010: On Hosting

with bonus unsolicited advice

Yes those are paper plates—long story!

Friday

🍝Dinner: Creamy Cauliflower Pasta (recipe, Alison Roman)

Saturday

🍳Brunch: Eggs in Purgatory (no recipe, but I recommend this and this, both from Melissa Clark)

🍆Dinner: Eggplant Parm (recipe, Alison Roman)

🍏Dessert: Sticky Apple Cake (recipe, Alison Roman)

Sunday

🥚🌱Brunch: Savory Dutch Baby (recipe, Melissa Clark)

Note: This is a lot of Alison Roman and Melissa Clark—normally I switch it up more, but I gravitate toward both of their (generally fool-proof) recipes when I’m overwhelmed.

For someone who enjoys cooking as much as I do, I’ve regrettably never been a comfortable host—and I don’t think I get better as I improve my cooking skills. Hosting and cooking are entirely different animals. I don’t know how guests of mine have felt in the past—maybe it’s all in my head as I replay it later, in that self-flagellating way some of us do after socializing—but my suspicion is that my stress and excitement don’t make for relaxing and elegant times. This isn’t the kind of thing one gets feedback on in life, unless one does it professionally. My first job was as a busser at my dad’s restaurant in high school, and I was very bad at it. I once spilled an entire tray of water glasses on a guy. But I wasn’t only bad for being clumsy. I *think* I could be charming, but I never moved with calm and efficient competence in the role. I remember approaching tables at the wrong moments. I remember looks of annoyance on patrons’ faces as I attempted to clear a plate that still had food to be eaten on it. Things like that. Thank God this was pre-Yelp.

Apparently we remember negative events more vividly than happy ones, so perhaps there were more good days on the job than I recall. I do have many happy memories of hosting, but the difference is I am able to hold both the good and cringeworthy in my memory at once. I am not so overcome with shame as to allow the negative to crowd out everything else. Welcome to your thirties! Happily, I get more shamless as I age.

When I host I get so excited and nervous that I overthink recipes I’ve cooked before. I’ve had a tendency to cook from recipes that I’ve never made before (a rookie mistake that I continue to make). I sometimes clear food for dessert too quickly rather than letting people relax leisurely at the table after eating (a repeat of those restaurant days, perhaps). I cook better meals when it’s just me and Reed.

The other weekend we hosted a handful of friends at a relative’s home in a remote location. Whenever we’re invited I love taking ownership of the cooking, and am very bad at delegating. I don’t mind doing it alone, but people want to help and to be made to feel that they are contributing. I aspire to being a host that serenely assigns tasks to others while simultaneously preparing the meal seemingly undistracted. The difference this time was that I was doing it with an infant in tow. The planning and the shopping I did solo with the baby while my partner was working. I was weirdly nervous taking him to the grocery store for the first time. Many of the most mundane firsts as a parent are the scariest, I find. As soon as we arrived we began having fun though. He got a lot of attention—people love that red hair. And we ran into one of my dear former colleagues (shout out to LuAnn, who will never read this!), whom I had not seen since pre-pandemic. Regardless of the fun we had, it took me twice as long to shop. He was perfectly content strapped into that deeply uncomfortable cart, with the metal digging into his back (somehow I remember what it feels like to sit in a grocery cart)—I think all of the visual stimulation kept him distracted. Despite all of this going pretty smoothly, I shopped poorly. Reed said I didn’t buy enough snacks.

I got home and immediately started prepping the eggplant parm I planned to make that night, only to realize that I needed twice the amount of ingredients to accommodate the number of people. So I switched to Alison Roman’s creamy cauliflower pasta, which is always amazing. Except I forgot to add the cream and reduce the sauce BEFORE adding the pasta, and spent about 10 minutes removing each rigatoni to correct. The pasta should have starchy pasta water clinging to it when you drop it into the sauce. I added 1/4 cup to remedy it, but something is lost when pasta isn’t immediately incorporated into the sauce, I think. It wasn’t as good as usual, and we didn’t eat until after 9 o’clock.

