Be Both Interested And Interesting

The key to a successful a dinner party host or hostess is to make your guests feel welcomed and entertained. Some people are just good at it. One of the best is my mother. After spending a weekend at my mom’s a friend once said to me: “Your mom has a gift, she is both interested and interesting”.

My mom is going to be 97 in August and she is still going strong. Mom started college when she was just 16 and still goes to college today. Past being smart, she is a secret weapon at dinner parties. Mom is one of those rare people that really listen to her guests. She has the ability to focus on what her guests are saying and play back an interesting insight to complement her guest’s point.

(Note: This is a picture of Mom Mom telling a story at Jennifer and Ethan’s wedding. Her “stories” have become a fixture at the family’s weddings. After her most recent performance, an investment banker friend recommended she start a business for weddings…”Rent a mom-mom for stories that will make you laugh and cry”.)

One of my largest complaints in life is that brains ran in my family, but when it came to me they walked. Unlike my mom, I am not a great listener. Instead of focusing on what you are saying to me, I am thinking about what I am going to say.

Beyond being interested and interesting mom is a great cook. She is famous for her Mom Mom’s Vinaigrette. She lives in Westhampton NY and gets a lot of visitors in the summer. The local produce out there in the summer is outstanding. Most of the meals mom serves center around a great salad. The cornerstone of her salad is her vinaigrette. She claims the origination is a recipe in the New York Times, but I believe the beauty of it comes form her herb garden and the fact that she never makes it the same way twice.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then this vinaigrette is legendary. My daughter Jennifer once surveyed Mom-mom’s other grandchildren and their spouses and 8 out of 10 use mom’s vinaigrette as a culinary staple. One reason is that it tastes great. The other reason is that it reminds them of their youth spending summers with their amazing grandmother.

If you can make your supper club dinner party guests feel welcomed and entertained you will be a success.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons follow me on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs. Published by Morgan James Publishing and available through most channels where books are sold.

What Is The Right Doneness For Seafood?

Everyone knows how they like their steak cooked. When you order steak, the waiter will ask you how you like it cooked. It is just the opposite with seafood. A lot of people don’t even know how done they like it. The waiter never asks you how you like your seafood. It is like the old line my friend Donnie’s father used to use. The waiter would ask Mr. Berger how he liked his eggs and he would say: “On a plate”.

The sad truth is that the default at lesser restaurants is that they overcook the seafood. A really good chef will cook the fish filet to somewhere between medium and medium rare. This is when the filet is the juiciest and the best texture. Getting the fish filet to the perfect medium isn’t all that easy. The thickness of the filet will be a major determinant of how long you need to cook it.

Justin Young, my old chef at Kraft Food Ingredients gets it perfect every time. He is now the chef/owner at Raven & Lily in Collierville TN https://ravenandlilyrestaurant.com I ordered the salmon the other night and told the waitress to have the chef cook it the way he likes it. This is a safe bet with most well trained chefs as it is what they are taught at culinary school. Justin has been a chef at top white table cloth restaurants from Dijon France to Memphis. I once asked him how most diners at better restaurants prefer their steak and seafood. He says that over 75% like it medium rare.

Unfortunately, some people like their seafood well done. The bad news is that if someone wants their seafood well done, they are possibly the type of person to go on social media to complain that the seafood was dry and flavorless. Being a chef isn’t easy. It is hard to give someone what they want, knowing that the end result isn’t up to the chef’s standards.

Note: Above is a Seafood Veggie Bowl with cod and shrimp cooked to a perfect medium.

My favorite story is about a buddy of mine that orders his steak “MEDIUM RARE PLUS”. What does this mean? Pity the poor waitress that has to go into the kitchen and tell the chef . The chef is probably already on edge because some idiot just ordered scallops well done and already has typed a complaint into YELP saying the scallops were dry. Now my buddy the “HIGH ROLLING REDNECK” wants his steak medium rare plus. Said another way, someone asking for medium rare plus makes that person …SPECIAL…

When in doubt, cook your seafood to just medium. This means that the fish isn’t translucent and is still moist. A good chef will use the Goldilocks Touch Test.

When it is real soft, it is too rare
When it is real hard, it is too well done
When it is medium soft, it is JUST RIGHT

If you are still in doubt, go to Raven and Lily in Collierville

Goals In Life

My goal in life since business school has been to do for my family what my grandfather did for his. Gramps did many things for us, but the most significant was to be a positive example.

My grandfather had every right to be a bitter man. His father died when he was two. His mother remarried and his step father died when he was six. His mother died when he was eight. He was raised in Brooklyn New York by his grandmother. Every summer he would be farmed out to relatives to work on their farms on Long Island and Staten Island New York. It was on Staten Island that he met my grandmother. They got engaged, but before they got married my grandfather went off to fight in WWI (See cover photo)

During the fighting in France Gramps got shot and lost his leg to gangrene. He survived and was shipped back to recover at Walter Read Hospital in Washington DC. While there he wrote my grandmother to tell her that the engagement was off as he was not the same man after the amputation. Of course she wrote him to tell him that she still loved him.

This next piece of the story makes me cry every time I tell it. My grandfather told me this story when I was in college. During a visit he asked me to take him to Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island. My grandmother’s homestead had been moved there and he told me this story sitting in a car in front the building that had been my grandmother’s farmhouse.

(My grandmother’s farmhouse that is part of the Richmondtown historic preservation)

After the war Gramps had been released from Walter Read. He had taken a train from Washington to New York City. The subway to the ferry and then the ferry to Staten Island where he arrived late at night. From the ferry he walked through the night across Staten Island with one leg and crutches arriving at my grandmothers at 4 in the morning. He went up to the front porch and sat there afraid to knock on the door for fear that they wouldn’t accept him.

Of course they accepted them. He and my grandmother married. They had two children, my mother Dorothy and her sister Margaret Mary.

(My mother Dorothy and sister Margaret Mary circa 1930)

Gramps had a successful career at the US Post office. But tragedies struck again. He had a heart attack when he was in his forties and then my grandmother died at the age of 58.

He had 10 grandchildren and we all grew up spending summers with Gramps at his lake house Candlewood Lake in Connecticut. It is there where he taught us so many things. He taught us about hard work. He taught us to garden. He taught us to fish. Most importantly he taught us to be good people and to find positives in life. Gramps had every right to be a bitter man, but he was one of the most positive people I have ever met. He had great faith and decided to be a happy man.

(Jennifer, Brian and Susan fishing at Gramp’s place Candlewood lake. Brian caught the same little bass I had caught 35 years earlier)

I went to visit Gramps at the lake when he was 90 and he told me: ‘Paul, don’t get this old”. I was thinking that life had caught up with him…He followed up with: “Yes I am getting old. I go to bed at night and there is more me out of bed than in the bed. I take off my leg. I take out my teeth. I take out my hearing aid. I take off my glasses. I can’t take out the metal plate in my head from that boating accident in the 60’s, but…”

Gramps died the following summer at the age of 91. A positive influence to the end.