Hard Core Cooking Hits the Road: Dinner Party in a Hotel Room

Whipping it up in the kitchenette!

Our recent vacation was an opportunity for us to develop a new skill, entertaining in a hotel room. We hosted dinner parties twice over our three night stay. The first night, it was a rush performance. We checked in at about thirty minutes after eight, with a miserable toddler in tow. Our guests (the bride and groom—Jess and Ryan—and the bride’s good friend Wei) arrived shortly after nine o’clock, tired, hungry and ready for their post-wedding feast. Luckily, I had thought ahead (suspecting that despite our best intentions we would not arrive at our destination early in the day) and planned a dinner that could be produced in minutes.

Now, I will say that we were somewhat disappointed when we stepped into our hotel suite. Mainly because it was, well, not a suite. We had booked a separate living room and bedroom unit, but the hotel had run out of suites with king-sized beds and so had automatically changed us to a studio. A quick call to our hotel membership program and they were willing to book us into a penthouse; however, the penthouses were taken. Darn! So, we were stuck with the studio apartment version, rather than the suite. We did take the liberty of rearranging the furniture to better suit a gathering of people. (We put it all back before the next morning—except for that lamp we left unplugged because it had a faulty cord!)

A bowl of yum! Crostata with cream!

Smoked turkey was the main course, made at home the day before, carved for easy carrying, and packed in our cooler. I warmed it up in the oven in my cast iron skillet, with just a touch of water in the bottom to help keep from drying. (The cast iron skillet, it turns out is a wonderful multi-purpose tool for hotel cooking, as our fully equipped kitchen included neither bake ware nor nonstick cookware: Good old fashioned seasoned cast iron works either way!)

As a side, I made a garden vegetable salad buffet. Storing the raw veggies separately kept them in good shape on the drive and kept me from dealing with onion infused carrots and cucumbers. The presentation was easy,because our hotel included a set of pyrex glass dishes and four white ceramic cereal bowls. I used hotel cookware to sauté zucchini and onions in butter, with a little home-milled flour to crisp it up; however, I was disappointed with the results. The hotel cookware simply didn’t brown the zucchini the way my cast iron does and unfortunately, the cast iron was occupied with turkey. (I tried again two nights later in the cast iron and it went perfectly… but more on that later.) By the time the bride and groom got to Sarah’s Traditional Hard Core Café, I had set the table, complete with homemade sourdough bread, salad, lemon-grapeseed salad dressing, zucchini, smoked turkey, cheese and crackers, and yogurt cookies. Dessert—peach and blueberry crostata with dough made at home the day before and pressed (not rolled, because I had not packed a rolling pin) into a pie dish—was in the oven.

Making peach and blueberry crumble!

The crostata was my adaptation of an Ina Garten recipe. The crust was made with fresh-milled whole wheat flour, raw sugar, and butter. The raw sugar was a compromise on my “no refined sugars” policy, but given the special occasion, I was all right with that. The filling was simply fresh sliced peaches and ripe blueberries mixed together with a splash of maple syrup. I baked it for about half an hour (until crust was brown and fruit was nice and soft) at 350 degrees.

I had planned on making homemade frozen custard to top it off, but I ran out of time and energy to make the custard in advance—not to mention the royal pain it would have been to haul my ice cream maker all the way to our destination—so instead I made a simple cream topping by melting our dairy fresh raw cream (which is so thick it holds its shape in the container when you hold it upside down) and flavored it with vanilla bean. The cream was probably better than ice cream would have been and the bonus was that (in the refrigerator overnight) it set up almost like custard on top of the leftovers. The dinner was a complete success. We had a wonderful time catching up with our friends while Mia (and the dog) ran around and let off pent up energy. (Imagine how a restaurant would have been that late at night after a nine hour drive!). I had a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

Crumble, ready to hit the oven!

We had plenty of leftovers from our feast, and it turned out to be a good thing that I had brought more food than we needed, because unexpectedly, we managed to locate an old friend and invite him to dinner on the last night of the trip. A quick tally of the contents of our refrigerator told me that we were good to go on a near repeat of the Friday night feast. We found a local farm stand and picked up a few things (zucchini, peaches, blueberries, and cucumber) to make sure we had enough. We were out of a few of the crackers and I was saving the yogurt dough cookies for our return trip; however, it was a smaller gathering and we didn’t need them.

For this second dinner party, I made zucchini in the cast iron skillet, rather than the hotel cookware. I coated the pan in olive oil and heated it on medium until it was hot (not too hot, olive oil, like the rest of us, should never smoke!) and then added rough chopped zucchini, diced onion, and two cloves of garlic, chopped. I seasoned with salt and pepper and allowed to cook (stirring often) until the zucchini was brown with bubbling skin. A little flour tossed in at the end soaked up the remaining oil and created a slightly crispy, crushed crouton-like effect.

With good friends, some things never change. (Except that's good food, not bar food!)

Because I did not have a second crust made for crostata, I reinvented the dish as a crumble, combining the remainder of my home-milled wheat flour with butter, cinnamon and maple syrup. It’s hard to say which of the two desserts was better. Brian had a hard time deciding and said simply, “The second night seemed easier to make!” I topped it with vanilla cream (thank goodness I packed the extra vanilla bean) made just as I had the first night.

For three people who love gourmet beer, a growler of local beer (an amazing vanilla porter that actually tasted fabulous with dessert as well as dinner) from one of our favorite old hangouts was the perfect accompaniment. (Brewing traditional beers is on the long list of things Brian and I would like to do as part of our new approach to food.) We sat and talked about the good old days and what we’d been up to over the last ten years or so. It wasn’t enough time to say everything that could be said or tell every tale that could be told, but I was thankful we did not have the distraction of menus, wait staff, and a room full of people.

Oh yeah! Crumble topped with vanilla cream!

I’m absolutely certain that our hotel room had never smelled as good as it did the nights we entertained! And, I know I’ve never eaten so well in a hotel room on vacation—and that includes all the meals I’ve had from Ritz Carlton room service, and the world’s-greatest grilled cheese (though perhaps it wouldn’t stand up now that I cook traditional) that I had at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta. Because I had prepared so much ahead of time, it really wasn’t all that much work to pull it all together and entertain. In fact, I was probably more relaxed than I would have been trying to get ready, pack up Mia, a diaper bag, a portable baby potty, and toys and snacks to go out. The best part, as always seems to be the case when dining in rather than out, was the opportunity to be relaxed and enjoy ourselves without distraction. I’m already trying to figure out how to eat traditional, sans restaurants, when we fly to Dallas next Spring!

Looking for cast iron cookware to season and love for life?