In the coming weeks, I will be sharing recipes that are seasonal and do-able while I encourage all of us to have more dinners together! I would love to hear from all of you as well. After you read this, I think you will probably have some very good tips and recipes to share which we can all benefit from. We need to do this. Now - more than ever! Thanks. TPF
How did we get here? I think many of you know what I mean. Think about some seemingly normal activities of daily living. Couples with take in eating and working in separate parts of the house. Kids always off to something or coming back late from something, grabbing fast food to fill up. Single folks who “don’t cook’ at all.
What happened to the dinner table? To reviewing the day? To planning for things to come? To eating good, basic real food that was prepared at home while actually talking to each other?
Surely, the American obsession with our particular idea of “busy” has contributed. Over the years, I have noticed that so many people seem to relish the idea of constantly talking about how overworked, overbooked, and spread thin they are. I don’t think they are necessarily making that up; I just think that they have more control over that than they think. Life is too short to have your time taken from you.
In recent weeks, I have been asking folks a couple of simple questions. And I think their answers reflect a need for change. Asking when someone last went to a “dinner party” usually elicited a snicker. “People have no time”; “The weekends are so scheduled”; “Oh that’s so much work”, etc. And when asked about the last time folks had friends or family or a mix “over for dinner”, the response was almost universal.Mostly, "Oh, I so wish I/we could, but it is just so much work, we’re so busy and I don’t how we could do it and make it nice”.
So, what I am hoping to do this Fall is to tackle that last statement. In my opinion, we desperately need more time at the table - together. Losing this connection is feeding the separation of like minded folks from one another. It is preventing americans from enjoying other cultures more thoroughly. Most importantly, it is sending all of the wrong messages to children about real food/good food and spending un-rushed time together with others.
How to Begin
The place to begin is of course in your own home. Analyze your dinner situation. It’s different for each of us, of course. We’ll get to food later. The first part of planning needs to be the when?
Try to set a goal of x number of times per week that everyone is can be home and at the table for dinner. No take out. No take in. Real food, cooked at home. Then, create a schedule. How you want to “enforce” that schedule is up to you. If everyone has been running in different directions for some time, it will take awhile for everyone to be happy with the changes.
For single folks - especially singles who enjoy cooking - think about friends, neighbors and co-workers that would be fun to have as dinner companions a few times a month. You CAN do this on weeknights. Wednesday night at your house is a good start. Cook something you like and are good at and invite! Having lived in a large, urban apartment building for years, some of my fondest memories are of us all ending up in one another’s units and eating together - pot luck, leftovers, whatever. Sometimes, there were many of us just sitting in the hallway on the floor with our plates - eating, laughing, talking - with our dogs running around trying to snag a morsel. There were life long friendships forged in that hallway. How many of us really spend any relaxed time with our neighbors? How many of us ever dine with our neighbors? Always remember: Restaurant behavior and Home dining behavior tend to be very different. Frankly, while I love to dine out as a treat, I find my most enjoyable meals are around our table at home.
If there are two of you I like to assume that you already do dine together very regularly, although I have been told that is not necessarily true. You know what keeps you from not being able to end the day over good food and conversation and I know that demands on time exist. Figure out how to get 3 or more nights a week, cooking and eating together at home and then stick to that schedule. .
A Plug for Sunday Dinner. We have some friends who’s families still observe the tradition of Sunday Dinner. The loss of Sunday Dinner in our country is very sad and it has all but disappeared from the american way of eating. With our friends, it generally involves some very specific dishes and it takes place at the family home - Grandmom's. Now - it may not happen every Sunday, but it is a regular event and everyone is expected to be there, to contribute, and to eat, catch up and enjoy themselves. There was a reason for it. Actually there were many reasons for it. I fear we have lost a great deal by losing Sunday Dinner. I also understand that Shabbat has gone out of fashion with many Jewish people. That, too, is sad. I used to attend Shabbat with a colleague and I loved it and it seemed like such a damned good idea!
Come to the Table. As some of you are aware, we have been looking into structuring a Supper Club at Il Moya, our home, for the past few months. This would be different from a Food Club, which tends to rotate from house to house. Being long time cooks, we prefer controlling the preparation and service. And we want actual members - with always holding out the possibility for newcomers. That said, this does NOT mean that some get togethers could not be pot luck events or assigned dishes based on a particular theme events.
The concept we are working from is a once a month event (to start anyway) with a notice sent to each member of the group as to date, time, theme and any requests for what each person can bring, if applicable. Private Supper Clubs work best when folks are encouraged to BYOB. Participants pay a fee. New participants are always welcome but a strict maximum number has to be observed. These sorts of clubs can serve so many purposes. They are first and foremost a time to "Come to the Table", as we like to say, and eat great food, with other folks who also love great food. They are a wonderful way to just kick off from the rest of life and its demands and sit and eat and talk and have fun. They can also serve as wonderful ways to raise money for charities and causes through very specific dining events. We're also considering a quasi- cooking lesson aspect in that recipe cards would be provided for participants so that they can then make dishes they really liked for their own tables.
Mostly it’s about socializing, having a great meal and laughing a lot. All of this Supper Club thinking is very much in the first phase planning stage. However, as we get into Fall, we will be beginning our usual season of Dinners with friends as well as traditional Holiday dinners. So we will have plenty of filled places at the table.
It’s All in the Organization. Keep it simple!
Big Plates - the kind that can hold everything on the menu are a lifesaver. I prefer white for food. Big Napkins, too. A Big Table Cloth that can stand up to a lot of washings is a definite. Unscented Candles (please, this is not the time for Yankee scented candles!) on the table and soft Music (on low). Build a comfortable, casual atmosphere.
