The time has come for us to literally and figuratively close the book on our cooking the Toro Bravo cookbook parties. Over the years, since the book came out from McSweeney's in the fall of 2013, we've had six big and raucous dinner parties at the homes of a very special group of hungry, good cook friends where we all cooked different dishes from the book. You can check them out here, here, here, and here. I didn't post the fifth dinner from fall 2015 and I'll do that soon too.
We looked through the Toro book's table of contents at the end of our grand finale Toro book dinner party last weekend, and it turns out that we cooked about 85% of the book. None of us are completists in life, so we feel pretty dang good about cooking all of those awesome recipes and not cooking every single recipe.
The biggest holes were in the Charcuterie and Cocktails chapters and meat dishes throughout the book. The first because those recipes take a good amount of time and special equipment (although our group tackled the Coppa Steak twice, the Pork Rillettes, and the Sherry Chicken Liver Mousse), the second because that's a lot of cocktails for six dinner parties (we made the Toro Martini, Venus 75, Jerez Negroni, Casa Rita and White Sangria), and the meat dishes because we have a few vegetarians and pescatarians amongst us (we made the Harira Lamb and Lentil Stew, Coppa Steak, Drunken Pork, Moorish Meatballs and Chicken and Clams Cataplana). I might have left a few out of those lists but that's most of them.
So, we ate, drank and were quite merry, as always, and I'm posting a bunch of the photos here for you. We'll probably do one more Toro party, that's not strictly recipes but that includes the Paella and Rabbit Fideos, this summer because that sounds like a lot of fun. After that, we're going to do a one night only James Beard cook from the book night -- everyone will choose a dish from whatever cookbook of his they'd like.
After that I'm really hoping that the group chooses Hello! My Name is Tasty: Global Diner Favorites from Portland's Tasty Restaurants, which comes out August 15th, as its next cook from the book cookbook. More than a little biased. I love that we can have brunch and dinner parties with that one.
If you want to watch a fun video that Rebecca and Fred Gerendasy of Cooking up a Story did of our dinner party series you can check it out here. Love that they captured it.
Alright, without further ado, photos from the night.
Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull. dinner party menu
Toro's White Sangria made with my Concord grape wine Boquerones with Toasted Bread and Piperade Bacon-Wrapped Dates Tapenade Octopus a la Plancha Sauteed Spinach with Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins Butter Lettuce Salad Harissa-Stewed Butternut Squash Coppa Steak with Salbitxada Panna Cotta two ways Limoncello *We also had really yummy Olympia Provisions ham, pork rillettes, chorizo and sopressata that Josh and Sarah brought. Josh is Olympia Provisions' plant manager.
Cheers to you for reading this! Maybe you'll put together one of these for a cookbook too? I highly recommend it. So fun. Happy Friday!