Dinner Parties

While everybody loves inviting friends or family over for a good meal and good conversation, it’s sometimes difficult in our busy lives to find the time and energy to plan, shop, cook, serve and clean for a dinner party. That’s precisely what Laughing Duck Gardens & Cookery does for you, letting you focus on your guests. We are your personal chef and we entertaining easier and more fun.

As of April 2020, we have been working with clients to provide dinners for small gatherings (less than 10 people) while minimizing contacts. The menus are designed to be prepared ahead in your kitchen (generally the day before). Some dishes are to be served cold or at room temperatures. Others are to be reheated (instructions provided). In a nutshell: I shop, I cook the day before; you reheat/assemble, serve & clear the day of your dinner.

Browse our pictures to give you a sense of what we do. Just remember, all our menus are custom!

Salads – appetizer or lunch

  • A salad of smoked duck breast, little leaves & blackberries from the garden
  • Mache, sprouts, citruses & pears
  • Winter rolls
  • Just picked radishes
  • A basket full of salad goodness
  • Summer salad
  • Salad of summer fruit & purslane
  • Chevre-fleurs & mouse melons
  • Melon Salad
  • Salad of little leaves, herbs & flowers
  • Grilled peach and local ham salad
  • Pretty salad
  • Watermelon salad
  • June Salad
  • Tomato salad; creme fraiche ice cream; cucumber sorbet

Soups, Tasty Soups

  • A mushroom soup
  • Dressy golden gaspatcho
  • Naked golden gaspatcho
  • Chilled sorrel soup
  • Barley & vegetable
  • Parsnip soup

Savory tarts, grain and pasta

  • asparagus & morel tart
  • A wheat berry salad with radishes & herbs
  • White beans & mushroom salad
  • Buttermilk corn bread

  • Grits soufflé with roasted Hatch pepper sauce; buttermilk biscuits
  • Another wheat berry salad w peas & mint

  • Making raviolis
  • Rye bread

A vegetarian June feast on the porch

Seafood

  • Seared Scallops
  • Bouillabaisse
  • Tarragon salmon, shiitake, favas & asparagus
  • Salmon, asparagus, forbidden black rice, pickled hakurei
  • Roasted wild Alaska salmon filets
  • Seared scallops, passion carrots

  • Paella
  • Curried lobster

Poultry

  • Quail, preserved tomatoes and creamy polenta
  • Heritage turkey roulade, braised chestnut & cipolinis, sweet potatoes

  • Brunswick stew
  • Grilling chicken
Cooking Chicken a la Basque

Meat

  • Racks of lamb ready for the oven
  • Pork Roast
  • Brisket
  • Lamb Barbacoa
  • Grilled flank steaks, herb & caper sauce, and spring veggies
  • Whole lamb roast
Searing rib-eye steaks

Sweets

Blueberry mousse cake
  • Strawberry Mousse
  • Fresh ginger cake with garden berries
  • A bowl of blackberry sherbet
  • June pavlova
  • Almond chocolate cake with wine cranberry sorbet
  • Strawberry trio
  • Rhubarb ginger cobbler
  • Almond chocolate cake
  • Fresh ginger & sorghum cake, with ginger mascarpone cream
  • Tricolor parfait
  • Peach sorbet, poached peaches, blackberries
  • Chestnut & chocolate buce de noel
  • Ginger Bread Pudding
  • Chocolate pudding
  • Blackberry “jelly”

  • Walnut carrot cake
  • Petite rustic peach tart

  • Roasted rhubarb cream cheese tart

  • Basque cherry cake
  • Mini Basque cherry cakes
  • Beet & chocolate cakes
  • Lemon ricotta tart
    with macerated fresh currants
  • Individual rhubarb strawberry cobblers