Following on from my last post on Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge , I’m staying on the other side of the Atlantic for this one too: The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris.
The Dinner Party, published in 2017, is a collection of 11 darkly humorous short stories depicting modern American life. Ferris satirises the failings and insecurities of (mainly) middle-class professionals. The follies and cruelties of male behaviour are particularly laid bare: there is vanity, aggression, dishonesty, selfishness, narcissism, infidelity… but the reader is left in no doubt that underlying all this is self-doubt and an acute lack of confidence.
In A Night Out a betrayed wife, Sophie, unleashes a shocking and unexpected revenge on her errant husband, Tom, abandoning him when they are on their way out to meet her parents to pursue the woman whom she thinks is his mistress, and along the way cancelling their shared credit cards. Ignoring Tom’s desperate texts and phone calls, Sophie reflects: ‘Tom was without any means of his own anymore, and now he was cut off; she had separated herself from him at last. She should have done it a month ago. Who was Tom when his wife disappeared and his money dried up and his lover was meeting another man in a bar?’
The Pilot focuses on Leonard, an aspiring screen writer working on a pilot for a show, who has been invited – by mass email – to a party hosted by an established screenwriter and actor Kate Lotvelt. Kate’s fame and success serve only to exacerbate Leonard’s anxieties and insecurities which are depicted through his thought-processes at every stage of the lead up to the party, from the moment he sends a reply to the initial email:
‘He didn’t expect a reply. It was a mass email – she couldn’t reply to everyone who replied. She was busy, she was wrapping the third season of her show. He would have liked a reply. After a few days went by, he’d have liked a reply a lot.’
The Dinner Party, the title story of the collection, was first published in August 2008 in The New Yorker. A married couple – Amy and her unnamed husband (he is only ever referred to as ‘he’) – are in their flat awaiting the arrival of friends they have invited for dinner. The husband – from whose perspective the story is narrated – is drinking steadily and clearly not looking forward to the evening. His complaint that he already knows how the evening will pan out – ‘”They come in… we take their coats. … We self-medicate with alcohol. … Everyone laughs a lot, but later no one can say exactly what was so witty. Compliments on the food. … Then they start to yawn, we start to yawn..”’ suggests his awareness of the predictability and futility of existence. His dread of the evening to come is intensified by his expectation that the couple will be announcing their pregnancy, a concern that triggers a darkly humorous exchange:
‘”That’s another thing,” he said. “Their big surprise. Even their goddamn surprises are predictable.”’… And we’ll take in the news like we’re genuinely surprised. …And that’s just the worst, how predictable our response to their so-called news will be.”
“Well, okay,” she said. “When that happens, why don’t you suggest they have an abortion?”
He chewed his ice and nodded “That would shake things right up, wouldn’t it?”
“Tell them we can do it right here with a little Veuve Clicquot and one of the bedroom hangers.”’
However, the evening turns out to be anything but predictable with the couple failing to arrive. And when the husband goes to their house to find out what has happened, he discovers a party in full-flow – one to which he and his wife have not been invited. Amy’s response when he returns to their flat and tells her of his discovery expresses the existential angst that many of Ferris’s characters seem to feel: ‘”Why do I have this life?”‘
Being a story about a dinner party – albeit one that never takes place – there are a number of food references . Whilst the husband gets steadily drunk and complains about their guests, Amy is preparing the meal: ‘water coming to boil on the stove, meat seasoned on the butcher block. Other vegetables, bright and doomed, waited their turn on the counter.’ As time moves on and the guests don’t arrive the husband starts eating his way through the different courses:
‘He had finished the cheese and crackers, the mini caprese salad she’d made with grape tomatoes, and the figs wrapped in bacon, caramelized with a homemade glaze. Now he was sitting on a bar stool eating a saucer of the mushroom risotto that was meant to go with the lamb’.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Amy is not eating the food, but rather phoning around the local hospitals to see if their friends have been admitted and worrying about what’s happened to them. As she says to her husband – ‘”This isn’t like them… and you know it’s not like them, and you’re not being helpful.”’ Having said that, if the husband knew anything about cooking, he would have known that risotto is not a dish that can be made in advance and heated up when required – it has to be eaten as soon as it’s ready – so arguably he’s doing a good turn by making sure his wife’s cooking doesn’t go to waste.
I usually eat risotto as a main with a salad accompaniment. This time I did it as a side to a roasted chicken thigh, which proved a bit too much for me but it depends how big an appetite you have!
MUSHROOM RISOTTO
Ingredients: Serves 2-3 (as a main) or 4-6 (as a side)
20g dried mushrooms
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped finely.
1 knob of butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil
200g arborio rice
400g fresh mushrooms, sliced.
200 ml white wine
Salt and pepper to season
A generous handful of grated Parmesan and a thick slice of butter
Method:
The risotto takes 25-30 minutes to make, but you need to factor in time (approx. 30 minutes) to rehydrate the dried mushrooms: wash them, place in a bowl, pour over 400ml boiling water and leave to soak.
When you are ready to begin the next stage, fry the chopped onion in a large saucepan in 1 tablespoon olive oil and a knob of butter over a medium heat for a few minutes until softened (but not brown). Add the chopped garlic and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to make sure the mixture doesn’t catch.
Drain the dried mushrooms, reserving the soaking liquid, chop them finely and add to the onion and garlic mixture. Cook for a couple of minutes before adding the fresh mushrooms. Stir briefly with a wooden spoon and leave to cook for about 5 minutes until they are softening.
Add the arborio rice and stir to cover the grains in the oil and butter mixture. Then add the wine if using. At this stage season with a pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper. When the wine has been absorbed, begin adding the liquid from soaking the mushrooms a ladleful at a time, adding the next ladleful when the previous one has been absorbed. You need to keep stirring the risotto all the time. If more liquid is needed after the mushroom liquor has been absorbed you can switch to water. You are aiming for a creamy mixture, but the rice should still have a bite to it – if it tastes a bit chalky, it needs more liquid.
When the mixture is the right consistency, turn off the heat, add a generous slab of butter and a handful of grated parmesan. Check the taste – add more seasoning if need be, and more butter and parmesan if desired.
