by Kiria Pepe

Created on: August 31, 2009

How to plan a dessert menu? Well there are several ways to do this, if you are organizing a dinner party you have to consider the main dishes as well as your starters to the meal, if it's a grand affair, or if it's an informal dinner party.

You need to consider the likes and dislikes of your guests, as well as yourself. For the most part it would be assumed that you know your guests and their likes and dislikes to a degree anyway.

So let's start with a grand affair, which could be a special celebration like a birthday, a reunion, or something similar.

If you are starting with a fruit you might not want fruit within your desserts, or if you did you would want to choose different fruits as desserts, if you had pastry somewhere in your meal either to start or part of your main meal you wouldn't want a fruit pie or pastry within your desserts. What you need to do is find a real balance within the menu as a whole so that things are not repeated which will add too much bulk and make your guests feel bloated and too full before they even get to their dessert. Nearly everyone will look forward to the dessert so it's worth making the effort.

So let's try putting together a balanced menu here, I am going to start with a small salad of rocket leaves as my base for a seafood starter, a combination of shrimps, mussels and a smoked fish like mackerel that is flaked perhaps, over the top of the other fish, or you could have a Mediterranean fish compilation of squid, shrimps and clams, perhaps cooked ahead of time and marinated in olive oil and lemon juice with seasoning and always add garlic, which I always add in large chunks so that they are easy to discard before I serve up. Not everyone is enamored of it and while they might not mind a hint of garlic they wouldn't appreciate whole pieces of it on their plate. So we have our starter of rocket leaves, washed of course, as a bed for the seafood, spoon over the marinade, never waste it, and garnish with finely chopped parsley. No need to further season as the seasoning will have been done within the marinade. If your guests want to further season allow them to do that at the table by offering them salt and a pepper grinder which is always much nicer. Also offer plenty of fresh warmed bread, no butter as this will spoil the starter.

Now for the next course, since the first course has been quite light we can now afford to offer something a little more substantial, remember this is the second course of four, since it is a

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