Tom Douglas

Dinner #1/ by Kathleen Gibbons, Palace Line Cook

The Invitees:

a small collection of red wine guzzling close friends

The Menu:

marcona almonds and castelvetrano olives

crostini with balsamic caramelized onions and melty blue cheese

butter lettuce with chive and Dijon citronette, brown butter sage croutons

roasted Yukon potatoes with rosemary, broccoli with sea salt, and fresh lemon

seared flat iron steak, butter shallot-Merlot sauce

chocolate cake with mocha frosting

The End Result:

full and happy friends, a kitchen that looks like it’s been hit by a tornado (twice), good sleep

The Story:

I cook for a living.  I’m a professional cook by trade.  So after creating this simple dinner menu and collecting everything I would need in order to make it a reality, I gave myself a time frame…. start at this time, do this then and that later, shower, finish the cake, throw this in the oven, blah blah blah.  I thought it wouild only take two, MAYBE two and a half hours to complete everything with enough time to shower and be a relaxed hostess.  And then I started playing with the cat.  Watched a couple episodes of 30 Rock.  Had a one woman dance party.  Then looked at the clock and realized it was exactly three hours until my friends were to arrive.

I walked into the kitchen and realized I was starting to cook in a messy kitchen.  After frantically doing a couple sinks worth of dishes (by hand), I started baking cake layers.  I’ve made this cake a dozen times, and this time I decided to use the cake pans that belonged to my great grandmother, noticing that they were a little bit shallower than most other cake pans, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to put the pans on to one big sheet pan so that if/when the cake baked over, it wouldn’t spill over onto the floor of the oven: a good plan on my part- I ended up with two (totally delicious) layers drowning in a sea of moist baked cake overflowing onto the sheet pan.

I did all the choppy business: cutting croutons, crostini, broccoli, potatoes, shallots.  Toasted the croutons and the crostini and thought I was totally ahead of the game.  Onions were cooking slowly on the stove, cake frosting eventually finished whipping, buttery crostini were breaking apart in my mouth, music was blasting from the speakers.  I was realizing just how much I neeed to get done before 8:30, and while I thought I’d only been in the kitchen for about an hour, I’d turned to look at the clock to watch the numbers change to read 7:45.  Truthfully, I felt bad for the cat, watching me run around, busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, cursing and throwing dishes in the sink.  Everything got done just in time for the arrival of the guests.  I don’t know how, but it all got done.

I served everything family style, very casual with appetizers, standing around talking.  Everyone sat when I brought out the beef and vegetables.  I lit the dining room with candles and some dim lighting, a simple vase of flowers from the garden, white plates, plain silverware.  It was beautiful and relaxed. I watch shows about putting together “table-scapes” and it seems to draw attention away from the food and towards the enormous centerpiece made of flaked coconut, popsicle sticks, and gum wrappers.  It’s way too much work.

Conversation was lively, as it always is with this particular group of friends.  Ridiculous stories from our pasts, inside jokes, inappropriate comments, and honest pleasantries.  I was very happy with the way the evening turned out, I have some things I would do differently and some things I wouldn’t change.  I will share them:

-NEVER underestimate how much people can eat.  Always make more than you think you will need.  If you have a lot of good food leftover the day after a dinner party, bring it to work; your coworkers will love you. Chocolate cake made its way into Palace Kitchen the day after my party, and, needless to say, it was gone within the hour.

-NEVER say no to wine.  It’s a reflex to ask if you should bring anything to a dinner party and you want to tell your guests “of course not, I’m just excited to have you come over.” However, if your friend asks “Can I bring a bottle of wine?” YES! Always yes.  A glass of wine in your hand will calm you down when you’re freaking out about the sauce breaking or the steak overcooking.

-Give yourself plenty of time.  This is obvious.  I went into this thinking that since I could prep all this stuff in 45 minutes at work, it wouldn’t take much longer at home.  INCORRECT. Just cutting and choppping all the vegetables as soon as I got home from shopping would have saved me a lot of time later in the day.  Cook the cake 8 hours before people come over, not 3 hours before people come over.

This dinner party made me realize something that I’ve been thinking for a long time.  Having cake and coffee after dinner really does make you feel like a grown up.

It’ll go much smoother next time. Maybe.

April 27th, 2010