If I Promise to Cook Less, Will You Come Over More?
A Proposal, Plus Actionable Menus
We got carried away, every one of us, foodies who mean well. It wasn’t that we were competitive, bent on showing each other up; generous rather, delighting in reciprocation with others who appreciate the care that goes into a good home-cooked meal. We’re like knives that keep each other sharp.
But it has been a minute since we got together, and I think I know why. We can’t just meet for pizza, can we, even homemade. We feel the need to forage/ferment/smoke something over oak planks. When dinner is finally served, we’ve lost track of how many corks have been pulled; conversation turns boozy. Six hours after arriving, guests head home, leaving hosts with mountains of dishes to tackle and a slight hangover the next morning. Maybe that’s why we don’t do it more often.
I’d like to change things up with an experiment, not so much in restraint, as structure. And this is not just because the price of groceries has risen 25% in the past four years. It’s because I see people less often than I did before 2020. We’re all working twice as hard for half as much. And we’re the lucky ones. But that’s no excuse.
I’m thinking about the elegance of a 3-course prix-fixe menu, the kind you find in French brasseries. What if I applied that menu structure to entertaining at home. There can be something magical about the pressure applied by form; when a poet writes using the sonnet structure, for example, innovation can ensue.
What if I approached entertaining like a restaurateur who had to turn a table? Terrible? It’s not that I want to rush, just tighten things up a bit. Imagine starting with a half-glass of sparkling wine and a dish of almonds. There’s really no need for the bulging platters of charcuterie, deviled eggs, and hummus. We want to whet appetites with starters, not fill them.
Many times, I’ve observed that the less someone offers to eat, the more grateful people are—or at least the more verbally thankful, as if rushing in to prevent the host from embarrassment. This, of course, is not what I’m proposing. The dynamic amuses me, though. When there’s not quite enough food for everyone to have their fill, people make sure not to take that last spoonful, confirming the host’s conviction that “there’s always bound to be leftovers.”
I’ve gone to dinner parties where wealthy people serve very little. Once, a vintner new to the Napa Valley, who was looking for a winemaker, invited us to his home for his wife’s pumpkin soup. He raved about her pumpkin soup. After we arrived, they gave guests a tour of their massive, empty home, still filled with unpacked moving boxes. Then we headed to the kitchen, where there was a large pot of pumpkin soup. It was good pumpkin soup, but no salad, no bread. We stood and spooned soup carefully from our bowls, while our host kept opening one ostentatious Cabernet magnum after another. And, as if some spell had been cast on us all, everyone kept saying, “This is the most delicious pumpkin soup I’ve ever had” and “How on earth did you make this pumpkin soup?”
I like the pacing a menu gives, the sense that there’s a plan behind the evening created by a sane and generous mind with a clock, and you can sense it. We’ve all been to dinners that feel like kidnappings.
You know steak au poivre? Traditionally, it’s a filet mignon coated with coarsely cracked peppercorns that form a crust when the filet is seared. Once, I was served an enormous steak coated in an ant-black crust of finely ground pepper by the wife of a business associate. As I contemplated how I could possibly eat more than one bite, I looked out the dining room window and watched her son push my daughter off their backyard swing set (the children had eaten chicken nuggets earlier). I wanted to leave immediately, but somehow, we patched things up, dried tears, and I went back to contemplating the immoveable steak while she sat on my lap.
On the table, there was a clear glass vase of flowers with a large-eyed telescope goldfish wriggling its fins at the bottom. The vase magnified the goldfish, which made it seem larger than it was and enhanced the illusion that it was cruelly contained in a too-small vase for decorative purposes. That night, let me tell you, went on forever.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always loved reading menus. I read a thrifted copy of Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook the summer I accompanied our daughter to Ohio to begin her freshman year of college. That was 2021, and I had strong misgivings about her being so far from home in troubled times. Most parents dropped their kids and left, but I’d decided to stay a week. I found myself the sole inhabitant of a bed and breakfast. I figured out how to turn the air-conditioning off and lay in bed at night listening to cicadas and reading. I’ve always wanted to try one of her “Uncomplicated Menus,” though they seem pretty complicated. One delightful recipe calls for “3 lively lobsters,” which I think might be a typo, but it sounds much more poetic than 3 live lobsters.
