How do you impress your dinner guests?

My surefire "impress people with minimal effort, most of which takes place in advance" recipe: Salmon en croute. For 6-8 people. 2 tail fillets of salmon (skinned). A large bunch of watercress 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind 1 beaten egg 1 oz pine nuts 2 oz soft butter 1.5 lb puff pastry Heat oven to 400. Wipe and season fillets. Blanch watercress and drain well. Gently grill (broil, as you're American!) pine nuts until just golden. Chop watercress and mix well with pine nuts, butter, lemon, salt and pepper. Roll out enough pastry to sit under one fillet; put one fillet on it, skinned side down. Spread the watercress/nut/etc stuffing evenly over the fillet. Lay other fillet over this, skinned side up. Brush pastry edges with beaten egg, lay another piece of rolled-out pastry over the top so that the fish is fully encased; pinch it down to the bottom layer to seal, trim the excess. Decorate with pastry remnants. It's fun to make the whole thing look like a fish: tail, fins etc. Get creative, if you like silly, anyway. Brush the whole thing with more egg, stick it on a lightly greased baking tray and give it 35-40 minutes in the oven. Pastry should be beautifully golden. Serve on a big plate surrounded by watercress and cherry tomatoes. Dress it with hollandaise sauce (if you're feeling lazy, as I usually am) or make a good fishy white sauce of your own out of stock and white wine( I can give you a nice recipe for this too if you like). You can make the beast look very impressive with a little care on the presentation. I usually serve it with simple new potatoes and butter and a simple salad, or maybe an uncluttered, crisp veg like green beans. But the central piece usually makes 'em ooh and ahh satisfactorily. Oh... and it tastes great. You can prepare the thing before your guests arrive (and it really doesn't take very long even then) and just stick it in the oven 45 minutes before you want to eat. Minimal time in the kitchen is then required before dish-up time.

Can't cut-and-paste, since it's written out, but I can type it: Beef Stew in a Pumpkin (from my former fiancee by way of, I think, the Williams Sonoma cookbook, but I'm not sure) Preheat oven to 350F. Cut top off 5-lb sugar pumpkin (butternut squash would work, too, although the bottom's not as flat so it might get a little tippy), reserving top to use as lid, later. Hollow out pumpkin as if you're making a jack-o-lantern. Place pumpkin on greased or non-stick foil in shallow roasting pan, set aside. (if you've used a butternut squash, you may need to prop it upright with a couple strategically placed balls of foil.) Heat 1 T (Tablespoon) vegetable oil in large, heavy pot (I use a cast-iron dutch oven, but whatever) over med-high heat. Brown 1 lb of beef cut up into 1/2-inch cubes (preferably a small chuck roast you've cubed yourself). Browning will take 5 -10 minutes. If you do it quicker, you haven't browned the beef enough. Remove beef to bowl. Add about a cup-and-a-half of beef (or whatever kind) stock to pot, and deglaze, scraping up the deliciousness with a wooden spoon. Pour liquid over beef. Wipe out pot, lower heat, and sautee 3 small sliced yellow onions (or one large sweet one like a vidalia or walla walla) and 3 small peeled, chopped parsnips in about 1 T melted butter until fully translucent, almost carmelized, maybe 10-15 minutes or so. Return beef and liquid to the pot, stirring to mix well. Add the following: 1/2 t (teaspoon) freshly-ground cinnamon 1/2 t freshly-grated nutmeg 1/4 (or more) bourbon or rye whiskey. Do not, under any circumstances, substitute single malt scotch, as I did once. Single malts, while delicious, tend to overwhelm everything else. Lesson learned... Mix well, continuing to cook on med. heat for another 5 minutes or so, then spoon mixture into the hollowed out pumpkin. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar over the top, and then put the whole thing in the oven. Bake 1 1/2 hrs (90 minutes), then place the pumpkin lid in the roasting pan next to your stew. Bake approx. another 45 min. to an hour, til they stew is done and the pumpkin lid is tender. Add salt & pepper to taste, place the lid on the pumpkin, and then VERY CAREFULLY (it will be soft) transfer the pumpkin to a serving platter. Place platter on table, serve stew out of pumpkin. Serve with warm loaf of crusty french or italian bread, and salad or haricots verts or brussels sprouts or whatever you like. Please note that cooking times are, of course, approximate. Check for doneness early and often. The beef is done when a fork cuts it like a knife... Serves 4. To make for 8, double recipe and use two pumpkins, not one that's twice as large

