Dinner Party

A typical dinner party in India for a limited crowd of 4-6 people would look like this.

The All Out Menu

Appetizers
If you plan to serve dinner after a while after allowing your guests to mingle, you could serve appetizers with drinks. However this is purely optional since Indian meals do not always include appetizers. You could also serve an indian savoury snack, also known as chaat or buy mini samosas from a store.

Main Course

1.Vegetables - For a party of four, you should ideally try to include at least two vegetable dishes. You could serve one vegetable curry with gravy and one dry vegetable dish. Popular curries include matar paneer, saag paneer, koftas, dum aloo, aloo matar. Dry vegetables include cauliflower, potatoes, mixed vegetables, okra, cabbage, potatoes and greens, eggplant. You might want to include at least one paneer(Indian cottage cheese) dish, dry or with gravy, since paneer is quite a crowd pleaser.

2. Bread - You can choose between paranthas, naan, rotis, or kulchas to go with your vegetable dishes. If your curries are very rich , naan is a good choice. However if you made lighter curries, paranthas and rotis are a better choice.

3. Lentils - You could serve one lentil dish. Popular party choices include choley or chana dal ( garbanzo curry), rajma ( kidney bean ), dal makhani ( black lentils), kala chana (bengal gram). However if you want to go lighter and the dinner is less formal, opt for pigeon peas, mung , black eyed peas.

4. Rice - You could serve plain steamed rice or cumin rice, depending on the lentil dish you choose. Basically the rice is supposed to be the accompaniment to your lentil stew and hence you do not want the rice to overpower the lentil flavor.
Rice entrees like pulao and biryani, do not need a lentil stew at all. They can be served with raita or vegetables in a yoghurt sauce.

Accompanients
1. Raita- Raita helps to temper the spicy curries and are easy and quick to prepare. Curd sauce with cucumber, onions, tomatoes. Popular choices include vegetable raita, cucumber raita, onion raita, mint raita, potato raita.

2. Pappad- Get your favorite brand from the Indian store. Microwave each pappad for 50 seconds.

3. Pickles

4. Salad- Cut onions, cucumbers, tomatos, into slices and just add a little lemon juice/ salt on the top. You can also add carrot and radish batons.

Dessert
Just serve store bought ice cream or kulfi ( indian ice cream), rasgollas (cottage cheese balls in syrup) , ras malai (cottage cheese balls in a milky sauce) if you don't want to work too hard. Some of the desserts on this blog like gajar ka halwa and malpua are excellent cold weather comfort desserts.

The One Wow Dish Menu

Serve paav bhaai
Serve a rice entree like pulao or biryani with raita