Another dress dinner challenge has come and gone, and Perfectly Proper it was, too, in its way. I begin with a 5 PM cocktail hour, this time with a friend via Zoom, and then move to the kitchen at 6 to do battle.
This weekend’s menu, in French as befits a formal dinner:
Brie et craquelins Celeri coupé
Salade vert
Risotto écossais
Fraises et bleuets
Restes de chocolats de Pâques
This is a very simple menu for Those Dining Alone because there’s only one recipe, the risotto. It takes no brains at all to chop up celery sticks for hors d’oeuvres, to pull some salad out of a box and add dressing, or to hull some berries to put in a china bowl and sprinkle with sugar. The simplest thing of all was the leftover Easter candy to add to dessert!
“Scottish” risotto came together from memories of a recipe in a cookbook I couldn’t find, a recipe discovered online, and improvisations based on what was actually in the larder. Instead of arborio rice (traditional) or barley (Scottish), I used brown rice (which doubled the cooking time). Instead of dry white wine (the recipe) or Scotch (Scottish, obviously), I added a cup of bourbon. And instead of whatever herb was suggested, dill to complement the salmon. With peas, it accomplished the three elements we’re used to seeing on a dinner plate: meat, starch, and a vegetable. The result was quite palatable, and thank goodness; I’ll be eating it the rest of the week! A dish like risotto isn’t usually served at a formal dinner*, but for Those Dining Alone, and then Cleaning Up Alone, simplicity is key.
Dinner ended with a brief toast for Peace Toward All. To be Perfectly Candid, reading the news earlier in the day left me a rather desperate mood, and the tasks of preparing for dinner - bathing, getting dressed, clearing the decks in the kitchen, mixing drinks - left me feeling more settled than I might have been had I succumbed to bourbon and a pint of ice cream in bed. Perhaps you find it so as well, at the end of the day, or the week. I look forward to dining with you again next Saturday night!
The gold bow tie won out in the voting!
*Millicent Fenwick’s Vogue’s Book of Etiquette provides remarkably detailed information about formal dinners and “dinners of ceremony.”