Getting the Pretty Back

by Molly Ringwald

  Now before you start the final stage, some helpful hints:

  Make sure you have invited people you really like to dinner. If you have things with shells that need to be cracked, buy claw crackers. If you don’t have claw crackers, don’t have things with shells. Have very big napkins, preferably of the pretty dishcloth variety. They will get stained. have very good bread. Make it into toasts. Have aioli, or better, rouille.

  So you have stock. You have beautiful fish. Everything else is ready. Your wine is chilling, there’s a green salad for later, or before if you must, and poached pears or roasted peaches, depending on your season, for dessert.

  Bring your stock to a simmer. Add your large pinch of saffron. First add the pieces of fish that look the biggest. Then the small guys. Add the cockles and mussels last* (as you’re doing this, increase the heat, because the cold fish will take heat out of the pot and slow everything down). When these shellfish have opened, it’s ready. Throw out any you see that stay closed.

  Serve in wide bowls, giving everyone a bit of everything. Dunk bread. Slather rouille or aoili (sometimes I stir some in—yet more heresy, before serving) on the bread. Drink icy white wine. Be very happy to be eating this with people you like.

  THE PERFECT DINNER PARTY

  I love dinner parties more than any other kind of party. I love going to them, and I love giving them. I don’t think there is any steadfast rule about the right way to give a party, although there are a few guidelines that I have gleaned from experience.

  1. MAKE SURE THAT YOUR GUESTS CAN EAT WHAT YOU PREPARE.

  It’s always a good idea to find out if there are any vegetarians. Or even just picky eaters. I once sent out an e-mail a couple of days before a dinner I was hosting and received a litany of likes and dislikes from a new friend. If I hadn’t known that she was talking about herself, I would have thought that she was listing her son’s allergies. But as annoying as this is, it is far better than having a guest pick the offending vegetable out of the sauce.

  2. PREPARE EVERYTHING THAT YOU CAN THE NIGHT BEFORE.

  This may seem obvious—many cookbooks recommend it—but I never realized how much smoother everything goes until I actually tried it. It works particularly well with soups or stews. Anything that has a million little things that need to be chopped up and simmered for hours. In fact, at the risk of sounding like my Greek father-in-law, it actually is better the next day.

  3. ALLOW ENOUGH TIME TO GET YOURSELF TOGETHER BEFORE YOUR GUESTS ARRIVE.

  Not to say that everything has to be finished and served immediately—there is something nice about hanging out in the kitchen while the chef puts the finishing touches on the meal.

  4. POLITELY DECLINE WHEN ASKED “IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP?”

  They are just being polite. The last thing your guests should have to do is be put to work when they arrive. Unless, that is, you observe a look of terror in their eyes at having to socialize with anyone. If that is the case, throw an apron on them and find something easy for them to do.

  5. CHOOSE YOUR SOUND TRACK WISELY.

  I feel that every party should have its own soundtrack. It shouldn’t be loud enough to overpower the conversation, but as a general rule, classical should be reserved for brunch. Jazz is my personal favorite—though having grown up listening to twenties jazz music, it is my musical equivalent to comfort food. It gives the evening a sort of vintage Woody Allen-movie flair and somehow makes people sound smarter.

  6. KEEP THE MEAL SIMPLE.

  Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, simpler is better when it comes to the actual dinner. Most people are just thankful not to have to eat out yet again or be at home thawing out whatever they have in their freezer. They are downright grateful to eat anything warm and tasty put before them, no matter how simple. So if you aren’t used to cooking for a bunch of adults, best to keep your stress level down and stick with something relatively easy. A roasted chicken is one of the easiest, and conversely impressive, dishes. It is my standby. Accompanied by a green salad (perfectly dressed, of course), roasted potatoes, and French green beans. Roasted chicken is versatile too, in that it is one of those year-round meals. In spring and summer, you can serve it with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, in fall and winter, switch to Poule au Pot and a Côte de Rhône.