Speaking of lobsters, my best cooking is always done when I’m NOT expecting guests. Consider Perla Meyers’ recipe for Lobster Valdosta. It begins like this: “There are many exciting ways to prepare lobsters, some quite easy once you get over your hesitation about splitting a live lobster. The fastest and easiest way: plunge a knife into the head between the eyes, then proceed with the recipe.”
I have not yet decided whether or not I’m capable of pulling this off, but I can tell you one thing for sure: I would never murder a lobster right before a dinner party. Too stressful! This is something I would only attempt in a relaxed state, standing in the kitchen in my sock feet, unconcerned about the cleanliness of my house. Some of my friends have cleaning services, but I don’t. I know my limits: I can cook an exceptional meal; or I can have an exceptionally clean house; or I can be rested, presentable, and excited to converse. But not all three at once.
Being welcomed into someone’s home is a small miracle. Entertaining isn’t easy. Though years ago, when Kristof was a young winemaker at Gargiulo Vineyards, he was a guest on several episodes of Chef Michael Chiarello’s cooking show, “Easy Entertaining,” since they used the winery as the set for filming. (Season 1, Episode 4, “Seafood Boil,” comes to mind, as baby Pella made a guest appearance.) I wasn’t in a lot of episodes, since we didn’t have a babysitter. Once, my mother was in town, so I was a guest on the Holiday Dinner episode. I remember sitting and drinking wine for hours in the hot sun, waiting for production to work through glitches. We were all sunburned, sweaty, and dehydrated by the time filming began.
The idea was, we weren’t actors, just regular people at casual wine country dinner parties. I love the casualness concept. But is there anything more awkward than being filmed while eating and drinking? At least, back then, we weren’t ready with our selfies, nor were we media-aware like kids now, who know their angles and good sides. And the unrehearsed conversation! We mostly said, “This is SO delicious” over and over again, as getting chemistry going with the host was not easy.
What I mean by actionable menus: They have to be in season. Fresh. Not too tricky. Doable. Nothing arcane. Nothing too expensive, no truffles. And only 3 recipes per menu.
So, here’s what I’m thinking: Dinner is served promptly, and the first course, plated up, is zucchini soup drizzled with basil oil, paired with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Not everyone knows what to make of soup, but I do. Made with homemade stock, it’s liquid gold. Some people will drain the bowl unawares, caught up in conversation, others push it around with a spoon.
The second course? Baked tomatoes, stuffed with pork breakfast sausage, mixed with fresh tarragon, breadcrumbs, and sauteed, chopped mushrooms. What do I serve it with? Toasted, buttered, parsleyed bread. This is the kind of solid specialty you want to have in your repertoire; you could build the reputation of a café around it. I’ve been making it for 20 years. I remember bringing it to new mothers, who felt enriched by it, and whose children now drink wine.
Dessert? We’re not big on sweets. I guess it’s the winemakers’ palate, developed over decades, which always prefers sour to sweet. Most desserts make me cringe, and the only reason we bake in our household is so that we can have the occasional cookie with less sugar and more sea salt than one generally finds. But I like the way a little sweetness signifies the winding down of our dinner.
Let’s macerate strawberries with a sprinkle of sugar, orange juice, and liqueur and serve with a dollop of whipped cream mixed with crème fraiche: case in point of something very simple that feels special. Here, I’ll pour you a thimble full of Tokaji. Let’s sit in the garden while there’s still light. While we can.
Will it work? It’s worth a try. Below are actionable menus that I’ve cooked and served, with more to follow.
Reconstructed Chicken Parm Blanca is Sauvignon Blanc’s soulmate. To make this dish, pan fry lightly-breaded chicken cutlets in clarified butter and olive oil. Remove to a plate. Toss a handful of cherry tomatoes in the pan and cook two minutes. Add a cup of cream and cook for two minutes. Remove tomatoes to the plate with the chicken. Add chopped chives and tarragon to the pan sauce, then spoon over the dish. Add a sprinkle of grated parmesan. I added fennel flowers from the backyard plant. The zippy wine cuts through the cream with a citrus edge, yet marries with the sweetness of the herbs and tomatoes.
