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I disagree with the water theory. The best pizza I have had outside of NYC was in North Carolina - two brothers who moved down from the bronx to open up a place. It's how you make it as well as the ingredients.

Thanks for everyone!! So I went shopping yesterday at Guido's, an amazing marketplace. Here's the tentative menu:

Spinach salad with Roquefort, glazed walnuts, cranberries
Asparagus Gruyere Tart
Roasted new potatoes with rosemary
Filet mignon with truffled mushroom ragout
Giant apple pie with ice cream
5 bottles of wine
1 bottle of Jameson

We bought the best ingredients we could get and it all added up to a whopping....

$290!!

Lots of cooking to do tonight and I'll report on it tomorrow! Thanks again for everyone's suggestions, I knew I could count on SE posters!

@Jenn Sit......it's Thursday - the big dinner day! You HAVE to let us know your entire menu, Campbell's Soup to Planter's Nuts, so to speak. ;-)

It's sooo easy to spend $300 on a great dinner. Of course, if you have limited access to ingredients then it'll be a little more difficult. A great whiskey will eat up a big chunk of money. If I were you, I'd get to the store early the day before your dinner and see what was available. Pick the best protiens, veggies, etc. and then go home and find your recipes. Then I'd go back to the store for whatever you need to complete the meal. Coook ahead where you can and finish the rest that night.

If he likes whiskey, you could pair each course with a different whiskey. That'd easily take up a huge chunk of the budget and provide a "take away" for each guest (what's left in the bottles). Maybe, appetizer, first + whiskey, main + whiskey, and dessert + whiskey. Would be memorable.

A chef friend and his wife had us and another couple over for dinner on Saturday--eight courses. We provided wine.

Hors d' oeuvres: BLT-stuffed cherry tomatoes; aged cheddar with pistachio; salmon and cucumber on crostini.

First: Steamed asparagus tips with hollandaise;
Second: Roast chicken salad on red pepper coulis, topped with Asian slaw (the dressing on which may have been the best thing I've ever tasted);
Third: Carrot ginger soup poured from individual boats at the table into bowls of shredded baby rainbow carrots, topped with parsley gremolata;
Fourth: Seared diver scallop topped with shrimp and pancetta in a vanilla beurre blanc;
Fifth: Meyer lemon granita;
Sixth: Filet with wild mushrooms, served on a potato cake (at this point, I was too drunk to remember exactly what else was in the potato cake) with sauteed swiss chard and raisins;
Seventh: Butter lettuce, simply dressed, served with goat cheese and orange marmalade crostini;
Eighth: Chocolate-mint mousse in tuile cups.

We went through five bottles: Lockwood Reserve Merlot; J. Lohr Wildflower; Rombauer Chardonnay; Paraiso Late Harvest Pinot and something else that I was too drunk to remember. The company was excellent, the food was even better. They must have spent a small fortune, and our friends made it look effortless.

I'd do a cheese course, a salad, maybe a seafood appetizer (mussels?), a red meat main and an excellent dessert. And booze. Lots of booze.

You could sweeten kefir with a little jam, honey, or agave and run it through an ice cream maker for a frozen treat.

Are you advised to eat your kefir raw? If you are, you could blend it with herbs and vegetables for cold soups, flavor it for salad dressing, or blend it with chickpeas for a hummus-like dip.
If not, you could bake it into breads, use it in a meat or vegetable braise, or stirred into a hot soup.

Yay, kefir! I love the stuff. I eat it plain with a little sugar or honey, or pour it over thick yogurt. Try it with cereal or granola. Cucumber/tomato/radish salad with kefir dressing would be good, too.

Russian lore says that kefir is very good for digestion (which I think is backed up by medical research, hence your doctor's advice.)

yulinka
Yulinka Cooks

I'd go simple, local and seasonal. A nice roast chicken, a fantastic salad of baby greens, honey vinegarette, toasted walnuts, pear and gorgonzola. Some high quality bread, you can make a great rosemary, olive oil and salt focaccia. For sides I'd make sauteed green beans with olive oil, lemon zest, salt and pepper and maybe some carrots roasted in orange jiuce and cumin. Top it off with chocolate chip cookies a trifle or cake (all homemade of course) and some old world red wine. Coffee and Port for dessert. Lots of candle light and soft music, maybe dine outside. My idea of bliss. I bet you'd even have money left over!

Another way to look at this is to break down the courses and what you want to spend for each ... for example:

Starter, Cocktail/Wine/beer, + 2 starters + nibbles @ $15.00 each = $45
First Course, salad w/wine/beer/sparking water @10.00 each = $30
Main Course, meat/fish, veggie, starch w/wine @ $30.00 each = $90
Desert w/liquer or coffee/tea @ 15.00 each = $45
Total so far is $210.00

With $30 per person for dinner - I'd go for that standing rib roast with lobster tails!

Jenn,
let us know what you end up cooking, ok? VicariousEating-R-Us, you know....

My idea of decadence: lobsters, apple smoked bacon, steelhead trout caviar, foie gras, morels, prime filet, ramps, baby greens... Call me a boring classicist but here's roughly what I would do: bring a pot of court bouillon up to a boil. Drop the lobsters in, turn off the heat. Allow to steep for 3 minutes. Remove the lobsters and break them down. Dice the bacon, render it gently till crisp but do not allow to burn. Reserve bacon, strain rendered fat and return to a clean pan. Sauté the lobster meat lightly in rendered bacon fat. Serve over the greens, which have been lightly dressed with good olive oil and 25 year old balsamic. Sprinkle with crumbled bacon and minced dill. The meats, mushrooms and ramps should be simply seared with sea salt and ground sichuan and black pepper corn, and a little butter and finely minced shallot for the veggies. Reserve all items and keep warm, deglaze the pans with some cognac and stock, preferably home made mushroom or veal stock. Strain. Reduce slightly, mount with cubes of cold french butter. Place the ramps and mushrooms on warm plates. Top with steak and foie. Sauce plates. Spoon caviar on thinly sliced black bread, top with white chocolate shavings, serve with champagne. Serve lobster salad with a pouilly fumé. Serve steaks with a blended wine such as a Ridge Lytton Springs, Cain nv5, or a Chateau-Neuf-du-Pape. For dessert, I would suggest a pear sorbet, hazlenut ice cream, raspberries, belgian butter waffle cookie, an espresso and a snifter of cognac, armagnac or maybe some marc. Hmmmm. You may need more than $300 though....