For the Table , livre ebook

ABRAMS BOOKS - Stockwell Anna Stockwell

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297 pages

English

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From a rising food star, a toast to the art of the dinner partyHosting a dinner party is a special kind of occasion. You welcome old and new friends into your home and gather around the table. You put out platters of food prepared just for that table of people, passing them around until everyone's had their fill. This sense of sharing and togetherness feeds more than just bellies. It is what helps us stay connected, form new relationships, and build lasting bonds with our chosen families. During socially distanced times, the perfect dinner party might have felt like a lost art, but in For the Table, up-and-coming food writer Anna Stockwell provides all the tools needed for bringing back the ritual of hosting memorable yet modern dinner parties. Stockwell has written a cookbook for a new way of entertaining that's simpler, better, healthier, and more fun. Organized by season and full of helpful hosting advice, Stockwell provides accessible and modern menus; each is built around two large platters to pass around the table and includes suggestions for no-recipe side dishes. Dinner parties don't have to be formal or fussy, or even a lot of work, to be celebratory and gratifying. This book teaches you how to plan and prepare great-tasting and impressive-looking menus that are easy to pull off, as well as offers expert advice on toasts, prep-ahead strategies, and tips on handling guest lists and dietary restrictions. With its mix of innovative food presentation and old-fashioned, homestyle technique, For the Table is a testament to the art of the dinner party and looks forward to the festive dinner gatherings of the future.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	26 avril 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781647006891
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	6 Mo

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FOR ALL THE FRIENDS AND LOVERS WHO HAVE FILLED THE SEATS AT MY TABLE, WITH LOVE AND THANKS

CONTENTS
Introduction
A Little Dinner Party Planning Advice
The Dinner Party-Ready Kitchen
Before-Dinner Drinks
There Should Always Be Snacks
Sauces and Toppings for All Seasons
The Right Way to Make a Salad
Fall Menus
Games for the Table (and Parlor)
Winter Menus
Useful Rituals
Spring Menus
Questions for the Table
Summer Menus
Sweets for Sharing
After-Dinner (or Dessert) Drinks
Sources
After a Dinner Party
Index of Searchable Terms
Acknowledgments
Introduction
This is a book for a new way of planning and cooking dinner menus that are simpler, more flexible, and more fun. It s here to prove that a dinner party doesn t need to be formal or fussy or even a lot of work to be celebratory and meaningful, and I m here to teach you how.
I believe that the act of gathering around the table is what s actually special and most important about a dinner party. Putting out a couple platters of food prepared just for that table of people, and passing those platters around until everyone s had their fill-this sharing feeds more than just bellies. It is what helps us stay connected, form new relationships, and maintain lasting bonds with our chosen families. Now more than ever, this act of intentional gathering for a festive dinner is a useful ritual to bring into our lives. It s uplifting, it s fulfilling, and it s a lot of fun.
The menus that follow are each built around two large platters for the table. These are not the meat-and-three-sides dinners our grandparents or parents served. While one dish in each menu is often more protein-forward than the other, neither is necessarily the main. Instead, they costar, each giving a shining performance on its own, but together are a true showstopper. Many of the menus include meat, but I don t believe we should all be eating meat all the time-these are special occasion menus, and so I source my meat carefully from local organic farms and enjoy every bite of it. When meat is on the menus that follow, though, I always provide tips for how to feed a meat-free guest, and there are plenty of vegetarian menus too.
Making just two large-format recipes is my favorite way to host dinner for a crowd of any size and works just as well for your weeknight family dinners as it does for entertaining. When you focus on making just two special things for dinner, you can actually have time to bake a cake and change your clothes before dinner too, and everything you make is better for not being rushed in the hustle of too many things. In addition to making life easier, serving dinner family style lets everyone choose what ends up on their plates, and the passing of platters back and forth across the table (or the revisiting of platters on a buffet) creates connection among a group.
The two recipes that anchor each menu are designed to go together, and I hope you will try serving them together, but you can, of course, pick them apart and reconfigure as desired. My menus are organized by season because that s how I like to cook, and what I want to eat depends so much on weather and seasonal availability. So if you do mix and match recipes, it s best to do so within a season. In addition to a couple platters, I almost always add a sauce, because I ve found that nothing more easily makes a dinner feel like a special dinner than serving a homemade sauce for the table. I ve left the after-dinner sweet and before-dinner snack planning of the menu up to you though, with an arsenal of easy no- to low-cook snacks and gluten-free desserts that you can add to any menu.
I ve been hosting dinner parties since I was a teenager (I even dabbled in it as a kid), and there is still nothing that makes me happier. Over the last decade plus, I ve worked in the editorial offices and test kitchens of some of the best food magazines and websites, including SAVEUR , Epicurious, and Bon App tit , and I got my culinary degree at the International Culinary Center in New York City in the process. As a food editor for Epicurious, I learned how to streamline and simplify my recipes as much as possible without sacrificing flavor to make them foolproof for home cooks, and developed more 30-minute weeknight dinners than I can count. I know that your time, dear reader, is precious, and I will never waste it. While working fulltime and overtime in NYC food media, I kept hosting constantly, cooking in a small apartment kitchen with no dishwasher. My lack of time and kitchen space taught me how to focus on what really matters when entertaining, and how to streamline my cooking and prep as much food ahead as possible to minimize dishes and maximize my own enjoyment of my time with my guests. (I now live in the Hudson Valley with a bigger kitchen and a dishwasher, but I still like to cook and entertain this way.) The menus that follow almost all appeared on the dining table in my Brooklyn apartments over the years. They have been put through the test of being served to real live guests, some of them many times, and I promise you they work.
Yes, all the recipes in this book are gluten-free, because I have to eat gluten-free, but you can always add bread (regular or gluten-free), and the very few recipes that use all-purpose gluten-free flour can also be made with regular all-purpose flour. I firmly believe in accommodating any and all dietary restrictions when entertaining, so I ve clearly marked my menus with what diets they accommodate, using the icons that follow:

gluten-free

vegan

meat-free

dairy-free

pescatarian
Each menu also includes suggestions for how to revise or add to the meal if needed to accommodate additional dietary restrictions. Dietary restrictions are here to stay, so it s good to know how to roll with the needs of your guests.
I hope this book will inspire and help you gather people around your table for dinner. It s time to have more dinner parties!
Why I Host
Before I dive into sharing my recipes and advice for hosting, I thought I should try to explain why. The day after a dinner party when the thank-you texts from friends start to roll in, I always respond with, Thank YOU for coming! And no, that s not to be cute. I truly feel so grateful for anyone who shows up at my table and trusts their night to me.
Hosting a dinner party makes me feel useful and accomplished, but it also brings me great pleasure and joy. We could talk about how, as an introverted extrovert and formerly shy person, having a task and a structure gives me permission to be social, and that does play a part for sure, but that s not really it. Have you ever acted in a play? I did a lot of theater in my school and college days, and I loved the thrill of sharing a live performance with an audience after spending a long time carefully rehearsing and building it with the cast and crew. After all that work was over, we moved on with our lives. You might think, What was all that effort for, if the thing you created just lasted for a moment? But the memory of that performance and how it brought us all together in a new and exciting way lived on and left a lingering glow. Hosting a dinner party is like that for me. I love the buildup. I love the anticipation. I love setting my table in the afternoon glow of an empty house knowing that soon that table will be full of people. Fork by fork, glass by glass, I build the scene for the evening s experience, full of hope. And the next day as I wash wine glasses, I love to remember the evening, recount its best parts, and bask in the glow of something good that can never be duplicated or experienced again.
Another thing I love about hosting is the simple act of feeding people. It delights me to be able to watch something I made bring joy to another person as they eat it-and to know that I m literally helping them live by feeding them is a special kind of magic. What other kind of gift could be a clearer sign of my love than nourishment? I ve spent more time than I d like living alone as an adult, and cooking for myself is a completely different experience than cooking for others. I prefer the latter but am working on getting better at the former. Dinner especially is a meal best shared. It is a time to stop and reflect on the day, to share your thoughts and experiences, to give thanks, and to nourish more than just the body. So, I bring as many people as I can into my home as often as I can. And when you have company to feed, you also have company to help do the dishes. And yes, I always let my company help throughout the night, even with the dishes-I do not believe in doing absolutely everything for anyone. That is not what hosting is about. It s about setting the stage for a memorable night, cooking some food, and sharing your love.
A LITTLE DINNER PARTY PLANNING ADVICE
Old-fashioned etiquette guides, party-planning timelines, and RSVPs make me weak in the knees. But don t worry, I m not here to impose that kind of structure onto your dinner party planning-we live in the modern world and don t have the time or the need for so much etiquette. But I do have some tips to make the process of hosting fit more easily into your life.
THE MORE OFTEN YOU HOST, THE EASIER IT BECOMES
I suppose this is true for most things in life, right? So, if you want to become good at hosting, make a habit of having people over. Put a dinner party on the calendar at least once a month! The more you do it, the easier it gets. And the easier it gets, the less you ll worry about it and the more you ll want to do it.
THERE IS NO PERFECT NUMBER OF GUESTS
How many people should you invite? Well, that s really up to you. Four people can feel like a party if that s not the usual number at your table. And many of the menus in this book can even be cut down to serve two. My table seats eight most comfortably, so that s usually the number I aim for myself, but often I get overexcited w