  7. BAG THE BUFFET.

  This is a rule that I made up when I was still living with my parents as a teenager. My mother announced over Thanksgiving one year that the meal would be served “buffet style.” I howled in protest. Buffet style? What are we, a cafeteria? To me, dinner is a time for everyone to sit together and pass things around. “Can you pass the bread?” is such a convivial phrase. The passing and the sharing. Buffets seem to take that away. If the reason for instituting a buffet is that there is just too much food to fit on one table, then you are probably serving too much food.

  8. SIZE IT RIGHT.

  I think the perfect number for a dinner party is six. Fewer than six can feel like a double date, more than six runs the risk of having two separate parties in one. It’s nice to have different conversations going, but at some point they ought to converge, like the moment in a symphony when all of the leitmotifs come together. As a hostess, make sure that you draw out the shyer people and keep the conversation hogs in check. There are some differing opinions as to whether or not you need to separate couples. The classicists say absolutely, but the more progressive hostess in me says let people sit where they want. A night out should be enjoyable for everyone, and if that means sitting with your beloved, then that’s where you should sit. In my case, having a night out with my husband, with our busy schedules and parenting responsibilities, seems like a treat. The last thing I want is to be shunted three seats away from him in the name of dinner party protocol. The one exception, however, is if you are the one throwing the party. In that case, I think it is a good idea to split the table. You cover half while your mate covers the other. That way you have the best chance of ensuring your guests are well taken care of.

  9. DON’T WORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING MATCHING PERFECTLY.

  It’s charming if things are a little mismatched. It makes everything look less intentional, less precious. The wonderful thing about being invited into someone’s home is just that: it is someone’s home. It shouldn’t feel like a film set or a magazine shoot. Tiny chips in the porcelain are fine, they won’t bother anyone. I like little imperfections. And if a chipped saucer mortally offends someone, then ask yourself, do you really want such a stick-in-the-mud in your home?

  10. MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE ENOUGH WINE TO LAST.

  There is nothing more depressing than going to a dinner party and finding that the wine is gone. It is a surefire way to ensure that your guests are gone too. In fact, discreetly putting an end to the wine is the dinner party hostess’s subtle way of letting you know it’s time to hit the road, comparable to a restaurant’s (not-so-subtle) habit of turning up the lights.

  WHAT TO BRING AS A HOSTESS GIFT

  DESSERT: This is an easy way to win your hostess’s heart. It’s very common for the home cook to spend so much time concentrating on the entrée and appetizer and overall setup that the dessert gets neglected. don’t feel that this requires a major time commitment; sure, you can spend hours in your kitchen crafting the perfect profiteroles, but you can also opt for a basket of fresh strawberries from the market. Whatever you bring, err on the side of generous.

  CHAMPAGNE: A lot of people think of champagne as an aperitif, but there is something really lovely about having a great bottle of champagne with dessert.

  FRESH HERBS: no hostess will ever turn her nose up at flowers, but as an alternative, consider bringing clippings of fresh herbs. They don’t have to be relevant to that evening’s meal.

  PINEAPPLE: A friend of mine has endeared himself to me forever by bringing over a pineapple one evening. It’s that perfect combination of thought and whimsy.

  THE HONORED GUEST

  One spring Marie and I were i
n a festive mood. The tulips had all come up on my rooftop terrace, and the weather was perfect. There was a climbing rose, Cecile Brunner, that had just come into bloom. I didn’t know when I had planted this particular flower; though charming and fragrant when in bloom, it blooms for only a very short period of time, and then not again till the following year. It seemed like as good a reason as any to throw a party.

  We invited our guests to the party in honor of the Cecile Brunner flower and concocted a special cocktail to go along with it: champagne with a coulis of raspberries.

