Etiquetteer wanted a lighter menu for this Saturday night’s Dress Dinner Challenge, which meant finding a lighter beverage than the usual manhattan cocktail. This resulted in Etiquetteer enjoying an entire bottle of Moet et Chandon Impérial, which somehow ended up on the wine rack and was the only white wine in the house. Once a bottle of champagne has been opened, it must be consumed. It just doesn’t keep for a few days afterward!
When only one wine is served with dinner, it’s not necessary to have any additional glasses.
So, the menu:
Cheddar et craquelins
Salade d'épinards et de chou frisé
Sauté de poulet au citron
Riz brun Épinards cuits à la vapeur
Framboises et Jello d’orange à la crème d’artifice
Steamed spinach, lemon chicken sauté, brown rice. I never paid so much attention to plating before I started this project.
Like many diners out (I do miss going to restaurants!), I have been forced to experiment in the kitchen with new recipes. This time I discovered a (necessarily) very simple dish for sautéed chicken with shallots, lemon juice, and marjoram, sprinkled with lemon zest. Yes, spinach shows up twice on the menu; not really a good idea, but I just wasn’t paying attention when I picked up that box of salad.
Jello is such a basic American dessert, and it can be dressed up in any number of ways. Dear Grandmother’s hobnail glassware always helps, and raspberries improve anything. But have you guessed what’s missing in that photo above? No, it isn’t the spoon, or the napkin, or even a wineglass. For a Perfectly Proper dessert presentation with a glass on top of a plate, there should be a small doily under the glass, to keep it from slipping while in transit. My beloved Ellen Maury Slayden, Congressional wife and diarist, had to keep a Senator from eating one with his ice cream at one of her dinners. She recorded that he never forgave her.
It’s become a feature of Dress Dinner Challenge for Etiquetteer readers to vote on a bow tie a couple days in advance. This weekend two selections tied - no pun intended! - for first. As you see, I chose a bold paisley that pops with a pale purple shirt; the violets on sky blue will have to wait for another dinner. But this led to a very interesting question from an Instagram reader: why not change ties between courses? Which led another reader to question whether or not that would really be Perfectly Proper at a dinner party. Of course the correct answer is that changing clothes between courses isn’t really correct*. This exchange did remind me, though, of Cecil Beaton’s story about a society showoff in his charming book The Glass of Fashion, a lady at a banquet who kept inventing excuses to go upstairs and change her dress. “Oh, a cigarette burn!” was succeeded by “Oh, a speck of ice cream!” etc. You get the idea. Quite the fashion parade, but . . . not a good look.
Socially the evening was quite busy, having been invited to a Zoom “Gin Room” for the cocktail hour, and dined with a friend via Facetime. And course it’s necessary to tune into Jon Richardson’s Virtual Piano Bar after the table has been cleared!
The price of all that champagne Saturday night is a sinkful of dishes to wash on Sunday. But I have to say, it was worth it. I look forward to dining with you again next Saturday!
*The “Let me slip into something more comfortable” line is best used at, shall we say, intimate little dinners of no more than two, or possibly three, consenting adults.