There’s nothing like the crunch of a chilled iceberg wedge, in this case thickly spread with homemade green goddess dressing and sprinkled with crisp bacon, green onion, and radishes. Yes, you really should drink a glass of Sauvignon Blanc with the salad and a glass of Cabernet with the burger.
Sauvignon Blanc pairs beautifully with Mexican cuisine, the pure, salty, limey crispness of the wine amplifying the flavors of fresh seafood and poblano pepper like a squeeze of lime juice.
We grilled our whole chicken slow and low on indirect heat for 75 minutes, propped on a can of Chardonnay. Kristof sprinkled the chicken with Parmesan and lemon, harmonizing it with the asparagus salad, which also got a squeeze of lemon juice. When we’re in Sonoma, we love to visit La Michoacana Natural Ice Cream for paletas, but you can make your own, too. My buttermilk and roasted apricot paleta is decidedly for an adult palate, because it’s tangy, refreshing, and not very sweet. I roasted the halved apricots with hot honey and sprinkled the fruit with sea salt, so the flavor is punched-up.
Ice cream popsicles for adults? Yes! Paletas on a summer evening make a great opportunity to move away from the dinner table and go for a walk or sit by an outdoor fire. I’ve become convinced that dessert is a natural transition that should mark the end of wine drinking and prepare guests to go home. Every great host will keep their guests’ glasses full during dinner but will also know when it’s time to stop opening bottles. Knowing how to do this, as well as how to be a good guest, is part of the art of gracious living.
Some Thoughts on No-Recipe Desserts and Dessert Wines
If the purpose of serving dessert when hosting guests is to bring the evening to a close and prepare to send them off, happy, fulfilled, and feeling that they have enjoyed a harmonious arc with a beginning, middle, and end, a sort of culinary and conversational short story, then why not consider something effortless: a plate of sliced apples, pears, cheese, and nuts. Maybe with a glass of Sherry.
I am not a fan of dessert wines in general, and I have neither the time, money, or inclination to go down a rabbit hole educating myself about them, and yet I can’t let go the idea that a miniature glass of something sweet could signal the last sip of alcohol — and open up interesting pairings.
A sommelier once told me that ice wine and chocolate are an intense match, and while the thought sets my teeth on edge, I’d be up for trying it.
Karen MacNeil has written about a perfect dessert pairing: demi-sec Champagne and shortbread cookies. Just imagine how the crisp, crunch of the cookie mirrors the tactile bubbles of the wine. I don’t think adding fresh or dried fruit to the plate would be gilding the lily.
I’ve never seen someone pair a salad with dessert wine, but I can imagine a glass of something sweet with a warm fig and goat cheese salad to end the night.
No-recipe desserts open up more possibilities in menu planning, allowing the cook to spend time on an additional vegetable or side dish recipe.
An Essay Because of Fried Chicken
Southside Napa is a breakfast and lunch cafe that serves fried chicken to-go every Friday. Kristof is allergic to the egg whites in the batter, but if he’s out of town, I’ll pick up a bucket and invite the neighbors over for fried chicken Friday. The chicken, sprinkled with sea salt flakes and nestled with fresh thyme and fried lemon slices, is wonderful and even better with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
Many people love to serve fried chicken with sparkling wine, but Sauvignon Blanc should be in the running, because the bright citrus flavors balance the crisp, salty chicken coating and creamy mayonnaise in a side like potato salad and harmonize with the squeeze of lemon.
My homemade potato salad is case in point of simple ingredients and careful technique producing something so delicious, you can’t buy it anywhere. I cooked the potatoes, along with a lemon wedge and a couple garlic cloves, in my Instant Pot pressure cooker for 3 minutes, then placed them in a bowl with chopped onions to cool in the fridge. This step is key, as you want the potatoes to remain toothsome, not soggy, and you want the sauce to coat them, rather than be absorbed. The sauce is simple: mayonnaise, the soft garlic cloves, powdered mustard, salt & pepper, bacon, and a spoonful of crème fraîche (one of my staples.) Bad potato salad, lumpen and mushy, sitting in a grocery store deli case, makes me sad, because just a little effort gives you something transcendent. And healthy!
