Summer Dinner

Some friends came over for dinner and I put this menu together from The Summer House Cookbook. I was trying to find things that took little-to-no prep time and would allow for everyone to help. Even one friend who didn't cook did a mash-up job on the guacamole! This is what I chose:

French Potato Salad
Baked black cod
Grilled fruit (peach, nectarine, plum) as fish topping
Guacamole with blue corn chips
Berries with fresh whipped cream for dessert (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries)

First, I chopped up all the guacamole fixings and threw them into a bowl for mashing. Our guac was 4 tiny organic avocados, 1 shallot (finely minced), 1 garlic clove (through the press), 1 tbsp lime juice, salt and pepper, and several tiny tomatoes from the garden.

The cod fillets were rubbed with salt and pepper (no oil; this is a very oily fish), placed on a rack and thrown into the oven at 375 for 20 minutes.

The fruit was sliced into halves, tossed with olive oil and grilled for 10 minutes. Then I sliced them into quarters and tossed with 2 tsp balsamic to serve as a topping for the fish.

The potato salad was a little more time-consuming than anticipated. Steaming that many potatoes takes at least 25-30 minutes. Then they have to cool for 10 minutes. The dressing is a two part build mixing a champagne vinaigrette with the mustard. We all ended up loving the potatoes though; they were well worth the extra time!

I made the biscuits from Cooks Illustrated but they totally fell flat and dry (what?!) so I should have just done the berries alone. Ah well.