The Dinner Party Issue

Spoiler alert - don't read this if you want to read about it in tomorrow's Sunday New York Times

It's going to be holiday time soon enough, and with that comes dinner parties. Luckily tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Magazine is devoted to all things cooking for a large crowd. Any home chef can follow the recipes and rules - yes, there are rules and be a modern day Pearl Mesta. It's actually easier than one would think, thanks to their  The Art of The Dinner Party.

This is definitely a keeper issue. There are stories and recipes from such heavy hitters as Sam Sifton and Tejal Rao, regular contributors to the Times' Wednesday Food section. What is great about their and other's contributions is that there is a story of how to and why  with the recipes. Home chefs will get a feel of what goes into each particular meal and how to prep the food and table. There are also rules included - mostly on how to start conversations in the little Table Talk tips . This helps any newbie host or hostess start up table talk. One valuable idea is researching some recent news item or weird science story that guests haven't heard about. This will set the ball rolling for some interesting salon like chatting. Another Table Talk  Tip is letting guests mingle and make small talk with each other. It helps in gauging  views on politics, sex and religion. Another fun sidebar is the celebrity questionnaires. Such luminaries as Quest Love, Alice Waters, John Waters, Busy Philips, and DJ Khaled are asked about who they would invite, what food and drink would they serve, where they would hold it  and what music would be played. The fun last question is how would they get people to leave (John Waters' way is a hoot). There are other sidebars too that feature memorable dinners and essays on dinner parties and being a bad guest.

Of course the issue is all about the party itself and the recipes that make it. Each is different and fun in their own ways. Take, for example, Samiin Nosrat's dumpling party,  which is really a cooking party,where everyone pitches in to make the Korean mandu or potstickers. Its' roots go back to when she was in college, busing tables, and working and eating with fellow waitstaff and cooks. It starts with feeding guests snacks first and then letting them pitch in . Tejan Rao gives us a fondue party (surprising  because she is the number one Indian chef). Hers is an informal cheese fondue,  true to the Swiss with Gruyere and Appenzeller cheeses. Bread, potatoes and cornichons are dipped in th gooey melt. She serves it with quick pickled vegetables and finishes with a thin and crisp apple tart. A more sophisticated take is famed chef, Dorie Greenspan has a French twist on it, feeding those in the food industry with gravlax, ossobucco and spiced red wine poached pears. Gabrielle Hamilton 's menu is ideal for a semi dressy cocktail dinner party. It starts out with ice cold martinis that pair with deep fried pork, braised rabbit and roasted mushroom with black lentils and croutons. Sam Sifton writes about the expandable feast complete with steamed clams with jalapeno butter, pineapple salsa, cilantro and mint salad and roasted sweet potatoes with smoked paprika.His is a relaxed do, with turning a dinner party into an expanded family dinner. He ends it with the homey Klondike bars and whiskey.

A dinner party is what you make it. It does take help and that's what the Sunday Magazine dinner party issue is for. Use it during this holiday season to create the one you want to give.

T

A Life in Food Carts

They are a staple of many cities and office campuses. They can provide a variety of tasty foods, from breakfast to even dessert that are cheap and quickly cooked. These are the food carts or lunch boxes and owning them as well as working them is as difficult as owning and working in any restaurant. Yet, they are one of the most popular occupations, especially of immigrants.

Food contributor and former restaurant reviewer Tejal Rao wrote about this little known but ever growing segment of the food industry in yesterday's New York Times Food section. For hipster foodies thinking this is a great life, having a food truck is more than hard work. They represent a dedication to a job that is back breaking and bone wearying. Bad enough the day starts off with hiring someone to drop off the cart or worse  hitching the carts to their cars if the vendors own them and looking for a parking spot big enough for both vehicles.Then there are the turf wars with other vendors.Another problem is the bathroom. One vendor, Kabir Ahmed, a Bangladeshi immigrant has to wait until his partner arrives to reileve him so he can escape to the Target across the street. Then there's the labyrinth of health codes and violations to avoid or that's the end of the business. The end of the day may provide profit but it also provides an aching back and sore feet.

Does owning a food truck have any benefits? It is a great way of getting one's cuisine out to the masses along with catering to loyal regulars.Mr. Ahmed creates twenty dishes from Biryani to all American hot dogs. To make the first he fries onions until they're translucent. He drops a variety of herbs and spices, from star anise to bay leaves into the mix along with a spoonful of garlic paste and ghee. The chicken is the last to go into the savory stew and then the rice is cooked. This too is created an extra special with dried papaya and plums added to the boiling water. Mr. Ahmed adds a soda to the meal , with all it costing only six dollars.It would cost double if it were served in a nearby restaurant. His take home pay at the end of the day is $125 or $625 a week. A yearly salary is only a little over $32,000 - not much for living in the New York metro area. There is the cautionary tale of a cart owner making a whopping three grand a day but he worked himself into sickness and has no one to take care him.Mr. Ahmed would rather have colleagues to help him out. while making less money

A food vendor's life may seem like a dream to any creative foodie or even young chef.Yet it's a dream with a few nightmares.attached. If you want it ,go for it, just be warned.

