How to Host a Dinner Party (24 page)

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Using your fingers, mix all dry ingredients together, including the corn kernels, and jalapeno. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs. Whisk the butter and buttermilk into the eggs. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and, switching to a spatula, mix together until all of the flour is incorporated.

Preheat a 12-in. (30.5 cm) cast-iron pan with pork fat or butter. Pour the batter into the pan.

Bake for about forty minutes or until a toothpick comes out fairly clean from the middle. Allow five minutes to cool before slicing.

Now that you’ve got the cornbread, what can you do with it?

I find that if cornbread is good and warm, and if there is plenty of butter on the table, it’s all people want to eat. If you’re serving it as a side with, say, a brined and roasted pork loin and red-eye gravy, warm it up before serving. I’d be glad to have it with a fried slice of the braised beef cheek from Chapter Three or the ceviche from Chapter One. Here are a couple of other ideas.

CORNBREAD PANZANELLA

In a large pan with a splash of olive oil, cook the onion on low heat until caramelized, about fifteen minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (204°C).

In a large cast-iron pan on high heat, sear sausages on all sides and slide the pan into the oven. Turning every few minutes, cook the sausages through, about ten minutes.

Cut the cornbread into large cubes, the same size as the tomatoes. Slice the cooked sausages into a similar size.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients. Add the cornbread cubes last so the tomatoes won’t make them soggy.

Serves six.

CORNBREAD GRILLED CHEESE

How much direction do you need for this one?

Considering its richness, you might not want to serve sandwich-sized portions of this. Maybe whip up a batch and slice it into three-bite portions for an appetizer.

Slice the cornbread
1/2
in. (1.25 cm) thick. Assemble sandwiches with Cheddar and bacon on the inside.

On a low heat, melt butter in a cast-iron pan. Slowly brown the sandwiches on one side, about four minutes. Melt more butter in the pan and flip. Cook on the second side until the cheese melts.

Serves four.

I
want everyone’s dinner party to be fun. with a book of rules, plus the running score of thank-you notes and reciprocations, it might seem to be more business than personal. And if that happens, it’s time to take a step back.

Though gleaned from years of hosting on a regular basis, the instructions in this book are only guidelines. They are not the Ten Commandments or the sacred scrolls (sorry, but grade five Hebrew school and
Planet of the Apes
are all I know from religion).

The key word is flexible.

Yes, I send thank-you notes to my friends. And I try to do nice things in exchange for the nice things they do for me. But I don’t sit at home with an abacus, calculating each friend’s value, like some vengeful Santa Claus. It’s all predicated on the idea that we like each other, that we want to spend time together. If Jesse forgets to send me a thank you for dinner, I’m not going to hold it against him. Aside from devoting pages and pages in this book to publicly shaming him, I probably wouldn’t even mention it.

The other night I went over to Jesse’s to store my patio cushions in his basement for the winter. “Bring me something,” he requested. I brought leftovers from the dinner I’d hosted the night before: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and gravy. His wife invited me to stay for dinner. She made a chicken pot pie and heated the leftovers I brought. We ate at the dining room table as their two-year-old thrashed about in his high chair, pouring milk on himself and trying to play a rice cracker as if it were a harmonica.

There was no coffee. I was driving and, since I just got my driver’s licence and can’t have any alcohol in my system, I didn’t have a glass of wine. There was no dessert, or music, or other guests, or an agenda. It was terrific.

Because in the end, it’s about connecting with people over food. That’s what’s important to me. Within this book, hopefully, I’ve provided some guidance so that more people can make that happen more often, and with greater comfort.

P
eople are only going to read a thank-you page if their name is on it. And if it is, you want a bit more meat than just being on a list. As this book has a section devoted to saying thank you, I hope you’ll forgive me if I go on.

If I have left your name off this list, please do not take it personally. It’s just that you’ve done nothing for me lately.

First I’d like to thank Lily Cho and Jesse Brown, separately. This book wouldn’t exist without either of them. It was Lily who bought me that copy of Ruth Reichl’s memoir, suggested I cook lunch for Reichl, and conceived of this book. Not only did Jesse name the Fed column, and not only has he been a regular cast member of my dinner parties, but he has been good-natured about accepting my public abuse.