Eggplant Parm

The following day, I fared better with Eggs in Purgatory at brunch and the eggplant parm for dinner. We procured more eggplant on a little trip to visit the town that inspired Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls (Washington, Connecticut, for those that want this information—worth a visit/adorable). I doubled the amount of pasta sauce I made the previous day, all the while making a seasonally appropriate apple cake. The cake came out looking glorious, but was dry and overbaked and somehow pretty bland. I have made this cake several times, so at first I had no idea what went wrong. Regardless of why, there is nothing worse than foisting a bad dessert on people.

Sticky Apple Cake

Luckily, I seemed to improve with each passing day. I killed it at brunch the Savory Dutch Baby. I added chopped dill, lemon verbena, and tons of good parm to the egg mixture just before popping it into the oven. Served with lemon and sriracha, it was delicious. It rose like crazy in the convection oven and I had the realization that everything had been a little overbaked all weekend because I didn’t know to adjust the cooking time for convection. Luckily the DB was still wonderful. Just extra puffy and a bit more browned than usual (which I enjoy). And then I knew what happened with that apple cake.

Dill & Lemon Verbena & Parmesan Dutch Baby

The moral of the story is, I’ll never be the effortless, carefree Nora Ephron character I aspire to, and that’s OK.

Even though no one has asked, here are some hosting tips from one who struggles (a.k.a. in a way the most qualified to give it):

• Learn how to delegate. Your guests want to be included and feel useful. I am very bad at this.

• Always have lots of high quality cheese and crackers on your list. Bonus for a bit of charcuterie and something salty like olives. That way people won’t go hungry when you don’t serve dinner until 9PM. 😏 For the record I did achieve this, despite Reed alleging that I didn’t buy enough snacks.

• Keep the snacks out and visible. When you take care of the shopping, your guests might not know that there are things to munch on, even if you tell them. If the chips sit on the counter people will eat them.

• Don’t apologize for your cooking. Acknowledging something constructive (“the cake seems a bit over baked!”) is ok—I am nothing if not self-aware—but don’t put anyone in a position of having to reassure you that your cooking is better than it is. You still got food on the table and that’s what matters (I say as someone who has attended dinner parties that didn’t ultimately involve a lot of food).

• Get to know your tools. If you’re cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen take a moment to research a thing before using it. You don’t want to overbake your cake like I did.

• Don’t rush. Don’t rush yourself while cooking, and don’t rush your guests to eat. Let yourself and others eat and enjoy leisurely.

While I have you—some recommendations:

• Womb House Books on Instagram and Etsy. My friend Jess, the owner of this shop, has impeccable taste and knowledge for books (both literarily [is this a word?] and aesthetically). My suggestion is to act fast. Things seem to sell out moments after she posts them to instagram. I recently nabbed an early edition of Edna O’Brien’s stories, and missed out on this and this. Devastating.

• Nerdette, a weekly podcast hosted by Greta Johnsen. This is one of the great OG podcasts, but I only recently began listening in earnest. Each episode Greta chats with two panelists (other media professionals) about timely topics of her choice (NASA’s postponed moon launch, a pumpkin growing contest, the delicious Don’t Worry Darling drama, etc), and then an interview takes up the second half. I’m suddenly addicted to it and now listening to old episodes while I wait. Greta also co-hosts the Official Game of Thrones Podcast, which I also recommend.

• A weekly bouquet of flowers. I highly recommend treating yourself to fresh-cut flowers once a week. I’ve been doing so ever since the Farmer’s Market began and it makes me and my space feel cared for. Zhoozhing is always a good idea (I guarantee you, something in your life needs zhoozhing). You’ll feel like you have your shit together, even if you don’t.

• The Olivia Wilde/Jason Sudeikis salad dressing drama, which came to the most delightful conclusion this week. If you have never read Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, pls remedy immediately (and watch the woefully underrated movie too). I might rewatch the movie tonight and reread the book this weekend—both of which I find myself doing annually.