One of the main reasons I prefer cooking at home is that I can determine the type of fat that I use; for example, I can use mayonnaise made with olive or avocado oil. I think by now, most people know that industrial seed oils, safflower and canola and whatever else the government industrial complex has been pushing on us as “healthy” because it makes profits at the industrial scale, cause premature oxidation, aging, and metabolic syndromes. Mary Enig PhD wrote masterfully on the subject, and the classic cookbook Nourishing Traditions is wonderful on the idea that humans have developed appetites based on millenia of hard-earned wisdom that should not be lightly tampered with. I don’t mind deep-frying at home, messy as it is, because I can use traditional fats like duck fat and lard that have nourished human beings for millenia and made us physically and mentally strong.
When someone like Bill Gates buys up farmland and leaves it fallow, then invests in novel technologies like lab-grown meat that take far more energy to produce than grass-fed beef, I’m suspicious. Milk made from fly larvae is pretty new and untested in human history, so who knows its long-term impact on human health.
I don’t buy the idea that livestock and farming should be discontinued because they significantly contribute to global warming. Want to know a much worse culprit? Digital technology—all those air-conditioned server farms owned by Google and Amazon. No one wants to talk about that, do they. Digital technology is a luxury, and I think everyone should voluntarily get rid of their Facebook accounts before they give up on eating meat. You know what else contributes to global warming? War. I’m suspicious when the same elites pushing bug milk advocate for a state of perpetual war, when most people want peace and prosperity.
I’m not against technology when it is used for human flourishing, but before we cut off all fertilizer manufacturing and decare farming bad for the planet, and start ripping out vineyards, let’s consider a moratorium on space satellites, which use far more energy and only contribute to the digital control grid. I’m almost 55 years old now, and I’ve got some life perspective. I remember life in the 1980s. I sometimes feel like I’ve woken up in a bad B-movie where aliens are trying to terraform the planet by convincing us that carbon is inherently bad but silicon is good (why?), and carbon-based life forms like humans are also bad, so we should give up our life force energy, roll over, and die. No, thanks.
Good food, delicious food, sends the opposite message: human happiness and thriving. Health and fertility. Growing, cooking, serving, and eating good food is ultimately a subversive act in societies where systems of control depend on limiting human potential through manufactured war, poverty, illness, and starvation.
The grapefruit, watercress, and carrot salad is something I would serve for dessert without hesitation because it’s a refreshing and satisfying way to end a meal. You could also serve it alongside the fried chicken and potato salad. The recipe comes from Jane Coxwell’s book Fresh, Happy, Tasty. She writes this: “This salad is happiness in a bowl! Eating it instantly makes me feel alive and well. The juicy grapefruit, crisp carrots, and peppery watercress matched with the bold cilantro and creamy pistachio is exciting eating.” Indeed.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s books rocked my world by showing me that vegetables can be prepared in a way that makes them the most exciting dish on your menu. I daydream about his salads. The green bean and tahini salad here is adapted from his book Plenty More. The sauce, made of tahini paste, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, garlic, maple syrup, and salt, is so mouthwatering and easy to prepare, I’ll use it to sauce and dip all kinds of garden vegetables this summer.
I love throwing a good pork chop on the grill, but lately I’ve been concerned about the use of mRNA products like SEQUIVITY in commercial pork, so I signed up for a monthly box of heritage pork from a local farmer who doesn’t use it on his hogs. Honestly, about time I did so! No one knows how mRNA products in the food system will affect human health, if at all, but if I’ve learned one thing over the past few years, it’s that I refuse to be a lab rat, while most people don’t mind being lab rats, and a few people out there love being lab rats. Seven Sons Farms published a thoughtful blog piece on the subject for anyone interested, as did Brownstone Institute.
