| Gourmet Game Night: Bite-Sized, Mess-Free Eating for Board-Game Parties, Bridge Clubs, Poker Nights, Book Groups, and More |  | Author: Cynthia Nims
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
List Price: $17.99
Buy New: $10.55
as of 9/7/2010 07:52 PDT details
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Seller: allnewbooks
Rating:  2 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 158008088X
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.812
EAN: 9781580080880
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Product Description
Have you ever accompanied an evening of game-playing with a bowl of salty chips or slabs of pizza? If so, you know that greasy fingers can be a distraction, with players interrupting the game to grab napkins or even lick their fingers—immediately before grabbing the communal spinner. Gourmet Game Night has the solution: instead of relying on conventional convenience snacks and standbys, you’ve got imaginative, homemade options; instead of greasy hands and game pieces, you’ve got mess-free, bite-sized snacks.
Cookbook writer, magazine contributor, and culinary blogger Cynthia Nims offers inventive alternatives that make hands-clean dining easy, including:
• Edible wrappers around savory centers (Shrimp Cakes in Shiso Leaves, page 66)
• Bite-sized versions of unwieldy classics for easy grabbing between moves (Caesar Dip with Big Croutons and Romaine, page 18)
• Edible bases to support tender ingredients (Tuna Tartare on Daikon Slices, page 58)
• Innovative mini containers such as shot glasses for liquid fare (Chilled Avocado Soup with Roasted Poblano Cream, page 112)
• Neat sweet treats paired with gooey dippers (Brown Butter Pound Cake with Caramel Dip, page 34)
• And of course, party-friendly drinks poured by the pitcherful (Pomegranate-Mint Fizz, page 138)
Cynthia Nims’s creative and contemporary recipes will liven up any event where free hands are of the essence, whether you’re gathering friends for a poker night, rolling those dice for a board-game party, spicing up your bridge club, planning a family Scrabble tournament, or impressing your book club or knitting group! Indeed, Gourmet Game Night proves that you don’t need a fancy night on the town to have fun; instead, gather your friends for satisfying small bites—and hopefully a winning streak—at home.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Are You Kidding Me? September 4, 2010
Mom of Sons (Buffalo, NY)
As the mom in a euchre, Catch Phrase, Bananagrams, Scrabble, Monopoly, poker, and etc. playing family, who loves to cook, I eagerly picked this book up. But the recipes are incredibly picky and tedious. It would take me longer to make some of them than to play the games they are intended to accompany.
There is "Crostini With Mushroom Tapenade," which calls for fresh wild mushrooms, dried wild mushrooms, capers, slicing and toasting baguettes, and...wait for it...FRIED CAPERS as a garnish.
Then there's Shrimp Cakes in Shisho Leaves; Nutella and Banana Gallettes (bake sugar cookies from scratch, then top with Nutella and freshly squeezed (of course) orange juice and banana slices, I'm guessing at the very last minute before serving, or those bananas will brown); Pickled Grape and Bleu Cheese Skewers which go together quickly not counting the time it takes to...yum...pickle the grapes.
There are many more extremely fussy recipes such as these, which require lots of time, not to mention trips to the grocery store for unusual ingredients.
Even the pizza recipe requires homemade dough (of course) CUT INTO TEENSY SQUARES and baked that way, THEN topped. Yikes. I love to cook, and I love appetizers and hors d'oeuvres, but this book left me completely cold. It seems like an effort to make things that are unusual and complicated (and time consuming) just for the sake of uniqueness, which is annoying on its own, but as food to accompany "games," it really struck me as odd.
Recommendation: I give this book a big miss.
 Delivers on its promise April 6, 2010
Sandor Weisz (Chicago, IL)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Gourmet Game Night hits dead-center at the cross-section of two of my very favorite things: game-playing and entertaining. My wife and I do a lot of both.
We cooked eight recipes out of the book, and they were all, without exception, delicious. Some certainly ranked higher than others, but I think more important is that none were duds. Our least favorite -- the artichoke-stuffed mushrooms -- were still tasty, and we all would have been happy to eat them had nothing else been available. But they held nothing to some of the more outstanding dishes that all had us going back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. Our favorites all offered interesting contrasts in flavors:
- A citrusy salmon poke, served in a bitter endive leaf
- A sweet/sour cherry chutney & cheddar bruschetta
- Grape tomatoes stuffed with a sesame-flavored edamame paste
None of the recipes are difficult, but they're also not quick. Many of the dishes involve roasting, or marination, or multiple parts. This is a good thing -- you're serving your guests quality goods. You should expect to spend some time in the apron here. (Though Nims makes special mention at the beginning of the dozen or so recipes that can be made on the quick.)
THE COOKBOOK
Nims adds a few subtle touches that go a long way toward helping your average cook. Two examples: 1) each recipe has a special instruction for how to double or halve, which is often not as simple as multiplying the ingredients, and 2) she tells you which parts can be made ahead of time without compromising the recipe. This last point is an important one. My one complaint about the book is that if you're making a lot of dishes at once -- which you will be, since each dish is small and going to serve less than a full meal's worth of food -- you'll be flipping back and forth a lot between pages. There's no easy way around this, short of binding the pages in a ringed binder. Thus, the tips about pre-cooking some ingredients should be heeded as much as possible.
THE EFFECTIVENESS
This is the crux of the issue. Quality cookbooks abound these days -- does Nims fulfill her mission of food that can be eaten tableside? By and large, the dishes we chose to cook suited gameplay very well, as soon as we found room at the table to put the platter (we have a fondness for playing component-heavy games). The shrimp cakes and salmon bites sat in finger-friendly leaves of lettuce. The bruschetta were easy to pick up and eat in one or two bites. One warning: Nims occasionally builds a dish around a particular piece of a party-friendly hardware, like single serving spoons, or shooter glasses for soup. It's often easy to work around these, just be aware. Or, if you're a frequent entertainer, invest in some; there is a list of retailers on the book's website.
BOTTOM LINE
Without question, Gourmet Game Night achieves what it sets out to do. I recommend the book for anyone who hosts game nights or is looking to start.
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