In the kitchen
Put Them to Work
On letting your guests peel the potatoes. And a tomato salad for the ten minutes before they arrive.
The doorbell goes, and I am standing in the kitchen with flour on my shirt, laughing, because it is happening again.
My first real dinner party was in Charleston. It ended with a kitchen full of smoke, the fire alarm howling, and my guests holding their drinks on the back steps. We laughed so hard the evening survived. It is still one of my favorite nights, and ever since I have believed the host is the weather. If you’re calm, the room is calm. If you’re laughing, the burnt thing is a story.
So I open the door with the flour still on me and lead everyone straight past the living room into the kitchen, because that’s where they’ll end up anyway.
Hand out jobs
A knife and a bunch of parsley for the friend who always hovers. The potatoes for the one who can’t sit still. “Can you keep an eye on that” for someone who has never kept an eye on anything in their life and takes it very seriously.
Nobody ever minds. People are happier with something to do with their hands. Watching a host work makes you an audience; chopping the parsley makes you part of the dinner. You can see it at the table later: the parsley friend reaching for the dish they helped with, a little proud.
What’s in here
- A wooden spoon, scorched at one endOlder than some of our friends. Nobody remembers where it came from.
- TongsAbout eight dollars at the hardware store. The best thing in the kitchen.
- A very sharp little knifeEveryone uses it. Nobody puts it back.
- Kitchen stringFor the turkey, and for the parcel you forgot to post.
- An old brass pastry wheelUsed twice a year, kept forever.
- A microplaneFor lemons, for parmesan, and occasionally for knuckles.
Nothing matches. All of it works.
Do the table alone
The table is the one thing I do by myself, early, in the quiet before anyone comes. The linen is ironed and still faintly warm. The plates don’t match, on purpose. The flowers are low enough to talk across. And there are tapers, always, because my mother taught me that a taper’s light falls down onto a face rather than creeping up from under the chin.
I have not seated a friend beneath a ceiling light since.
Motown is on, because it always is. There’s one playlist for daylight and another waiting for later, so no one has to stop the evening to scroll.
After dessert, nobody is allowed to stay at the table. We move to the sofas, the good chairs, the floor, and the little things follow: dark chocolate broken into shards, a bowl of clementines, tisane for the sensible and port for everyone else. The best conversation of the night happens in that second, softer room. It always does.
The recipe
Tomatoes, Mozzarella, Basil
Make twice what you need. The cold leftovers, eaten standing at the counter the next morning, are the best hangover cure I know.
- Serves
- 6, as part of a spread
- Hands-on
- 10 minutes
- Total
- 20 minutes
- Ahead
- Not really. That’s the point.
You need
- 4 large ripe tomatoes, mixed colors if you can find them
- 2 balls fresh mozzarella, about 250 g each, at room temperature
- 1 big bunch basil
- ⅓ cup very good olive oil, and the bottle nearby
- Flaky sea salt and black pepper
Then
- Salt them earlySlice the tomatoes thick, lay them on a platter and salt them well. Leave them to weep for ten minutes while everyone finds a drink.
- Tear, don’t sliceTear the mozzarella over by hand. A knife makes it look like a hotel buffet.
- Be generousPour over a great deal of olive oil. Scatter basil from high up. Pepper, and a little more salt.
- Warm, not coldTake it to the table straight from the kitchen, never from the fridge.
Somebody is still in here. Somebody always is.
