The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [145]
Throughout all the schmoozing and tasting of various delectables, I was once again faced with the question of what constituted not eating out. Did this count? A bunch of small, local food purveyors gathered for a celebration of food on the South Street Seaport, sharing and boasting of their wares, for free?
I had no idea anymore. There were too many events like these lately, anyway. I’d walk into a party, or a foodie meet-up, and there’d be samples of catered food, or something else that was borderline restaurant fare. I went to a tasting night at the Grand Central Market, which really is a market in the sense that it sells fresh produce, meats and cheese, and fresh-baked bread, but so much of the food that night was fully prepared hors d’oeuvres. There were just too many loopholes in not eating out. I shook my head as I thought about it.
The next morning, I put together a quick lunch to bring to work. Earlier that week, I’d boiled a half dozen or so small baby red potatoes, some of the first newly harvested ones of the season at the markets. In another bag in my fridge, I had some fresh zucchini and summer squash, also from the Greenmarket. I heated some oil on the stove and smashed a clove of garlic. I chopped up two of the squashes—one green, and one small yellow one—with my knife and added the slices to the pan along with the garlic. After seasoning them with salt and pepper and flipping them twice until just a little caramelized, I took the squash out of the pan and put it into a plastic container alongside two of the potatoes. With the addition of roasted beet—I’d roasted a bunch of beets over the weekend, too—I popped the lid on the container and took it to work.
I liked this easy lunch so much, I brought more or less the same thing with me to work the next day, Friday. By suppertime that night, I decided I was tired of eating potatoes, zucchini, and beets. I found a bag of yellow cornmeal in my pantry and made a quick polenta to go with some vegetables instead. There was a bag of green beans in my crisper that had been hanging out perhaps one too many days, and I sauteed them with some garlic and a sliced half onion also lingering in the fridge. I added a bit of butter and some grated Parmesan to the polenta before topping it with the brownish pan juices from the sauteed green beans and onions. It was a good dinner, if simple. Afterward, I spent a relatively quiet night at a bar with Jordan, Dan, and a handful of other friends. I knew I was in for a crazy day of cooking another supper-club dinner with A Razor, A Shiny Knife starting the following morning.
The dinner we’d served at Michael’s apartment that Sunday was actually a preparation for a larger, more elaborate supper-club dinner. Michael had teamed up with a local dramatist who went by the name of Jonny Cigar for an event he called “Dinner Theatre.” Theatrical interludes would be performed by the actors in between the six courses of the meal. The idea was to match the presentation of the food with the drama that was being acted before the diners. Therefore, every course would be as elaborately staged and whimsical as the underground theater group’s performance style.
Sporting a bowler and a three-piece suit, Jonny was a character, and great fun to be around. He and his fellow actors rehearsed while the rest of us prepared the meal all day. Instead of at Michael’s, this dinner was held at the large loft of a friend, and small round tables covered with white tablecloths were placed around the room to create a cocktail-party feel. As usual, guests were encouraged to arrive in the afternoon to participate in the cooking process and watch demonstrations by the chefs.
I arrived at the