How to Host a Dinner Party (18 page)

Conversations can get out of hand. Always have a few questions up your sleeve that you can toss out at a moment’s notice to divert the table’s dialogue from the danger zone. “Any plans for the summer?” or “How did you spend your summer?” are the quintessential talk-show host diversionary questions. If they’re good enough for David Letterman, they’re good enough for us. I defy any group tension to withstand the question, “Did you know the mouth of a jellyfish is also its anus?”

Once guests behave badly, there is no easy way to deal with it. Part of inviting the right guests is avoiding those people who are prone to horrid behaviour. Unfortunately, some of our most entertaining friends are also the ones most likely to say something truly offensive.

Grown-ups, intelligent ones, can have intelligent disagreements. There’s a satisfying crackle that goes through the room when one guest tells another, “I think you’re full of crap and I’m going to tell you why.” A good argument among respectfully disagreeing adults can make for a memorable evening.

I’ve already stated that a host and, by extension, a guest must endure certain indignities in aid of the group’s enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that we’re all punching bags, hostages to the whim of a boorish person.

It can be grating to hear a guest go on about how much his or her house costs, the important people they know, all the great meals the guest has eaten elsewhere that were better than this one. However, it is not usually worth having a fight over.

But things get ugly when someone is being a bigot. In matters of social justice, it’s go time. This isn’t to say that we must get up on our hind legs at the first mention of something that
may
be sexist, racist, or homophobic. Having chosen to spend the evening in the company of these people, let us give them the benefit of the doubt that they are not all closet racists. But when we reach our threshold — the first, second, or third confirmed strike — it’s time to call these people out.

The host or any guest can do this. If it’s you, remember to focus on what they said, not who they are. Instead of, “Wow, you are a racist,” tell them, “Wow, what you just said was racist.”

There’s no way it’s going to end well, but you can at least dissect their words and explain what they mean to you, rather than attack the person and force him or her to behave defensively.

Try offering them a way out, an opportunity to recant or apologize, rather than demand it of them. Some people will fight just for the sake of it, or because they feel surrounded, so leave them an opening to escape. You’d like to get the evening back on track rather than derail it permanently, unless being right is more important to you.

And righteous though you may be, do not expect your guests to have your back. It’s not that they disagree, but most people, whether from cowardice or some vestige of Victorian civility, will withdraw from a dinner fight like a vampire from the sun.

I was at a dinner where the host referred to her husband’s music as gay. One guest decided that this made the host the perfect straw man to vent all his hostility toward homophobic language. As the two of them dug into their positions, the rest of the guests inched farther and farther to the other end of the table, in an effort at isolation.

If you, as a guest, become locked in an intractable argument, just leave. It’s an unpleasant conclusion to your part of the night. But it might help the host and the other guests if one party takes themselves out of the equation, regardless of who’s at fault.

If the evening does take an unpleasant turn, there is usually a collective will to fix things. During one dinner, forever referred to as “The Incident,” a guest suddenly demanded to know why I hated her. When I didn’t answer the question, it was repeated. If I had been at someone else’s house, I would have just left. Bizarre and unexpected though it was, we had all been having such a nice time. And through sheer force of communal will, we managed to get the dinner back into its groove. Thinking back, I can hardly believe we were able to bring the evening back from such a dark extreme. Perhaps, for many people, this is what family dinners are like.

At a certain point it is worth considering that the night may be irreparably ruined. A guest can always leave, but a host cannot. So guests, if you think things have passed this threshold, consider an evacuation.

THE DRUNK

I 
 t’s up to you whether you want your guests sober, tipsy, rosy-cheeked, raucous, or undergrad, but know your limits and try to keep everyone at the same pace. Prevent any one guest from getting significantly, embarrassingly, drunker than the rest. This is easier said than done. In fact, it was really easy for me to write that.

It’s usually between drinks two and three that the heavy drinker shows you how fast they can drink. If you want everyone drunk, make sure you keep filling everyone else’s glasses at the same rate. If you don’t, slow things down. Do not leave the bottle on the table and certainly not within that one drunkard’s reach.

