A cocktail party with Greek/Mediterranean appetizers

In the post above, I wrote that I made a tart with pesto, artichoke hearts, roasted tomatoes, and parmesan cheese for a party that we hosted. After all the wedding entertaining, we decided that for this party, we needed help. So for the first time ever, we hired a caterer to make some of the food and to provide help in the kitchen during the party.

For the catering, we hired Georgia Sander. According to her web site, she’s been doing catering in the Twin Cities for 18 years. She also owns a restaurant in Dinkytown, Kafé 421.

We selected three items from her catering menu. She made crostinis with a variety of toppings, including goat cheese, eggplant, and roasted peppers. We had meat and vegetarian dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) with tsatsiki (yogurt, cucumber, garlic, oregano) sauce. The third choice was chicken breast filled with spinach and herbs, rolled and wrapped in phyllo. Then the breasts were cut into appetizer-size portions and served with a roasted red pepper sauce.

Besides the items we got from Georgia and my tart, my wife made little wonton cups filled with a cream cheese/cheddar cheese mixture and baked. (Really yummy!) We put out a variety of crackers with three kinds of cheese – a brie, a stilton, and manchego. And we had a variety of fancy olives and a bowl of cashews.

We were really lucky. It had been rainy most of the day. But by evening, it dried off and was very mild, so our guests felt comfortable sitting outside for much of the evening. After it was over, we felt we were better able to enjoy the party because we had someone to help in the kitchen. We definitely will do that again.