cookbookshelf
THE pLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY
HOW TO GIVE A DINNER PARTY WITHOUT LOSING YOUR MIND
BY JONATHAN HAYES during the eight years she's been food columnist for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Molly O'Neill has been a consistently intelligent and congenial culinary voice. Writing on a tight weekly deadline, her pieces are as striking in their breadth (from Asian peanut sauces to the Jewish cuisine of Egypt) as they are in their sensitivity.
Like most columnists, at the Times and elsewhere, O'Neill has been unable to resist the anthologizing urge. Her "New York Cookbook" (1992) found her at her most journalistic -- O'Neill's text is an interstitial editorial glue binding together a mosaic of recipes from in and around Gotham. An immediate critical and popular success, that book was followed by "A Well-Seasoned Appetite" (1995), a collection of essays and recipes that celebrated the changing seasons -- it's a book with almost religious reverence for the gradual shifting of air and light.
As if she's been emboldened by the progressively more enthusiastic receptions accorded her (progressively louder) authorial voice, O'Neill takes a brave and perhaps ill-advised plunge in her new collection, "The Pleasure of Your Company." Ostensibly a cookbook about entertaining, the book is coyly described on the jacket as "part novel, part cookbook, part self-help, part social satire." Here's what this really means: O'Neill has replaced her well-considered essays with a roman à clef about a circle of hostesses (plus one professional caterer) who form a self-help group to share advice and recipes on the subject of How To Give Killer Dinner Parties In an Era When Expectations Have Soared but Time Available for Preparation is Nonexistent.
Come meet the participants! Johanna, a 40-ish documentary filmmaker and inveterate Hostess with the Mostest; Mrs. J., platinum-rinsed society doyenne and avatar of ancien-garde entertaining; Nan, a busy biological researcher in her 20s, as well as a latchkey childhood survivor and kitchen neophyte; Elizabeth, an uptight lawyer, here an icon of cool pragmatism; and finally, the prissy and insecure Mr. D., a society caterer propelled into crisis by changing dietary and hostessing norms.
At one level, these characters are a useful conceit -- they allow O'Neill to present a series of season-by-season menus pitched to a variety of different skill levels and entertaining needs. The problem is, O'Neill lets her cast become caricatures; their internal dialogues sink into neurotic flailing, and their narratives become irritatingly cute. (Nan, suspicious that the snide Mr. D. is dissing her clothes, realizes that she's just being paranoid: "Clearly, reasoned Nan, Mr. D. was talking fashions in food, not fashion à la Anne Taylor -- a store, by the way, that Nan herself was beginning to notice with more regularity.") By the time I reached the summer menus, I was praying that Mr. D. would be found unconscious in the kitchen, his whereabouts given away only by the muffled hum of Nan's immersion blender, planted securely in his fastidious fundament. Ultimately, what might have been an effective innovation reads like ingratiatingly whimsical copy from a J. Peterman catalog.
I had to read every word, but general readers don't, and most probably won't. This is a pity, because O'Neill offers a number of excellent suggestions. There's a lot of pithy advice on streamlining dinner party preparation packed into the crevices of the fanciful chapter breaks. O'Neill even goes so far as to endorse the practice of customizing catered or store-bought dishes with homemade sauces or garnishes. Other useful recommendations include finessing simple stews by using exotic spices and bracketing an easy one-pot main course with dazzling appetizers and desserts.
The recipes, which are up to O'Neill's usual high standard, are prefaced with useful do-ahead guidelines, ingredient substitutes and alternate menus. The lack of photographs, however, is a significant flaw, particularly in a book aiming to inspire stylish hosting.
Some of my friends -- old Craig Claiborne loyalists, mostly -- argue that O'Neill's recent columns give evidence of authorial burnout. While I'd agree that the years of pumping out well-written essays have taken their toll, her recipes are still varied and strong, this collection included. If O'Neill has been hanging around with the sort of people she's written about in "The Pleasure of Your Company," she certainly deserves a nice, long vacation. Far away from Park Avenue, far away from Le Cirque, and far, far away from Mr. D.
Jonathan Hayes writes about food for Paper magazine.
Recipe for Wild Mushroom Timbales with Bacon and Arugula
P R E V I O U S R E V I E W S "Last Dinner on the Titanic" reviewed by Sam Sifton (04/09/97)
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