Suggestions for a Potluck Dish?

Have to take a potluck dish to an afternoon of live Irish music this Sunday. I usually take deviled eggs to a potluck 'cause just about everyone likes them... and because I'm not very imaginative. Hope you can give my imagination a boot.

Well, if you're looking for an appetizer-y thing, you might think about something like a white bean puree spiced up with whatever sounds good to you. I like to throw in smoked paprika. Add baguette or crackers and you're good to go.

Another FLDG favorite is gougeres. They're good hot or at room temp, so if you can't keep them hot it's not a problem.

Thanks, Mike, that's a good suggestion. It's going to be at the small local grange and I'm not sure how many electrical outlets they have for slow cookers and hot trays. I can make the gougeres the night before and freeze the extras!

Enjoy the music! Do you play?

Ahhh, I WISH! Just love to listen. It's toe-tappin' music.

Maybe a warming Irish Stew (prep beforehand, warm up on arrival)

As a good hearty side dish, Colcannon (cabbage & mashed potato) can do the job

I also recall seeing an interesting cake recipe (it might even have been on forumite Celia's site) for chocolate and Guinness cake.

regards

Ian

If you want to bring something in keeping with the music and Irish theme, all the following are fairly easy to do and transport.
Dublin coddle, sausage, bacon, potato casserole
Baked potted herrings (should be easy to get in Washington)
Boxty, potato griddle cakes
Hope you let us know what you chose to bring.

[Jenise]

Sounds like fun, Katie. There's an event up here about once a month that sounds similar that I've always meant to go to, but haven't yet. It's always tricky taking foods to potlucks, isn't it? We have a lot of them up here in my neighborhood, and the quality of what people bring is all over the map but skewed toward heavy fat and carbohydrate. As a consequence I usually end up making something in self defense that will ensure I end up having a healthy meal if I eat my own food! I've shown up with whole platters of steamed asparagus spears and tapenade dip and all manner of lettuce-y things, like 3" lengths of romaine lettuce that make like a taco shell in which a thick slice of rare grilled beef can sit with a little blue cheese and a drizzle of rosemary vinaigrette.

Oh, but here's an Irish idea, thinking about blue cheese: what about savory shortbreads? Little cheese cookies with, say, roquefort cheese and walnuts?

No earthly good for a potluck supper, but at a celtic music themed event at home I fed the masses with:

IRISH FLAG SOUP
Make three quantities of soup: one pot of pumpkin soup, one pot of potato soup, one pot of zucchini soup. Have all three soups very thick. To serve, pour a ladleful of each into the bowl. They don't run together, but sit side by side: a bowl of green, white and saffron soup, the colours of the Irish flag.

A bit of fun. But it doesn't work for "serve yourself".

The Irish music was outstanding... much better than we anticipated. Glad I didn't do anything fancy for the potluck. There were no outlets to plug into and it was all very informal with most people wearing jeans. It seems this grange building is almost 100 years old and very simply maintained. People and businesses volunteer to keep it going and updated.

I would have done the gougere but a fellow I've been tutoring on the computer expressed his thanks by bringing over a full size loaf of nut bread. It would be too much for us to eat so I took it along to the potluck and it went over very well.

I love these boys.

Sadly, Liam died in December.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSIozxB0rs