Fondue Party Page 2

Also worth remembering is that if there are vegetarians amongst your guests, they may not appreciate meat/ fish/ chicken being cooked in the same pot they they're to eat their food from.

Finally, although wine is generally used to make a cheese fondue, the heat of the fondue will burn off the alcohol content of the wine, and leave you with only the flavour, so there's no need to worry about your guests driving home safely after your cheese fondue. (Unless, of course, they've enjoyed a few too many glasses while they've been eating!)

For the meat fondues, why don't you give your guests some variety by preparing one broth pot and one oil pot? You will need to have both pots over a very high heat, and the meat/ fish/ seafood you dip into the pots will need to have been very finely sliced. (Your butcher will be happy to do this for you.) To cater for vegetarians, you could keep one pot for just vegetables and tofu, and the other strictly for meat. Some ideas for dipping items are: tofu, grilled capsicum and zucchini, beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, crab meat, fish, button mushrooms, broccoli & cauliflower florets.

Whenever we host a fondue party, or even just when we're having a family fondue meal at home, we put a few little dishes around on the table containing various condiments, such as tartare sauce, horseradish, barbeque sauce, mustard, applesauce, soy sauce, sesame seeds etc. Select a few of your own favourites and suggest to your guests that once they've cooked their meat (or seafood, chicken etc), that they then dip it in one of your condiments, and then into the sesame seeds, for example. Yum!!

Saving the best for last: DESSERT! There are dozens of delicious and delectable dessert fondues, usually chocolate or chocolate based, and sometimes spiced up with a small splash of liqueur (for example, cointreau gives a lovely subtle orange flavour, while kahlua makes for a slight coffee flavour). These fantastic fondues finish off an evening perfectly, and what you can dip into them is limited only by your imagination. Some of our personal favourites include: fresh strawberries, cubed day-old cake, cherries, macadamia nuts, pineapple chunks, marshmallows, grapes, cookies, slices of banana, hazelnuts, apple slices, pretzels, dried apricots, meringue, rindless orange wedges, etc. Again, we like to have a few little dishes of "extras" on the table, such as whipped cream, crushed nuts, and dessicated coconut.

And just to finish off, why don't you make a compilation CD or two of your favourite dinner music so that you don't have to get up to change the music while you're eating? Also, what about burning a few candles and scattering them around the room and just use the light from a lamp and your candles to light the room and add to the ambiance?