My friend Heather threw a comfort food dinner party, which meant lots of dips and spreads, mac n cheese, grilled meats, and s’mores… it generally involved a lot of eating with your hands. And eventually progressed to sipping wine by her amazing fire pit. Sign me up!

Dips and Spreads

We started with an array of finger foods that you could mix and match with all sorts of dips and spreads. Heather fried her awesome homemade seasoned tortilla chips. There was fire-roasted tomato hummus, tzatziki, and pesto guacamole.

I made baba ganoush (check out my Guessipe), with carrot sticks, cucumber rounds, and pita bread for dipping.

Raleigh made olive tapenade to spread on a nice crusty bread.

Anthony homemade a millet and wheat bread, which paired really nicely with Heather’s honey sage whipped butter.

Bites

Then we moved on to Heather’s luscious mac n cheese, filled with seafood and bacon, and topped with onion crisps – there’s not much that’s more comforting than that. How cute that we each got our own single-serve ramekin!

Because Heather is the ultimate dinner party hostess, she had a palate cleanser for us before we moved on to the next course. These beautiful bites of passion fruit panna cotta were to-die-for. I cleansed my palate twice!

Plates

Robert made his incredibly tender sous vide brisket, which he finishes under the broiled to give it a nice outside char.

Heather made these gorgeous sliders with truffle butter on pretzel bread. Take that, gourmet burger bistros!

Treats

For dessert, Heather had the ultimate comfort food treat – s’mores! But these were the fanciest s’mores I’ve ever had. Wafers and almond biscuits for the base; four chocolate options – milk, bacon, coconut, and sea salt; four marshmallow options – peppermint, lemon, chocolate chip, and coconut; and candied lemon for topping. Needless to say, the resulting s’mores were incredible. And sipping wine while roasting marshmallows by the fire was a perfect way to close out our comfort food night.