Good Bits

Dinner with friends

Needing an excuse to indulge the part of me that loves to entertain, on Friday night I hosted a dinner party. We were six at table. Had I a larger kitchen we might never have made it to the dining table but remained standing around the kitchen pouring and tasting. However, I’d put a leaf in the table that had been my mother’s, and brought up the pads from the basement and covered it with a white quasi-damask linen oval, and put out the nice glassware and all, and it was way too cozy and too close to hot pots and sharp utensils, so to the table we went.

My dark plum Crate and Barrel dinner plates weren’t too out of place amid Mom’s good china, the only source of six matching salad, bread and dessert dishes. The gold-trimmed cream white china, made in Japan, has been stored in padded dish holders, thin foam sheets separating each piece and the dainty cups each in their own cubicle in a big square holder.

For the ten years since her death, my mother’s most carefully protected possessions have hidden on the highest shelves of my kitchen wall cabinets. Not my style, the gilt floral design, but unused for other reasons. First, somewhere in my mind/brain resided the idea that the pieces should be saved for formal occasions or family holidays like Rosh Hashana or Thanksgiving, which my mother always hosted but I do not. Second, there was always the fear that I’d break something and wind up forever identified as unreliable, like my aunt who was banished from participation in cleanup detail after dropping something or other after some long ago family fete. Of course I’d already received the badge of less-than-perfection while Mom was still alive so any additional ribbons of achievement in that department would now be just showing off.

I don’t have kids. I doubt that my grand-niece or -nephews will want the stuff by the time they are ready to set up house. So I’m giving myself permission to use the good china more often.

One thing about the set of china that speaks to how different things were in the old days, aside from the raised gilt-ness of the stuff, is how small the pieces are. The coffee cups are four-ouncers. Officially, or traditionally, that’s what a cup of coffee is supposed to be. In this age of the supersize and the travel mug and the sixteen-ounce grande latte, though, they seem to hold barely a few gulps. The soup bowls, too, hold only four ounces. When I was a kid and slurping matzo ball soup out of them they seemed so much larger. Then again, so did a lot of other things, like our house.

So it turns out that if I use the good china I don’t have to cook as much food to fill the plates, which means I can play with pricier ingredients. I think I’ll have more dinner parties.

Menu -

Chopped Chicken Livers (from free-range organically-fed cluckers, of course, with eggs of the same origins and…sue me…schmaltz. Conventional onions. Oh well. A gift to friend Ed.)
Bruschetta with goat cheese, tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil and optional olive tapenade.

Scottish Atlantic Salmon, organically fed (it says here) and conscientiously farmed (hey, it’s January, there’s no fresh wild salmon out there) – from Kate’s Fish at the West Side Market, just gorgeous and this is why I doubt I’ll ever go back to being a vegetarian.

Red Lentil Dhal – My first try, starting with the toasting of the whole spices and grinding them. Not knowing how much the recipe made I doubled it and had enough to feed the Indian Army (not to be confused with the British Army in India…curse you, Wikipedia! Had it been Jewish food I’d have said ” enough to feed the Russian Army.” Please don’t turn me over to the PC police.) The stuff was deeeeelish, and since I controlled how much red pepper went in, I could actually taste the flavors, me the spicy-food wuss. And the kitchen still smells heavenly.

Roasted local organic beets and celery root. Tossed in olive oil and honey first. Pretty and yum.

Organic, overcooked and undertasty green beans (oh well, can’t win ‘em all.)

And for dessert, homemade Chocolate Shards with Dried Tart Cherries, Toasted Almonds and…Lavender. UNBELIEVABLY WONDERFUL.