  Dining alfresco whenever possible is my motto. Especially in a city where we spend so much of the day cooped up indoors. The rooftop deck was the main reason I had chosen my apartment in Manhattan. Who needs a country house when you can dine among Japanese maples while gazing at the Chrysler building? Some of my fondest moments have been spent on the roof, either dining with friends, or during the day, working in the roof garden, my hands deep in the soft, warm dirt.

  Food is one of the true great pleasures of life, and I feel that it has been demonized to the point where so many people can’t enjoy a perfectly healthy meal without having shame attached to it. I truly believe that this has led us down a disastrous road of modifying the way we eat to the point of not actually eating real food at all. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the Michael Pollan manifesto that he writes in his book In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And when he says food, he means real food, not edible foodlike substances, which is what we find all over the place in supermarkets today. The more we can get back in touch with real food, the healthier we, and our families, will be. And if you have the space, plant a little garden. Live off the fat of the land! I’m not saying that you need to dress like a pioneer and start churning your own butter, but planting your own small organic garden is a wonderful way to know what it is you are feeding yourself, and at the same time make food less abstract for your children. Kids tend to be far less suspicious of food and more willing to try it if they have some idea of where it came from.

  Tending a garden also has the added benefit of being incredibly meditative for me—it’s the part of the day when I don’t have to talk, or answer, or even think. And the satisfaction of eating what you grow never ceases to be magical. I remember being a seventh grader and growing radishes in horticulture class. I was just as bored and blasé as all of my fellow students, but the day that we harvested and I got to take home a giant heap of radishes in a brown paper bag was thrilling. My family ate radishes for a week as I vigilantly checked to make sure that my hard-earned booty was being properly consumed. To this day I have a special fondness for radishes that goes far beyond their actual merit.

  I realize that not everyone has the space for a full-blown garden, but it actually takes less space than you think. And a lot of vegetables can grow vertically (tomatoes, green beans), meaning that you can just throw them in an old wine barrel packed with soil. If you don’t have room for even that, however, there is the option of finding a local community garden, something that is becoming more and more prevalent lately. It seems that it has finally dawned on us that we need to get out of processed food purgatory and back to our earth somehow.

  TRICKS THAT MODERN COOKS HAVE FORGOTTEN…OR PERHAPS NEVER LEARNED

  My mom enrolled in chef’s training when she was in her midforties. But her culinary education really began years earlier when, as a young bride, she began to teach herself how to cook. While she never undervalues what she learned in cooking school, most of the information that she has passed down to her children and grandchildren was learned from trial by fire. here is some of my mother’s kitchen wisdom, direct from the school of Adele, in her words…

  When baking a pie, to prevent the edge of the crust from overbrowning, place a strip of aluminum foil around the edge of the pie before putting it into the oven.

  Both biscuits and pie dough are very easy and simple to make from scratch. In order to keep the dough flaky, handle it as little as possible.

  Pie dough is one of the few foods that actually benefit from freezing. The freezing helps relax the gluten. Thus it may be convenient to make the pie dough ahead of time and freeze it for future use.

  Never add salt to a soup or sauce without tasting it first.

  Always store tomatoes with the stem-end down. They will last longer. And never put tomatoes in the refrigerator. Refrigerating tomatoes ruins their flavor.

  Do not store onions with apples or potatoes because the onions will make the apples and potatoes ripen faster.

  If you store potatoes in a crock, they won’t turn green. Green potatoes are poisonous.

  To prevent the stinky green border around the yolk of a hard-cooked egg, put the egg (or eggs) in cold water and place on stove over heat. bring to a boil and then immediately turn the heat down to a low simmer and cook for thirteen minutes. Then immediately take off heat and place eggs in cold water to stop the cooking process. The green border around the yolk is caused by a chemical in the white and a chemical in the yolk coming together under heat for too long. Remember, eggs are not soft- or hard-boiled. They are soft- or hard-cooked.

  When making a potato salad, use a firm potato such as yukon Gold or White rose instead of Idaho (which are mealy). The potato salad will stay tasty longer.

