Recession Proof Dinner Party

"I think that you can basically cook anything that tastes decent and call it a dinner party and people will be thrilled."

it is (nearly) spring in vermont :)

I was talking to a friend on the phone recently and she said, I feel like the girls are going out to dinner less, meaning that we’re either staying in or we’re getting together at home, on couches, watching a movie or having dinner or catching up. I hadn’t noticed, or articulated this—I’ve been between Vermont and Brooklyn for the last two months, and before that it was deep winter—but it makes sense. I don’t even think that the comment was recession-related, but soon it will be. So much of existence right now feels like standing on a cliff waiting to see how far the fall will eventually be. I have been trying not to hoard, but I’m wondering if I should be ordering a bunch of tea. Or olive oil??? I don’t go out to restaurants so much in Brooklyn, but this summer I think I’ll be going even less. I’m looking forward to CSA season, and I’ll finally have half of a plot in the community garden. My own speculation about what will happen to my favorite restaurants is mostly vague, but Soleil Ho had a great (if depressing) piece in Best Food Blog predicting a return to meat and potatoes. Please—no!!

You probably know where I’m going with this. I’ve been regularly having friends over when I make it back to Brooklyn, a habit I’ve established to avoid total social isolation. Put the date on the calendar now, plan the menu later: this was the strategy I adopted in February, before coming up to Vermont for a teaching fellowship. So once a month, roughly, I’ve had four to seven friends over for dinner. Always on Sunday night.

In March, I came home to a days-old delivery of sesame-chocolate babka and sourdough bread to promote Molly Yeh’s beautiful new book, and I immediately sliced and froze both. The bread was just beginning to stale, but I refuse to waste a good loaf of sourdough. The babka got griddled in lot of butter: a good way to revive any dried-out baked good. I didn’t have a menu planned for that Sunday’s dinner, but I felt allergic to spending money. I went to the shelves, saw my big fat jar of beans. This would do.

I think that you can basically cook anything that tastes decent and call it a dinner party and people will be thrilled. Marcella sauce and spaghetti? Brilliant. Pappa al Pomodoro on a chilly spring evening? I’d be learning calligraphy just to write you a thank-you note. Sheet pan quesadillas? Yeah!! Souped-up instant noodles? Of course. An enormous pan of fried rice? Abbondanza!!! At a time when most of us are experiencing at the very least low-grade depression, the menu is secondary to the hang itself. You can really cook your friends anything, and so long as they are comfortable, they will be happy.

So I made a big pot of beans. Of course I love my rancho gordos but I also get great, fresh, local beans from my beloved CSA. I believe these are what I cooked: pintos, and lots of them. When you cook something cheap like beans, you can really relish in abundance. (I wanted to send friends home with little deli containers of beans, but I forgot.) Because I wanted something that felt “nice”—festive—I made a quick green herb sauce: chopped mint and cilantro, lemon, garlic, oil. There’s an incredible-looking green sauce in Samin Nosrat’s new book, Good Things, that I think would be perfect for this; I’m eager to try it out. Mine was just fine: not smooth enough to my liking, but it added a brightness that I craved, and it got at least a few compliments. (If conviviality is the primary reason I like dinner parties, compliments are the second.)

So the friends arrived, and half of them sat on the floor, as the room requires, and we ate chips and talked, and once it felt time, I fried up a bunch of slices of toast. Into each bowl went a slice of toast, a ladleful of soupy beans, a spoonful of green sauce. It was a relief to make something so simple; I have the sort of intensity disease that often bleeds into my dinner party planning. But I think I spent about $15 shopping for this party, and it was mostly herbs and seltzer. The rest came from my freezer or shelves. I didn’t take any photos of the beans, or the toast, or the friends laid out, so I don’t have any photos to show you, but I think you can imagine it: some people hunched over bowls, yapping.

A few years back I was at the end of a month-long artist residency, and whined to Jackson on the phone: I just want to lay on the ground somewhere while all my friends sit around me and talk. They don’t even have to talk to me! I just want to be there. I have a similar urge now, when I’m home. I just want to feed my friends, and I mostly want to do so cheaply, without too much labor; I just want to sit in a chair in my living room, and listen to them talk.

Tell me in the comments: what are your favorite cheapo dinner party strategies?