On Hosting
On Hosting
Sometimes you just have to buy a Costco rotisserie chicken, slap on an herby salsa verde, and pretend.
Last weekend I hosted a dinner party for my girlfriends. It was nothing less than a labor of love: multi-day prep, trying to make galette dough work in 90-degree heat, sacrificing my dietary needs (read my last post for context), spending a bit too much money. I live for these kinds of nights, even if they always feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I want to dig in to this impulse of mine, especially since it’s not an impulse shared by many. But hosting—or helping a someone host—offers a beautiful moment to tell your friends “Hey! You are important to me! Look at this galette I made to prove that!” Not that importance needs to be proven, but a party will never go unappreciated.
First things first, hosting can be a lovely practice if you learn how to make things easy for yourself—and listen to advice. At the inception of this event, I was all jazzed up and made a lofty commitment to cooking enough chicken to feed twelve people, in addition to make two types of savory galettes and a whole cake. I was planning on following this recipe for chicken with leeks (Alison Roman, I love you) which is simple enough on its own, but, in my typical do-it-all fashion, meant I’d have to deal with poultry, pastry, and pistachios. Far too many Ps for one evening. I was complaining about the work ahead of me to my (friend?) (lover?) (tbd?) and she suggested a very simple fix: Costco rotisserie chicken. My god! How could I be so frivolous! The humble rotisserie chicken can take you far. Of course, I spat out the usual “But I’ll feel like fraud!” to which she replied “You’re already throwing a whole dinner party. That’s enough!” Readers, this is Lesson #1. You need to tell a host when enough is enough. They’re delusional and need to be psychologically sedated from time to time.
So, I grabbed my bestie Jules, trotted off to the hallowed warehouse (COSTCO) and purchased exactly fifty dollars and two cents of food: two rotisserie chickens, a bag of lemons, 24 eggs, a box of cilantro lime rice and a stack of canned tuna. No one in the world has ever gone in to Costco and purchased only $50 of food. I consider this a triumph of restraint. I’ve been eating only tuna and rice for a few days straight and my biceps have doubled in size.
Jules and I had blast sourcing our chicken. In fact, the several grocery trips leading up to dinner were a large part of the fun themselves. Which leads me to Lesson #2: don’t consider the prep to be work. The prep period is like the VIP section of hosting. You recruit those most important to your team. There are the brainstormers, the grocery companions, the cleaners, the calmers, etc. This is always my favorite part of hosting because I can see before my eyes how my loved ones light up by getting to help out in something that brings me joy. Help your friends see through their passions. It will mean the world.
I had two chickens, my cake elements prepped, my galette dough chilling, my radishes sliced. It was about 3:00 pm. Guests don’t arrive until 7. I was feeling good. Except, it was hot. Sweltering even. Turns out, the world loves to be 90 degrees the day you’ve committed to handling butter-based pastry and frosting cakes. Not to mention, I had to have the oven on. The time came to start rolling out dough and the stress set in. The butter was instantly melting. Those like me who are Great British Bake Off enthusiasts understand the manic panic of a baker forced to work in the middle of the summer. The Bake Off producers get a kick out of lining up pastry or chocolate week with the hottest days. The poor contestants attempt, with fear in their eyes, to produce chocolate cake collars and pie sculptures in a standing temperature warm enough to turn ice to water in minutes. Well, here I was doing it to myself. Lesson #3: always check the weather before setting a date. Forecasts are getting awfully accurate these days and event-appropriate weather is a variable you want to control. The galette dough made it out OK, with the help of my freezer, and only leeched out a little butter in the oven. I, however, was a sweaty mess and didn’t get myself together until 30 minutes before guests arrived. Weather, my people, is important.
My roommates cleaned the apartment and set up the appetizers while I did some very necessary dolling up post-pastry marathon. We were ready. At around 7:15, the guests began rolling in. At this point my angelic (friend?) (lover?) (tbd?) had already served me up a filthy little martini to sip while I did the dolling. BIG thank you to her for being the resident bartender. We all drank, gabbed, ate cheese, made toasts, ate dinner, gabbed, sliced cake, got a little drunk, at cake, shared a cheeky cigarette on the fire escape, and then it was over. Just like that. It felt like the whole thing lasted about 20 minutes. This brings me the last teaching, Lesson #4: document your parties. This is a perfect guest tax. My cute pink Canon digital camera with its shit quality came in so clutch. She was passed around and I was left with an assortment of pictures and videos to document my hard work. The hardest pill to swallow about hosting is that you usually put in at least 3x the actual length of the party into the prep. Its an unforgiving commitment. Though the joy you will derive from a successful event makes it all worth it, you will feel unfulfilled without some evidence of your product.
Hosting is, to me, the ultimate form of friendship maintenance. An event big or small is guaranteed to make an invitee feel special. I am the type of person that runs a little too fast to make a consistent effort at keeping up with all the people I consider in my circle. A party gives me a moment to distribute a mass “Thank you.” Call it impersonal. Call it a cop-out. I think it’s a realistic way to commit time to friendship. In this busy world, sometimes you need to have scheduled friend time. Spontaneity is a luxury. Besides, generosity is generosity, even if I express it in concentrated spurts. And, selfishly, I will admit that seeing your friends all together in one space brings ultimate satisfaction and adoration.
I love to host and will continue to put too much effort into three hours of fun. All I wish is that I learn from my mistakes and remind myself that even if I served up soggy pastry (which, for the record, I did NOT), just the act of hosting is enough. I leave you with the below video of me chowing down on my and the Costco pitmaster’s hard work. Costco ribs, you’re next.
Until then!
xx
Ally
Chicken Recipe (If you want to actually cook chicken, unlike me)