Eating together over a video link is nothing new in the world's pandemic response, but I was looking for a sense of occasion. I wanted to play a proper host's role, and I hungered for the atmosphere of a celebratory, formal dinner party. Such entertaining is usually the highlight of our winter months but has been absent from our lives since autumn 2019. Thanks to eight adventurous friends, I think we managed it.
We started with a WhatsApp group and a contest. Each of the 10 (including us) participants suggested an ingredient or challenge for each of the three courses. Amongst the starter suggestions were "pistachio", "the American South", or the cryptic "smoke in the water." Suggestions for mains included ingredients (chestnut, capers), instructions (roast it, spice it up) and cuisines (England on a plate, French). Desserts might have been anything from "get colourful" to Biscoff (a new ingredient for most of us) to crumble.
Once all the nominations were in I wrote them on slips of paper and staged a random draw for each course, recorded on video and broadcast to our WhatsApp group to ensure impartiality and create a sense of occasion. This happened a full three weeks out from the dinner, so everyone had plenty of time to plan their menu. The random draw gave us a first course of pasta, the instructions to "wrap it up" for our mains and cheesecake for dessert.
Three weeks of amusing culinary chat ensued across WhatsApp, connecting people who mostly didn't know each other well, if at all. This turned out to be a fabulous way to break the ice, so that by the time everyone got together on a live broadcast they felt they knew each other a bit. The digital format also made it possible to bring together five couples who would have been particularly difficult to get around a real table, given their starting points. While two friends were connecting from down the street, the others joined us from Herefordshire, Essex and Norfolk.
I laid down timings in advance to help everyone plan and try to ensure we were eating each course together. We'd assemble at 7 for cocktails, serve starters at 7:30 and mains at 8. But we were flexible. Between conversation and ambitious second courses, we slid our "wrap it up" interpretations to 8:15, and dessert to 9. In the run-up to the start time, everyone laid their tables, setting up their computers at one end and a festive array of china, glassware and candles at the other.
And then ... we dressed for dinner. Men ironed shirts, dug out cufflinks and polished shoes. Women wore makeup and donned dresses. The majority made what efforts we could to tame our lockdown locks, while the bald ones smirked with superiority. We all agreed it was a delight to make an effort, and all of the preparation contributed to it feeling like a grand event.
Naturally, staring at a mosaic of five screens at the other end of the table on an iPad leaves something to be desired. We certainly didn't get the views of everyone's culinary efforts we would have liked ... though shares on social media the next day revealed that people had made as much of an effort with "plating up" as they did with everything else. If we do this again, we'll set our table in front of the television screen in the sitting room and broadcast from there, so we can see people and their plates in more detail.
While there's actually no need to make huge culinary efforts to participate fully ... ready meals could easily have met the three-course challenge and not diminished the fun ... this was a group that was serious about its food. The WhatsApp group hummed with news and photos of special orders and advance preparation, my favourite being our neighbours' video of a squirming box of live langoustine just arrived from Scotland.
Home-made ravioli dominated the first courses and Wellingtons the mains. (Though the langoustines were a defiant rebuttal wrapped in sole ... if I remember rightly. Like any good dinner party, we'd had a fair amount of wine by that point.) We probably saw the most variety in the cheesecake course. Not only was there the baked or set debate, but the neutral base of the standard version took on an entirely different flavour profile in each house. The suggested but unselected Biscoff made an appearance in the Essex dessert, while Norfolk laid on both a sweet and savoury variety, pictured in the montage of their whole meal posted below.
The menu chez Bencard started with crayfish ravioli in a red pepper sauce. I used a fabulous tip from a Gordon Ramsay recipe for the first time, whizzing half the crayfish into a pate-like paste with an egg white and adding the other half to that, diced fine. The result was a firmer filling that's easier to work with and less likely to "bleed out" in the boiling if your pasta breaks. I made a mistake with my sauce, however. Though my red pepper and carrot combo has become a successful alternative to standard red sauce for my tomato-allergic husband, the flavours overwhelmed the fish here. I should have gone for a simple brown butter with a scattering of pine nuts and herbs.
Piers took over the main course with a venison Wellington ... a beautiful and planet-friendly alternative to beef ... with rosti, broccoli and a fabulous red wine sauce. We still have an issue with presentation, however, and that plate came out as a tasty but rather lumpy array of browns. Note there's no photo. It being late February, I could take my cheesecake (baked, New York style) in a Sicilian direction with a topping of seasonal blood orange curd and candied blood orange slices. Turns out another benefit of a virtual dinner party is that half of the cheesecake is now in the freezer, saved as a treat for a later date.
We spent a lazy Sunday mildly hung over, alternating between sedentary pursuits and cleaning up the prodigious mess in kitchen and dining room. Almost like old times. I'm grateful to adventurous friends who were up for something different. Who's next? Given that the UK government roadmap currently won't allow more than six individuals from more than two households to congregate indoors until 21 June at the earliest, there's plenty of opportunity to do this again.
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