Winning dinner party, cooked by a character

Dinner was in danger. A crucial front burner wasn't working, the meat thermometer drew a blank, the skillets wouldn't fit in the oven as planned, and a pot holder caught fire.

But as far as Karyn Scher knew, her prize dinner party was proceeding according to plan.

Indeed, it was a prize - she'd bid hundreds of dollars for the dinner at a silent auction in the fall to benefit First Person Arts, a Philadelphia not-for-profit that celebrates the many forms of storytelling.

Now Scher, a clinical psychologist, and her husband, Eddie Ohlbaum, a Temple University law professor, sat at either end of the dining room table in their Penn Valley home, entertaining 10 friends and feeling quasi-confident that calamity would not strike their kitchen.

They'd thought through potential problems: locking up their 18-year-old cat, who normally spends her days and nights sitting in the kitchen sink; hiring someone to do the dishes; scrutinizing the menu for allergens.

After relaxing with drinks (Tom Collinses made with Meyer lemon) and appetizers (fried plantains in the living room), guests sat down to apple Thai squash bisque; chile and garlic shrimp stir-fry (see recipe) over caramelized fennel and Vidalia onion (see recipe); pan-roasted free-range airline chicken with Asian spices (see recipe); lemongrass and ginger potato salad, garlicky sesame-cured broccoli, and then, for dessert, bittersweet chocolate peppermint cookies and banana sorbet made with goat yogurt and ricotta.

Of course, what can go wrong, will. The cat got out midway through the meal, and the hired help canceled.

In the end, the meal won raves and laughter resounded from the dining room by way of a pass-through to the kitchen, reassuring the cook.

And, by the way, this story is really about the cook, Ed Tettemer.

At 55, Tettemer is a marketing consultant whose client roster includes the Mural Arts Program, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Department of Tourism. As part of the tourism mission, Tettemer crisscrossed Pennsylvania, mapping attractions and eateries far from the turnpike's mundane path and created a chronicle of those joints in a book and blog, the Shunpiker's Guide (shunpikersguide.blogspot.com).