Shopping. Yes. We’ve had the longest summer in history. But now - Fall - is a good time to start thinking about recipes that will work for a few or more folks around the table, are easy, satisfying, seasonal and are not real expensive to make.
Some Suggested Dishes for the Fall
Appetizers: Warm Soft Pretzels with sea salt & mustards, mixed spicy nuts, hard cheeses with a relish or mostardo. A Cheese Board of one hard, one soft, one strongly flavored cheese. With mostardo, pickles, sliced pears or apples, fig jam, and crackers or a sliced baguette.
First Course:
*Note: Always serve Bread Sticks, Rolls, or Bread - a basket of various things is nice - with Soup.
Potato and Cheddar Cheese Soup
Butternut Squash Soup
Tuscan Bean and Kale Soup
Tomato Bread Soup
Clam or Fish Chowder
Cream of Tomato Soup
Cream of Potato and Bacon Soup
Cream of Potato and Bacon Soup
Winter Salads - if soup is not doing it, there are so many ways to mix hardy greens, onions, shredded carrots, celery, toasted squash, etc. together to make delicious warm and room temperature salads.
Mains:
Cream of Tomato Soup, Stack of Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, Pickles, Chips
Turkey Chili, Chips, Avocado, Salsas, Assorted Chili Fixings
Spaghetti, Meatballs or Sunday Gravy, Green Salad, Garlic Bread
Nonna Sauce, Shaped Pasta, Salad, Garlic Bread
Meatloaf, Mac n Cheese and Spicy Collards
Roast Chicken, Mashed Potatoes and Garlicky Green Beans
Chopped Meat and Macaroni with Southern Red Gravy
Beef Stew, Egg noodles, Brussels Sprouts (slow cooker for the stew if you can)
Chicken Thighs, braised, with Rice and Beans (southern style)
Mixed Sausages, Roasted Potatoes, Cole Slaw
Cheese Ravioli, Butternut Squash, Sage Butter Sauce, Warm Salad of Kale, Garlic and Peppers
Pan Roasted Pork Chops, Cheesy Polenta, Sauteed Black Kale
Oven Roasted Shrimp, Linguine in Lemon Sauce, Hearts of Romaine Salad
The themes here are important: the cook will not be standing at the stove and oven for hours, the dishes are hearty, seasonal and satisfying in the chilly weather, everyone can serve themselves, basically one large dinner plate and/or a soup bowl will work, and left overs can easily be stored.
Many of the items above can be made in advance and re-heated. The aim is to reduce the pressured, hurried factor. Take time for Dinner! No "eat and run" allowed!!!
I am reprinting my technique for home made red sauce and beef and sausage meatballs as the first of our Eat Together recipes because, in my opinion, nothing "brings them to the table" like this! The aroma alone is a total lure. My favorite pasta, if not homemade, is to buy fresh pasta sheets, roll them, and cut them into long medium wide strips. It holds this delicious sauce very well, and is light.
Ingredients:
8 cups (2 - 35 oz cans) Italian plum tomatoes with their juices. We can plum tomatoes in the Fall just for this use.
1 large onion, rough chopped
1 medium carrot, rough chopped
1 rib of celery, rough chopped
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt (kosher) plus more to taste
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Technique:
Put the tomatoes through a food mill using the medium blade (see picture) or push the tomatoes through a colander or sieve set over a bowl. This is an important step. It gives your sauce a lovely lux consistency.
Put the onion, carrot and celery in a food processor and pulse - you want everything finely and uniformly chopped. Or do it by hand.
Pour the olive oil in a big heavy bottomed pot. Stir in the chopped vegetables and set over medium high heat. Sprinkle with the salt. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently, bring the veg to a sizzle but don't let them brown. I set a timer for 3 minutes.
Pour the milled tomatoes and juices into the pan and stir with the vegetables. Use the 2 cups of water to swirl any tomato residue from the bowl and the empty tomato cans. Pour the water into the pot.
Stir in the bay leaves and the red pepper flakes, turn up the heat, cover the pot and and bring the sauce to a boil, stir frequently.
When you get the sauce boiling, adjust the heat to an active simmer - you want small bubbles all over the top of the sauce. If you have a "simmer" burner on your stove top this is the time to use it. Cover the pot and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
After 45 minutes, remove the cover, raise the heat so that the sauce is still bubbling well and gradually reducing.
Cook for another hour or so, stir frequently to avoid any sticking to the bottom of the pot.
As the sauce thickens, turn down the heat.
Taste for salt near the end of the cooking process.
When the sauce is reduced by about a quarter and is well concentrated but still pourable, turn off the heat.
Let the sauce cool. Remove the bay leaves. Let the sauce sit for an hour or two to allow the flavors to mellow.
Note: This sauces freezes very well. If you follow the steps you will always have a great sauce and once you do it a couple of times, it really is easy.
My Meatballs
Combine 1 pound of ground meat and the meat (remove it from casing) of 1 pound of hot Italian sausage.
Add two beaten eggs, a teaspoon of garlic powder, a teaspoon or more of dried oregano, a couple of tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a quarter cup of panko crumbs and mix - By hand is really the easiest. Roll into whatever size meatballs you like.
Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet at 425 for about 30 - 35 minutes. Until they are browned. They will not be completely done. Finish the meatballs in the sauce
OK - time to hear from you! How will you start insuring that eating Real Food, homemade, with others, at a table, with few distractions is going to be a regular part of your life? Share. Please.
EAT TOGETHER. EAT REAL FOOD.