The bad host Jesse Brown, as featured in these pages, is a fictional character, his blunders a composite of real-life dinner blunders, committed by real-life blunderers, some or all of whom may or may not be named Jesse Brown.

My many editors at the
Toronto Star
have had a massive influence on me, directly or indirectly altering the course of my life and work. Jen Bain opened the front door for me, advising me to apply for a job. Lesley Taylor (who terrorized me during a ninety-minute interview) championed the idea of hiring me. Alison Uncles supported me through my first year of professional writing, while Katie Ellis quietly taught me everything I know. She did it so unobtrusively that I wasn’t even aware of being mentored. Kim Honey came up with the idea for the Fed column. We didn’t really know what it was when we started. It’s not like there is a long history of dinner party interview columns from which we could draw inspiration. Kim allowed it breathing room, probably resisting the urge to tinker too much, trusting that the writing would find a way to make the column function. Thank you to Janet Hurley for not firing me, making this column the longest job I’ve ever held. And of course to Christine Loureiro, who started at the
Star
the same time as me, a copy editor who became my boss. In a shrinking newspaper culture where writers barely get any attention, Christine made time to call me about stories, even if that had to be after 10 p.m. Though mostly she was a stopgap against me going over my monthly usage of the word penis.

Everyone should have a friend like Jen Agg, who never flinches from telling me what I’m doing wrong. When, as I refilled her glass of Riesling, she told me that my serving skills had gotten better (not good, but better), it was like getting the okay signal from Johnny Carson.

Emma Segal, the official go-with gal. She has never needed more of a pitch than “Will you come to dinner Friday?” (Unlike that lousy Jesse Brown, who wants to know what’s on the menu before he says yes.)

My produce supplier, Pots, and my butcher, Peter, have helped put good food on the table.

Dr. Laura Adams (I’m certain that Laura will have finished her PhD by the time this sees print) was the one who famously, and scientifically, decreed, “Girls like napkins.”

Thanks to Sandy Butts, esq., for letting me steal a line.

Kathryn Borel, for everything. If I ever got one break in this life, Kathryn gave it to me.

Now I’m getting all Sammy Maudlin, but if it weren’t for Max Mandel showing me how to be a freelancer, I don’t know that I would have figured out how to work from home, how to discipline myself. Mostly Max is an inspiration, for never pursuing that orchestra job.

Not only did Sarah Polley write a lovely introduction, but if it weren’t for her, I would not have lost my virginity.

My unofficial helpers: Jonathan Goldsbie and Brigitte Noel. Brigitte has done fantastic work as a research assistant. If anyone at Anansi is impressed with the background material I presented, that was all Brigitte. Goldsbie, friend to many, enemy to many more, could be called the casting agent for Fed. As a dinner guest, he always knows when to talk and when to listen.

Mika Bareket talked me into teaching the class at her store, Good Egg. I think she also maybe whispered into the ear of Anansi publisher Sarah MacLachlan that this would be a neat book. And the good people of Anansi have been nothing but supportive the whole way.

Mark Medley might look like a rumpled muppet, but he is a gracious fountain of information and advice about the publishing industry, of which I knew nothing before starting this project.

I have never met Steve Murray, who illustrated these pages. But I make this promise to you, dear reader. I will hunt Mr. Murray. I will eat his flesh and destroy every record of his existence except for this book, making it a rare collector’s item.

Book writing is vastly different from newspaper writing, where the facts must be at the top and there is no space for stray thoughts. Jared Bland, who I suspect had more to do with this book than I yet know, steered me through this temporal shift, coaxing me to take my time, at first with directions such as “Corey, I feel like this chapter begins a little abruptly. Could you take a go at a slightly more luxurious introductory paragraph?” By the time we got to the end it was just, “Need intro.” Two of life’s greatest extravagances are colleagues who take the time to explain things properly and the shorthand that develops once you understand each other.