  When making fruit pies, add a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice. This will bring out the flavor of the fruit. Also, dot the filling with about a tablespoon of butter. This will enrich the flavor of the fruit. With stone fruits, such as peaches or cherries, a quarter of a teaspoon of almond extract enhances the flavor. Be careful though, as almond extract is very strong—less is more…

  When baking a cake, bake it at a lower temperature, such as 325 degrees Fahrenheit, for a longer period of time. The cake will rise more evenly and not have the hump in the middle. This is especially helpful when decorating a cake.

  Make your bread dough the day before (eighteen to twenty-four hours) you are going to bake. You will not have to use as much yeast, and your bread will have a better flavor.

  When hard water deposits have built up in a stainless-steel teapot, double broiler, or other stainless-steel pans, simmer unsweetened Kool-Aid in the pan, and the buildup will dissolve without scrubbing. (For those of you who own or work in a restaurant, the Kool-Aid works fantastic in cleaning steam tables. It will save hours and hours of scrubbing.)

  I always tell new cooks: “Just as all it takes to have a green thumb is brown knees—all it takes to be a good cook is a good recipe and the good sense to follow it.”

  Chapter Seven

  WORK IT OUT

  AND NOW WE COME TO THE SHORTEST CHAPTER IN THE BOOK…FITNESS. I wish that I had more to say on the topic. I wish that I could wax equally rhapsodic on the subject of reverse crunches as I can on Pissaldiere (savory Provençale tarte made with puff pastry and onions, preserved fish called pissala, or anchovies in a pinch, and olives). But I can’t. I don’t get excited about working out. I begrudgingly renew my gym membership, I drag myself there a few times a week, I work out, but never with the same enthusiasm that several of my friends do. I wish I had that chip in my brain that could thrill at the sight of an elliptical trainer. I wish my heart would race when I hear an aerobics instructor bark out steps in a room full of sweaty people. I have spent years trying to find that elusive endorphin high that runners supposedly get. All I’ve gotten are bad knees and an occasional stitch in the side.

  So why do I include this chapter at all? Because exercise is a fact of life. We need to stay fit. Everyone should, though in my business it is a professional imperative. (Actually, in my business, I should be at least ten pounds underweight, if I really want to look like I’m in great shape, but I have to draw the line somewhere.) Some of us have metabolisms that just naturally burn calories, and we can eat whatever we want and have little to show for it in the way of jiggly upper arms and muffin tops. Others can run six miles every morning and then put on weight just walking past a Pinkberry. It hard
ly seems fair. I would say that I fall somewhere between these two categories. I inherited my paternal grandmother’s tall yet curvy figure—the latter description being something that my grandmother tried her entire life to starve herself out of. She was an undiagnosed anorexic/bulimic who abhorred any sort of weight gain, on her or anyone else. I remember as a child listening to her boast that her waist could be measured by my grandfather putting his two hands around her waist, fingertips touching. I am pretty sure that food never held the same allure for her as it does for me. Food for her equaled shame—something to deny herself, or to immediately get rid of if she did indulge. Food for me equals a kind of wonder, a miraculous thing. You can create that with these simple ingredients? It’s something that I would never want to give up, which means that I need to face the fact that the only way I can continue my love affair with food is to get in bed with the gym—and pretend I like it. Close my eyes and think of England…

  The times when I have been the most successful at staying in shape have been motivated by love. Falling in love or falling out of love. The former being the easiest, since the endorphin kick from infatuation makes you feel like you can move skyscrapers—a few chaturangas are small potatoes. Yoga lends itself to this state very nicely. Falling out of love is usually more anger motivated, and every exercise can seem like a violent, almost vengeful act. It’s a great time to take up boxing. But unfortunately, these two emotional states are short-lived and not dependable as fitness motivators. The desire to exercise needs to come from somewhere else.