I wanted it all to be extra Martha-like
Seven Cornish game hens seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to start.No one is certain what I was thinking, least of all me, when I wrote out the menu for this particular dinner party.
Being in my mid-twenties, I had, of course, hosted dinner parties, but they were more along the lines of pizza, hamburgers, maybe a pasta and ragu, but I had never fully undertaken a menu quite to this extent.
At the time, I was subscribed to Martha Stewart Living magazine, and I had read cover-to-cover, Martha Stewart Entertaining. I was invested in her whole way of entertaining.
So in this case, I wanted it all to be extra Martha-like.
A few days in advance, I planted myself at the dining room table with a stack of fifteen cookbooks and methodically went through each one, reading the recipes, choosing the ones that inspired me, and coming up with a menu.
After many hours of research, I landed on the following:
Spinach Dip with torn bread and crudité
Cornish Game Hens stuffed with wild rice & hazelnuts
Lemon linguini with fresh Italian parsley
French green beans with caramelized shallots
Sour Cream Pound Cake with strawberries and whipped cream
Wine, beer, pop
Now for some, this may not seem like a difficult menu, but I had never in my life made a single Cornish Game Hen, let alone seven individual ones, nor had I ever held and stuffed a raw one.
And the thing is I hadn’t considered the “timing” of each recipe let alone what should be prepped in advance.
In junior high and high school, I had been known to serve my latest crush, Chicken Cordon Bleu, but that was it. Just the chicken. Nothing else.
In this instance, I was trying to pull off this complicated dinner menu for seven people without ever having made these dishes before and without the help of the real Martha in my life, aka my mom, on a blazing hot summer day in August with no A/C.
I did have the foresight to make the spinach dip and pound cake in advance but that was where the “foresight” ended.
So there I was, knotted up with stress, making this complicated dinner in real time as my guests were showing up.
I remember feeling a shock of electricity pulse through my body when I read the part of the Cornish Game Hens recipe where the wild rice needed to cook 45 minutes BEFORE it gets stuffed into each hen. I had assumed it all just baked together for the 45-50 minutes necessary for the hens.
I started the pasta right after I set the wild rice to simmer. Hours later when it was finally time to serve dinner, the pasta, which had only taken a mere 20 minutes to make, had gone cold and was stuck together.
The green beans were overcooked and the shallots were more blackened than caramelized.
At one point the hubs came in the hot kitchen and said, “Wow babe, you’re really going all out here. Any idea on when we might be eating? Appetizers are gone. Should I put out some chips?”
And he gave me his raised eyebrow smile.
I had left him tasked with the job of keeping our guests entertained: some friends of mine from college, and my best friend from grade school.
And instead of me enjoying these friends I rarely saw, I was in the kitchen acting like I was Julia Child filming an episode of “The French Chef.”
Two, maybe three hours later, I finally served dinner.
My elementary school friend, who I had only been recently reacquainted with as a young adult, politely declined a Cornish Game Hen and gently let me know she was a vegetarian. She took a clump of the pasta and a scoop of the overly soft beans and took her plate to the table.
My sweet college friends who probably would have been happier with grilled burgers and beer, took a game hen but mostly just poked at it with their forks.
And the hubs, who really would have preferred pizza, ate his whole meal, reluctantly, but you know the saying, “Happy wife” and all that.
This was the first of many attempts to throw overly-complicated dinner parties. And it was not the last time people kindly indulged me by eating my food even if they weren’t too sure about it.
Nowadays, I don’t sit around to plan with a stack of cookbooks as much as I used to. I simply look to what’s in season at the farmers market, pair it with something to grill, and pick up cookies from a favorite bakery.
I spend less time trying to impress my guests with my cooking skills and more time actually sitting down to enjoy the meal with them.
Because what I remember most about that first dinner party isn’t the cold, clumpy pasta or the roasted hens we all stared at as they sat on our plates…but the fact that I barely spent any time with the friends I’d made it all for.
And I try to remind myself that Martha has a staff.
Cheers,
Carrie