Wine In My Kitchen: Cooking and Reading Everyday

By Karen Tripson

Extreme Entertaining: Invite the Boss to Dinner

A menu and recipe inspired by Marcella Hazan and special wines to serve with each course.

"To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue." - William F Buckley Jr.

Next to a prospective mother-in-law, your boss is probably the highest risk dinner guest. What's at stake besides your future? Entertaining is up there with any of those heart-pounding, white-knuckle activities. Why do people engage in adrenaline sports? You feel so alive if you live through it — and if you don't, well, you get big points for trying. In the case of your spouse's mom, it's ultimately unavoidable. So as a strategy you might as well jump in quickly rather than wait for it to be a formality-that's good offense. In the case of your employer, you might avoid it forever, which would be the perfect way to handle it with certain individuals. But with the right person, if you pull it off, wow. This is old fashioned career advancement with nothing to loose but your pride.

Make it Look Easy — and Luxe
The rules of entertaining are doubly important here, as there is only one outcome: fabulous. Plan, plan, plan the menu so you are with your guests almost every minute and there is no final fiddling with recipes in the kitchen that could fray your nerves or delay dinner. Choose delicious, expensive, low risk food that can be prepared ahead. Nothing is too good for you is the sentiment. Before show time set the table, with the dinner wine open and ready to pour, and the appetizers out. Put the dessert plates where you can reach them quickly. Serve dinner exactly one hour after the guests arrive. Eat leisurely. Encourage lingering. Don't rush to clear the table or serve the dessert.

"Would it have been cheaper to take them out?" My spouse likes to kid me. That has been true, a few times, but there is nothing like a home cooked meal and when you are competing with colleagues who belong to golf courses, invest in truffles. I insist on following my own house rules, no matter who the guests are. Spare no expense having excellent quality food. Never spend more than $20 a bottle for wine and have lots of it. Always ask ahead of time about allergies, vegetarianism or intense dislikes. There's no point in the menu being a surprise that ends up giving the host a heart attack when a guest announces after the main event is served that politics prevent them from eating Sea Bass, in any sauce.

When It's Really Important, Channel Through Marcella
About 20 years of entertaining successes and disasters went into planning this menu. To make me feel confident, I leaned on my hero Marcella Hazan. She didn't let me down. I'm gainfully employed with a future. The only surprise was the guest of honor's when I offered the top of the line in non-alcoholic wine, which I had learned was the only choice when inquiring about allergies and oysters.

Appetizer: I had an oyster loving crowd and a restaurant nearby that sells them shucked. If you don't, cold shrimp or crabmeat is equally simple and nice.

Main: Inspired by a Marcella Hazan lasagna recipe, it is rich enough to satisfy meat lovers with intense wild mushroom flavors and béchamel sauce instead of the dense white cheeses you see bulking up American variations. The price of dried boletus mushrooms is roughly equivalent to fillet of beef, sea bass or leg of lamb. (Here is the original recipe in an easy print PDF format. If you do not have the Acrobat Reader 5.1 installed, get a free download at Adobe.)

Dessert: The flour-less cake was store bought. The sherbet was also inspired by a Marcella Hazan recipe from the same book as the lasagna, More Classic Italian Cooking. The port was more than $20 a bottle, but that's a separate house rule that also covers cognacs.