However, the sort of person who is determined to get drunk will, which can make things uncomfortable for your other guests. This puts you in an awkward position. You don’t want to make an issue of your guest’s drunkenness at the table, though, along with bigotry, drunkenness may require a confrontation because that will just make people feel worse.

There are two courses to take:

1. 1.
   Sweat it out. If you can tolerate their loutish behaviour for the rest of the evening, then don’t bring attention to it. The next day, you can talk to them privately. Communicate clearly that their level of drunkenness was unacceptable. If you don’t feel that this directness will be of any use, just blacklist them.
   
2. 2.
   If their drunkenness is too out of control to tolerate, then take them aside (into the kitchen or a bedroom) and tell them, “You are too drunk and it’s time for you to go to bed. I’ve called you a cab. Here’s your coat. Please tell everyone you’re not feeling well on your way out.” Everyone else will understand. For the record, I have never had to do this, perhaps because my friends know that I do not tolerate sloppy, drunken tomfoolery.
   

This is also a time to ask your friends if they’re driving, or remind them. If your message from the invitation (see Chapter One) has not been heeded, then pour accordingly. If you know that guests are driving, limit their consumption of wine while increasing their consumption of food and water.

If a guest has driven to your home and you see them getting drunk, mention that. Ask them simply to choose between not having another drink and parking the car overnight. They can take a cab home. I’ve seen this done very elegantly and effectively. A guest has a second drink and says, “Y’know what? My car’s on the street. I’m gonna move it to the lot behind your house and leave it there.”

This depends on the availability of parking, but you can figure it out. There’s really no excuse for drunk driving.

THREE PORK SHOULDER DISHES

New York City’s Momofuku made a lot of friends with their bo ssäm, a massive slab of roasted pork shoulder accompanied by sauces and lettuce leaves for wrapping. As a result of its inclusion in their influential cookbook, it has become a birthday party staple among my friends, and I’m always happy to see it.

It’s great to see friends learning to properly slow roast a big cut of meat but it’s a shame to stop there as so much more that can be done with it. Pork shoulder is one of the best buys at the butcher shop, a powerful convergence of great flavour and value for price. The traditional bo ssäm method is simple and effective. If you can do that, consider some other uses for the pork. I suggest forgetting about wrapping the soft meat in bibb lettuce — not because the lettuce has the absorption of paper towel and inevitably leads to spilled sauces, but because it is expensive. If you need one head of lettuce for every three guests, it quickly becomes the most costly part of the meal.

It’s a good lesson for slow cooking, showing how such a great texture and flavour can be achieved through time and patience rather than complicated techniques. Here are three other directions you can take it: tacos, rice bowl, and ragù for polenta. It’s a good way to build on the skills you just learned, or to use up leftovers.

Pork Shoulder

Rub the pork with the sugar and salt. Refrigerate it in a sealed container overnight. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C). Mount the pork on a roasting rack and slide it into the oven. After a couple of hours the pork fat will start rendering. Use it to baste the meat. After four hours it will be soft, but after six hours it will be gooey. Finish the meat by rubbing it with maple syrup and cranking the oven to 500°F (260°C). Ten minutes should give the meat a good crust. Reserve extra rendered fat for future frying.

Serves four.

Tacos

It’s pretty easy to turn the pork into taco meat. All you need are a few garnishes to really set it off. Use the pickle method from the rice bowl (see below) for red onions. Get fatty Mexican sour cream wherever you buy fresh tortillas. If you have some tarragon mayo left over from the tomato sandwiches, throw that in too. And here is a recipe for green salsa.

For the salsa

Blanch and shock the tomatillos by dropping them into boiling water for two minutes and then transferring them to a bowl of ice water. When they’re cool, strain them and allow them to dry as much as possible. In a blender, purée them with onion, jalapeno, and cilantro. Season to taste.

For the tacos