The Chocolate Fudge Avocado Cake pictured is from a recipe I tore out of a magazine years ago, from an avocado producer. I freaking love this kind of thing. The cake calls for 3 avocados, a cup of honey, a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder, a cup of almond flour, etc. and tastes like the most decadent flourless chocolate cake you’ve ever eaten. The frosting is better than any ganache I’ve tasted, and it’s made of 2 avocados, blended with honey, cocoa powder, and coconut oil. Eating this kind of dessert is like investing in good skin, a humming brain, and a happy mood because of the healthy fat.
This funny but tasty meal had a logic to it: on a hot day, Kristof decided to fire up the wood-burning ceramic oven outdoors to help keep the house cool. It made sense to cook more than one dish (both pizzas and salmon) using the same heat source. Restaurants may have convection ovens, deep fryers, wood-fired pizza ovens, steamers, and more going at the same time, so you can order steamed bao buns and fritto misto and fire-roasted pork, but for a home cook, it makes sense to think ahead and minimize cooking methods. My beet salad recipe, as an example, called for roasting the beets in a hot oven for 45 minutes, which would have been a bad idea. I could have used the outdoor pizza oven to roast them, but I used my Instant Pot instead. Garden vegetables have a best friend in pressure cooking. I peeled the beets and popped them in the Instant Pot for 4 minutes. The house stayed cool.
As I’ve mentioned, I don’t love deep frying, but I don’t mind it, either, since I can use healthy, ancestral fats to fry instead of cheap, commercial vegetable oils that cause the body oxidative stress. Deep frying is a good tool for the home cook because it offers variety. Just when I’m fatigued by my garden’s overabundance of zucchini, I remember the joys of crisp, crunchy zucchini fritto misto. It took me awhile to figure out that I could strain the cooled oil into a Mason jar and used it repeatedly, as long as the foods I cooked were neutral (not fish) and the batter or breading hadn’t scorched. My oil jar is something of a solera, mixing last night’s olive oil with last month’s coconut oil, but it works. In the case of the fish taco dinner, however, I fried the churros fist and tossed the oil after frying the fish.
The goat cheese recipe is my adaptation of Goat Cheese with Chile Morita and Piloncillo Sauce by Liberty Bar in Texas. You can find the recipe all over the internet. I’ve been making it for 25 years, and it’s just the sort of fusion cooking a home cook likes. Goat cheese and tortilla chips? I’ve got both on hand most days, and the chipotle chile caramel is also delicious on Mexican vanilla ice cream. The recipe brings me back to a specific place and time, Napa in 1999, when I was cooking from the pages of Gourmet like my life depended on it.
Downtown Napa in 1999 was seedy, with few fine dining restaurants and many homeless encampments where Copia and the historic Napa Mill on the riverfront are now. (These encampments keep moving further away from downtown, along the Napa River.) The tenor of Downtown was captured for me by the Fagiani Bar, which locked its doors one night in 1974 after a murder and never reopened, all the glasses and bottles left as they were on the bar, so that you could peer through the grimy octagonal windows in their Art Moderne tile facade at the macabre mise en scene, like Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, which became a symbol of Old Napa’s reticence to develop.
Kristof and I were hitting some milestones, as we’d turned 30, celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary, and bought our first home, a 900-square-foot cottage on the East Side, the mortgage for which we struggled to afford. Kristof was Associate Winemaker and GM at Saddleback Cellars in Oakville, and I had a consulting job in the IT department at GAP, Inc. headquarters in San Francisco, managing a database of all software programs used in the company and whether or not they were Y2K compliant, due to concerns that the digital grid would implode when the calendar changed from 1999 to 2000. In those days, no one worked from home, so my commute was sometimes four hours a day. If you’d asked, neither one of us would have said we were exactly happy, but we were moving slowly and steadily toward a meaningful life, without being fully aware of it.
Kristof worked 12-hour days, six days a week, and on Sundays, he would take to the couch with a stack of newspapers to recharge. And I would cook, choosing a challenging editorial spread from Gourmet or (in the case of the Goat Cheese with Chile Morita Sauce) the feature where people requested recipes from restaurants. One night I served a multi-course Greek meal from one of those glossy editorial spreads that looks deceptively easy but takes six hours for a home cook to prepare and uses up a whole litre of olive oil. Oh well, I thought (fat-free cooking was still the ideal back then), I guess I’m a rebel and a sinner, but what can I do about it? We had a guest over for dinner, someone in wine sales, who mostly talked about her passion for running marathons, as well as her achilles tendon injuries, and who picked at my feta-stuffed peppers.
