I Hosted 3 Dinner Parties in 7 Days and Didn't Lose My Mind.
Here's my playbook: the 6-point strategy, the food, the drinks.
Welcome to Quaintrelle, a weekly newsletter written by me, journalist-turned-sommelier and party host, Erin Henderson.
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Here, I share my my insights from decades of working in hospitality to bring back stylish, laid-back and stress free hosting.
Won’t you join us?
In this issue…
HOST: My 6-point strategy to stress free entertaining no matter the day, t
RECIPE: This is it. My definitive, final, absolute last, go-to recipe for gougère. At least for now.
DRINK: My (current) go-to, under$20 wines for serving a crowd
Back to Basics…
I made Irish soda bread on the weekend. I’m not Irish and I’m certainly not a baker, but the idea has been rolling around in my brain for a while. The bread’s sales pitch of being easy and fast was too alluring a seductress to ignore any longer.
I’m on a quest to find a reliable home recipe to replace the relatively pricey loaf I buy from a very good Toronto baker. While the product is truly excellent, it’s nearly $9 for a sourdough boule and $5 for a simple baguette.
Perhaps my Scottish/German heritage is showing, but that’s a bit steep for a weekly investment, even if the ingredients are top-notch and the quality indisputable.
The purchase is also guilt-inducing. I’m reasonably proficient in the kitchen; there’s no reason to shell out nearly $60 a month on flour and water baked to crispy-on-the-outside-and-soft-on-the-inside perfection.
So I’ve set about trying to find a suitable recipe to make at home with little fuss and muss. I’ve tried this one from The New York Times, which is a keeper, but requires at least a one-day head’s up, so if I’m out of bread and craving a sandwich, it’s not exactly a winner.
I also love my focaccia recipe, but that’s sort of a specialty thing, so it doesn’t really count.
Irish soda bread seems to be the answer. It only takes about 90 minutes from start to finish (so if I’m craving a sandwich it doesn’t immediately scratch the itch, but there is something to be said for allowing the tension to build) and while I haven’t done it yet, word has it you can flavour the loaf with cheese or onion, or make a sweet version with fruit.
Sometime last year I started making my own butter. Not all the time, but once in a while, when I have a lot of cream left over, and not a lot to do with it, I break out the KitchenAid, carve out 30 minutes in my schedule, and get whipping.
My dad, who worked most of his life in the food industry, with a few years’ intermission for wine and spirits, thinks my kitchen projects are hilarious.
He was raised in a post-war, modest country home, situated on about five acres of property. What my grandma could make from scratch, she did, and they wasted nothing. As a side hustle, my grandparents grew vegetables for Campbell’s soup to help make ends’ meet. (One of my dad’s favourite stories is when the pipes froze in the winter, and the plumbing wasn’t working, it was his job as the eldest child to take the family waste bucket on his sled to the back forest, which was a good couple of acres away from the house, and dump it. Being a rebellious teen, and rightfully revolted by the task, he dumped it in the garden patch beside the house and buried it in the snow. The next summer, the area that received the family’s, uh, blessing, grew cabbages five times as big as the rest of the garden, and they earned 25 cents for those cabbages and not the standard, five cents per head. Think about that next time you crack a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup.)
Anyway, with those memories close by his side, my dad is honestly baffled as to why my sister and I have returned to the fold, so to speak, preferring to make our pasta, pie dough, and bread and butter from scratch. He’s a fan of a Costco roast chicken, marvels at a Dr Oetker frozen pizza, and delights at a packaged meat pie, ready in minutes with the simple press of a button.
This is not to say my dad doesn’t eat what we make with gusto, but he takes the stance that many packaged items are just as good as homemade, and when you factor in the time spent and cost of ingredients, you come out ahead buying it already made.
He’s not wrong. There is that meme that makes the rounds every year about the single, home-grown tomato that costs $78.
I would tell my father about my kitchen project this week of making my own mascarpone. But he’s just had cataracts surgery and I can’t risk him rolling his eyes too strenuously. But honestly, stores around here charge $18-$20 for 500ml! That’s outrageous! I checked in with my friend
who lives in Como, Italy. She sent me photos of her local store which charges €8 ($12.50 cdn) for 500ml. In short, I won’t stand for the exorbitant costs of a simple cheese that I can make with two ingredients and a bit of stirring.Admittedly, my Trad Wife cosplay seems like a bit much – I hear regularly from friends who don’t have the time or energy to embark on these flights of culinary fancy that I regularly take.
And, if I can redeem myself, I don’t do it all the time! Generally I tackle one or two of these kitchen projects on a day off, when I need a little “me” time in the kitchen.
So, rest assured, this week’s Quaintrelle is not to go all Martha Stewart on your schedule. Like I promised last week, I’m sharing my reliable go-to’s for fast tracking dinner, without sacrificing style.
I’ve had people over three times in the past seven days – all at the end of a work day – and here is how I planned and executed low-stress, but big impact evenings:
