My best friend turns 24 soon at xmas - dinner?!
My best friend turns 24 soon at xmas - dinner?
I want to cook her and some friends a yummy meal, but with no association to xmas as she is sick of getting left overs and turkey dinners in restaurants...how can I make this special? Its her birthday but it always feels like an extension to xmas!
Answers:
I'm born on Christmas, so I can definitely relate.
If you want to distinguish the dinner from Christmas completely, I'd suggest that you serve those things that one would never expect to see for Christmas.
Maybe you could fire up the barbeque and grill up some nice steaks, and serve the usual steakhouse fare alongside of it.
You could also do an Italian meal, provided she's not Italian herself, (as that would seem like leftovers). A nice lasagne or baked ziti or eggplant parm would be nice. Or you could serve a pasta with sauce and a chicken or veal parm alongside.
If neither of these work for your friend, I'd go purely ethnic. You can plan and cook a great chinese, japanese, indian, etc. meal, which would be very much different from the usual Christmas turkey.
do kabobs on skewers over a saffroned basmati rice (get the metal skewers not the cheap wooden ones)
make chicken tikka