The First Cookbook Issue Ever

Cookbooks play an important part in any home or even professional chef's arsenal.They not only provide inspiration for meals, they also broaden horizons.They teach home chefs new techniques and introduce them to ingredients they've never tried before.Now the New York Times has created the first cookbook issue. They review and recommend cookbooks  that would be perfect in any kitchen.

Fall 2016 has some culinary celebrities coming out with some interesting compilations. Alton Brown, the Food Network's genius has Everyday Cook . Fans may be disappointed  that it's not full of puns that he's famed for. It's a more introspective book, as Food regular contributor Kim Severson wrote.it reflects his midlife crisis of going through a divorce, drinking and eating too much peanut M&Ms. His recipes are cozy, the kind you'd make for family and friends. There are warm Saltines brushed with dried mustard,hot sauce and butter along with a unique but delicious breakfast carbonara that marries spaghetti with breakfast sausage and eggs.Mr. Brown not only has a cookbook out but also a one man show called "Eat Your Science." Another celebrity with a new cookbook is British chef and radio personality, Diana Henry/ Ms Henry has written "Simple Effortless Food, Big Flavors, Tejan Rao, another regular contributor describes her recipes as having very little instruction because they're so precisely worded. A yogurt marinaded chicken has only three neatly worded paragraphs on how to prepare and cook it.It also includes how to dress a salad too. A recipe for Greek style beans is terse for a recipe that takes exactly one hour to make.

Yet another contributor, Margeaux Laskey reviewed Poole's by Ashley Christensen, a cookbook featuring the best recipes of here famed diner in Raleigh, North Carolina.This is not your ordinary diner food. This is home recipes with an artesinal twist. She calls for roasting and pickling peppers and making cider vinegar mayonnaise .The book has some homey recipes like macaroni au gratin and a warm broccoli salad with a bacon vinaigrette. The piece de resistance is the famed sweet potato hummingbird cake.It's a  fruity, spicy confection topped with a light cream cheese buttercream icing. Chopped peanuts top it.Newcomer Oliver Strand writes about Jessica Koslow's new book, Everything I  Want To Eat: Squirl and The New California Cooking which has the best recipes from her whimsically named restaurant, Squrl.It's a mash up of diner and health food combined with Michelin starred eateries.The style is raw and direct, not much on words as usual cookbooks are.The exotic is also featured. David Tanis reviews Naomi Duguid's book Taste of Persia that features herbed yogurt soup along with fish kabobs made with Alaskan baked cod and tomatoes.

Cookbooks are the best tools in any chef's arsenal. This fall there are more to add. Go for the exotic , or try the homey. They are all informative and fun.

Restaurants That Change The World

Restaurants are an important part of our culture.They are responsible for foods trends and introducing international  cuisines to communities . There's a new book celebrating them and their impact on the American diet, featuring some of the US's most famous eateries.

Food critic and regular contributor, Tejal Rao wrote about this great new book featuring  the most influential restaurants in today's New York Times Food section. "Ten Restaurants That Changed America" (W.W. Norton and Company Publishers) was written by Paul Friedman who is surprisingly a medieval history professor at Yale University. He took on the massive task of researching two hundred years of restaurants , culling through hundreds of thousands of restaurants to culminate in the top ten. The list spans the 19th and 20th Centuries and the American continent. One of the first and most famous is New York's Delmonico, the city's most famous eatery. It started in 1827 as a French pastry shop by the Swiss born Delmonico brothers. They were the first and the most instrumental in bringing a sit down restaurant to a city full of oyster stands and rowdy , boisterous taverns that served just basic dishes., It was the first restaurant to import foods, namely truffles from the Dordogne region of France. Delmonico's also was one of the first to use local fish and turtles caught from the Eastern seaboard. Their menu was the gold standard for all French restaurants for one hundred years.

Chain restaurants such as Howard Johnson''s and Schraft's also changed American eating and paved the way for fast food giants such as McDonald's and Wendy's. Howard Johnson's , still going and famed for their fried clams, pioneered the idea of franchise restaurants, They were also the first for strategic planning, situating restaurants along highways.The idea appealed to traveling families who didn't want to eat at the truck stops ,mostly populated by truckers and sales reps. Schraft's , also was an innovator, It started earlier , in the 1910's and was a Northeastern chain of candy stores. It added a lunch counter and seats, offering a new concept- dining options for unescorted women. Restaurants would not sit women without a male companion. Schraft's didn't believe in that. They also were the first business to hire women as waitresses along with giving maternity leave to pregnant workers.Other restaurants that made a difference were Mama Leone's, Alice Water's Chez Panisse , the famed Sylvia's in Harlem , the equally famed Antoine''s in New Orleans and The Mandarin. In one way or another they  have influenced generations of restaurant owners and chefs.

Restaurants have always been important in American history and culture. "Ten Restaurants  ThatChanged America" shows just that, how they influenced our eating and cooking habits.It is a fascinating read into how vital these eateries are to our psyche and image.