That’s when I understood that I cooked for my own pleasure, primarily, and that the reason I did so was the drive to create: it made me happy to create something whole and beautiful and new from scratch where before there was nothing.
During that period of time, when I cooked as a means of creative survival and (naturally) invited friends to share dinner, I bought Letitia Baldridge’s Complete Guide to the New Manners. Initially, I wanted to make sure that my table settings were correct, with the white wine glass on the far right, then the red, then the water glass. I became enamoured of all the accoutrements of formal entertaining (though we were distinctly informal), the name cards, correspondence cards, and menus. I would print out little menu cards for each place setting, some of which I still have. Eventually, I read the book cover to cover.
What I didn’t expect, in learning about etiquette (which is really about boundaries, clarity, communication, and empathy), is that it would have a protective quality for us in the wine industry; paradoxically, wineries, despite their emphasis on hospitality and their sumptuous wine dinners, can be some of the worst offenders when it comes to treating people properly. In the early years, I would sometimes be invited as a guest to a winery dinner, only to be told at the event that I was expected to work (for free) and that I needed to pour wine (though I was not an employee and had no training; this was decades before the state’s ServSafe alcohol training requirement) or that I needed to help stack chairs in my pretty dress and spike heels, which kept sinking into the sod.
As Kristof progressed in his career as a winemaker, there were more (and fancier) dinners, and I was invited to join him and to make conversation with guests who ranged from avid wine collectors to celebrities. After dinner, he might be expected to stay until the early hours of morning enjoying Port and cigars, but I became notorious for politely collecting him and heading home after dessert. Often, we were the first to leave, giving guests their cue. I’m not sure it was the best move for his career, but it made us happier and healthier, I think, in the long run.
The fascinating thing about etiquette is that wealth, education, and prestige don’t guarantee good behavior; some of the ugliest gaffes I’ve seen were made by wealthy people who didn’t know how to behave well and who felt entitled. Some day I’ll write more about the things I’ve seen, the smashed dinner plates and manicured women in designer fashion who suddenly seem ugly when they talk about being hungover and leave little mounds of trash on the table for others to clean up.
I almost miss wine dinners and harvest parties now that we infrequently attend them, though at the time I dreaded making conversation with strangers. Recently, I was venting about how anachronistic the demands on my time had been as the unpaid wife of a winemaker who was expected to attend events. Then Kristof explained to me that he’d fought for me to be there, as his wife, simply because he wanted to spend time with me. I was humbled.
The starter here is very rich, a pie with new potatoes lining the crust, which supports a mixture of goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and olives. I sliced it very thin and served it with lightly dressed greens.
My favorite way to roast a chicken is to place the bird directly on top of thick slices of country bread, so that they absorb all of the savory juices and fat and transform into a heavenly melange of almost caramelized toast and soft, gravy-scented middle. I roasted the chicken, seasoned with herbes de Provence and olive oil, in a very hot oven (450 degrees F) for 30 minutes, turned the chicken over and roasted another 20 minutes, then took it out and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, I made a pesto with fresh black figs by blending 1/2 cup almonds, 1/2 cup pine nuts, 2 garlic cloves, 1/4 tsp. sea salt, 3 T. sherry vinegar, 1 T. sherry, 1 T. honey, 1/4 tsp. vanilla, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan. I then mixed in roughly chopped figs, about 12, along with lemon zest and a handful of fresh herbs.
I served slices of chicken atop toasty bread, with the fig pesto on the side. The flavors were layered, subtle, and deeply satisfying, and the whole reason I bring this recipe up is that it was a dish that cried out for a crisp, minerally Chardonnay like none other. I could weep thinking of the Chardonnays Kristof made in the past (the tastes of which still reside in my taste memory). How I miss them! I wish he was currently making Chardonnay and Pinot Noir; it’s a crime he’s not.