perfect meal to recreate for my friends.

The Recession Recipe Dinner Party’s official menu would start with Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese with a main course of Chicken Chasseur with Crunchy New Potatoes and Roasted Carrots.

The Beet Salad cost $1.50 per serving, and the Chicken Chasseur cost $2.85 per serving. The Crunchy New Potatoes cost 99 cents per serving, and the Roasted Carrots cost only 33 cents per serving. The total cost per guest for the dinner party was $5.67, which clearly shows that you don’t need lots of money to entertain well.

Usually when we roast beets, we just cut them up and put them in a roasting pan and throw some olive oil over them. While this gets the job done, the beets always end up looking a little bit dessicated after the roasting process. To prevent this, I found this recipe on how to roast beets by wrapping up each individual beet in tin foil and roasting them in a 375 degree oven for an hour or so. Not only was this method incredibly easy, it used no olive oil, and the beets were perfectly roasted and sweet while still looking beautiful. After discovering this method, I don’t think I will go back to pan roasted beets unless it is for a recipe that includes multiple roasted veggies.

I bought two kinds of beets from the Farmers’ Market, your regular red beet and the fancy Chioggia beet. The Chioggia beet not only looked fantastic with its alternating pink and red rings, but it was slightly sweeter and more delicate in flavor than the regular red beet to provide a nice complexity to the salad.

To assemble the Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Cheese, I let the beets cool and then sliced them up. I put down a bed of local arugula also grown by Tecolote Farm and placed the beets on top. I then drizzled some olive oil and white wine vinegar over the beets and arugula plus added salt and pepper. In retrospect, I should have tossed the salad with the olive oil and vinegar first and then placed the beets on top with just a dash of oil to top off the dish, but such is life.

Last but not least, I sprinkled some of the most delicious and fluffiest goat cheese that I’ve tasted over the beets. I bought this plain goat cheese from the Maid in the Sky farm stand, which basically consisted of an old guy in a cowboy hat with a small cooler, but damn, that old guy can make some goat cheese!

Anyway, this Beet Salad was a huge hit and devoured by everyone, especially Ashley M who had somehow never eaten a beet before but quickly became a convert. And all for $1.50 a serving!

One of the best things about this Chicken Chasseur recipe is that you could split up the cooking process and make the sauce before your guests arrive. Then all you need to do is warm it up and place the chicken breasts in to simmer right before you are ready to eat. This is a huge help for when you are throwing a dinner party because there is nothing worse than stressing out in the kitchen instead of hanging out with your guests.

I ended up buying chicken breasts with the skin on, but without the bones because the bone-in chicken breasts included the rib bones which looked a little scary. I think you could easily use chicken legs, thighs, or even a whole chicken cut up to save on the cost of the chicken and it would hold up well in this recipe.

The end result was delicious, and all of the tomato and mushroom sauce proved to be even tastier when eaten with hands down the BEST roasted potato recipe I’ve tried.

I ended up buying some small Dutch Cream potatoes for this easy recipe. Basically, you boil the potatoes for 10 minutes, drain, put them on a baking tray, and then lightly smash them with a potato masher. Yes, I know it sounds bizarre, but the smashing will help produce the crispiest potatoes you have seen. Drizzle them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and then stick them in the oven at 400 degrees.

The recipe says to roast the potatoes for 20 minutes, but I just kept them in the oven pretty much the whole time that I was cooking the Chicken Chasseur. I didn’t have to worry about them over cooking because they just became even more crispier and awesome. Seriously, if you love potatoes, please be sure to make these Crispy New Potatoes this week. You won’t be disappointed.

Another super easy side dish were these Roasted Baby Carrots. Chop the tops off of the carrots and trim the roots. Put them on some tinfoil and drizzle a bit of olive oil over them with some salt and pepper. Wrap up the carrots in the tinfoil like a present, and pop them in the oven. I just stuck them in with the potatoes at 400 degrees, but you can cook them at pretty much any temperature and just adjust the cooking time accordingly. I left these in for around 35 minutes or so until they were tender.

The dinner party was a huge success with the food pairing brilliantly with passionate conversations over wine. Thanks to everyone for making my last night in Austin so special, and thanks to Ashley G for letting me take over her kitchen, and more importantly being the photographer for the night.

Here are some more photos of the beautiful decor she created for dinner party.

Ashley G loves everything vintage and has been assembling an eclectic collection of antique plates that served as a pretty focal point for the dinner table.

For a sweet but cheap floral arrangement, buy a big bunch of baby’s breath and place them by themselves in a vase.

Ash made these favors for each of the guests to take home by placing a flower in a vase made from reused bottles of Mexican fizzy water.