Ode to the Dinner Party, and a Beautiful Citrus Dessert

My formative cooking years were overly influenced by Gourmet magazine, and I’m not gonna lie, it made me a little psycho. My idea of a good time consisted of slaving over a hot stove and hours of chopping and at least one panicked last-minute run to the grocery store and dirtying every single pan in the house. I had to have dinner parties, and the menu had to include multiple (complicated) courses and I had to use the good china – which naturally would have to be hand-washed – and so on. It was A Big Deal. It was exhausting. It was a huge mess. I adored it.

I spent some time thinking about why exactly this is such a big deal to me, Gourmet’s influence notwithstanding. I didn’t grow up in a house with a lot of complicated cooking or entertaining, and while I could perfectly well feed myself once I moved out on my own, it tended to be a very straightforward: spaghetti, chili, meatloaf, chicken and rice, etc. I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese those first couple of years, because I hadn’t figured out how to scale things down for one person or cook new things.

Dinner parties represented a sort of airbrushed, idealized grown-up world that I was just tiptoeing into. Being able to pull one off meant that I had learned how to cook new things without anyone to teach me, just a handful of recipes and an inexplicably unshakable belief that it would turn out well. It broke the stereotype of a hapless 20-something that couldn’t boil water, and meant that when I threw a party it didn’t have to involve Doritos and a keg. It was a way to show how much I loved and valued the friends I had made, by doing something nice and special for them. It fostered my love of food and eating with a spirit of adventure. After a while – let’s be honest – it was a way to feed the monstrous ego I had developed around my ability to do this when nobody else around me was. My husband and I cooked together before we ever dated, which was kind of a big deal since I rarely even let other people clear the dishes, much less help with the actual cooking.

In writing this and doing the mental math, I realized that it was literally half a lifetime ago that I started my dinner party obsession. Some things have stayed the same, and some have changed. I don’t always pull out the good china, though I’m extra happy when I get a chance to set the table with all my best stuff. There are a few friends that I’ll let into the kitchen, and my daughter – who is pretty sure she’s headed to culinary school after graduation – is my favorite person to cook with. I’ll happily let others clear the table, pack up the leftovers, and even wash dishes or load the dishwasher if they’re so inclined.

It’s still fun. I am perfectly willing to throw myself undaunted into a pile of new recipes, which just goes to show that I am hella good at following instructions (I’m not a creative cook, but I can follow a recipe like nobody’s business). I still have some of those same friends, and we’ve added lots of people to the list of those we love so much, we can’t wait to feed them something. Food is love, y’all! My ego is considerably less engaged these days; dinner is about feeding the soul as much as the body, and I care much more about that kind of sustenance than the kind on the table. I finally believe that I am a real adult. I still cook with my husband.

Thanks to a cookbook my college roommate sent me from Dubai, David now makes what is arguably the best falafel outside of your sitto’s kitchen (that’s not the recipe you’re getting here, though). We love any excuse for a falafel party, which is how we ended up with two tables full of people tearing their way through a ridiculous abundance of food and drinking some excellent rose and laughing and talking and telling stories and generally making for the kind of night I still love, half a lifetime later.

This photo doesn't really do it justice. 

After a huge meal, an elaborate dessert goes utterly unappreciated, so I went with something simple, a citrus salad that looks gorgeous but is really no more complicated than slicing some fruit. It’s adapted very slightly from Seriously Good Salads, which is chock-full of beautiful things that will make you rethink your lettuce-cucumber-tomato paradigm and proves that “salad” really can be another word for “meal.”

Orange Salad with Pistachios and Pomegranate

1 Ruby Red grapefruit
2 blood oranges
2 other oranges – clementines, Minneolas, or whatever is at the grocery store at the moment
2 Tbsp honey
½ tsp almond extract
¼ cup chopped pistachios
Pomegranate arils
Fresh mint, for garnish
Fresh thyme, for garnish

Peel the citrus fruits and slice thinly. Arrange on a platter – this is such a pretty dessert! Without any real effort! (If you’re feeling ambitious, do some kind of ombre effect and send me a picture. That would be so cool.)

Mix the honey and almond extract together and drizzle over the fruit. Sprinkle with the pistachios and pomegranate arils. Garnish with chopped fresh mint and/or thyme.

We have, at various times, skipped the pomegranate, skipped the thyme, skipped the mint, and substituted the pistachios for blanched almond slivers. No matter what you do, this is going to be (1) beautiful and (2) tasty, so don’t overthink it if you can’t find something or forgot the thyme or whatever. I also think this would be good with some fresh pineapple in there. Let me know how that works out for you.