Nothing's simpler and more impressive (although it can be somewhat time-consuming) than a big, beautiful standing rib roast of beef, carved in front of your guests' eyes right at tableside. My recipe, adapted from several others... Preheat oven to 250F. Rub roast with just enough canola oil to make it shine. Salt and pepper liberally. Place in shallow roasting pan, bone side down. Insert probe thermometer (this is NECESSARY) in center of roast, set alarm for 120 degrees F. Place roast in over, turn oven down to 200F. Roast 'til internal temp hits 120F. This can take up to 4 hours for a large roast. Remove roasting pan from oven, cover with foil. Turn oven up to 500F. When over hits 500F, wait another 15 minutes (or until internal temp has hit 130F - 135F), then return roast to oven. Roast at 500F for 15 minutes or so to give a delicious browned crust to the exterior. Remove from oven, place on carving board, tent with foil. While meat is resting, make sauce: Skim fat from pan, then place over two burners at high heat (this only works well if you have a good, heavy roasting pan). Deglaze pan with 1 Cup water, scraping with wooden spoon. Add 1 Cup red wine (a drinkable-but-not-fancy cabernet would work). Add 1 Cup stock. (Beef preferably, but chicken or vegatable would work) Reduce by 1/2. Bruise 3-5 sage leaves between your palms, and add to sauce. Cook another 1-2 min, then strain the sauce into a sauceboat (or pyrex measuring cup). Remove foil from roast, bring to table. Carve table-side into slices 1/2" thick. Serve with whatever sides you like. Roasted fingerling potatoes are always a good choice, and a nice salad can be made in advance. It's simple, elegant, delicious, and impressive, and the only real work you do is the 10 minutes or so it takes to make the sauce.

Since people are still favoriting this thread, I'll add a summer menu that I just made, that involved no time in the kitchen at all for about four hours before people arrived: Poached whole salmon, poached the day before and well chilled. Mustard dill sauce. Roast tenderloin, again roasted the day before and chilled. Horseradish sauce. Cold rice salad, made and dressed the day before, with veggies and herbs added a few hours before the doorbell rang. Various other veggie salads, (not lettuce obviously) assembled several hours in advance. Sorbet and berries in chocolate cups for dessert. Bonus: no extra heat in the apt from using the oven. (We're having a heat wave.)

you can impress your guests with your unique understanding of Classics (they're certainly already familiar with your awesome brain power) by serving them a http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Coena.html: in this case http://www.opendoorbooks.com/antiquarian/apicus.htm is the go-to http://www.archaeology.org/0111/abstracts/romans.html. some of that http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/historical/ant-rom-coll.html is really http://www.dl.ket.org/latin3/mores/food/cenbene.htm. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16439. Other recipes http://www.mccsc.edu/~blaw/Chapter_33.htm also interesting: http://www.livescience.com/history/ap_050525_pompeii.html. and remember you can always replace http://web.foodnetwork.com/food/web/encyclopedia/termdetail/0,7770,4219,00.html with a nice bottle of http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:LtvCq4G8uiYJ:216.110.187.77/food/ancient_cooking/garum.html+garum+nam.pla&hl=en&client=safari -- nobody will note the difference for something less pretentious, you can also go the http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802086578/102-6063017-5694538?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance, that always works.

I find http://www.cooksillustrated.com/ to be the single most useful resource for practical recipes. The food is a bit homely, but the recipes work and are geared for simplicity.

That sounds great dersins. Thanks for making the effort to write it out.

dersins: can you paste it here anyways?

I also have a great recipe for beef stew cooked in a pumpkin, which is also much more delicious and impressive-looking than the amount of work would seem to warrant. Happy to provide that one, as well, if you want.