Getting Serious

I have several friends that I would call casual runners: people who run a couple of miles a few times a week just for the heck of it. It helps them stay fit and they like to run, but they aren't fanatic about it and they aren't in training for anything. A few of these casual runners have talked about doing a marathon just once in their life (some of them have even done one, but aren't planning to do it again). To them the marathon represents the ultimate running challenge; to complete one would validate the runner in them.

I would consider myself a casual cook. I like to cook, if I have the time, but I don't go out of my way to make the time for cooking. I like to try new recipes and frequently tear articles out of magazines, but I don't spend my Sunday afternoons perusing cookbooks. Additionally, I don't find that I need an elaborate meal to be satisfied most of the time; one well-prepared dish with a salad usually qualifies as good eating for me, particularly if it is a new recipe and we are trying it on a weeknight. And, in general, if a recipe looks complicated and time consuming, I pass it over.

To me the dinner party is the casual cook's equivalent of the marathon. The dinner party requires great planning and preparation to go smoothly. This is the chance to try those recipes that look fantastic but have way too many steps and make way too many dishes to be practical for a family dinner. And kitchen tasks that seem superfluous all of the sudden become very important.

For example, why would anyone want to peel a pepper? Sure, the peel gets charred when you roast a pepper and needs to be removed, but I am talking about a fresh pepper. The delicate membrane is so thin and so tightly bound to the underlying flesh as to be barely noticeable, but last Friday I found myself carefully removing this transparent layer, all in the name of the dinner party.

And when else would one put so much thought into garnishes? But I sometimes put as much thought into the garnish as the recipe itself. For heaven's sake, many of the garnishes are put on the plate with no intentions that they ever get eaten (though they are non-toxic, of course).

The preparation up to a dinner party proceeds through a successive series of lists: lists of potential recipes, then shopping lists, to do lists, and finally, the preparation lists for the dishes themselves. The lead-up is always a lot of work, but in the end I am always quite satisfied with the night. Some dishes turn out worse than expected, but some turn out better. But more important than the food, I enjoy the good company there to share it with me.

I may not be ready for Iron Chef, but the cook in me always feels quite good after throwing a dinner party, like I can slack off in the kitchen for a long time to come and not feel guilty about it. And so now if you'll excuse me, all this talk about food has made me quite hungry. I think I'll have spaghetti-O's or Top Ramen... without a garnish.