An Ode to Ina

Last month I threw a dinner party for 12 or so friends from law school. It had been too long since I’d entertained in my home and also had a few new recipes up my sleeve that I’d been hankering to test out on a trapped audience. But two days before party-time disaster struck. My oven inexplicably sputtered to a halt. The diagnosis was terminal, it would need to be put down, out of mercy more than anything.

In a day’s time the whole menu needed revised to a strictly no-stove array. It was like being plunked down into an episode of Dinner: Impossible. Which is essentially how consoled myself -- by pretending I was on my own cooking and entertaining show. How would the party go on? Would our heroine resort to ordering take-out? Tune in Saturday night to find out!

In desperate times such as these, if cooler heads are to prevail, the only thing to remember is WWTBCD? Translation: what would the Barefoot Contessa do?

I have a not-so-secret girl-crush on the Barefoot Contessa. I love everything about her, including but not limited to, her easy-breezy Hamptons style, home-tilled garden full of fresh tomatoes, herbs and berries, blushing love of cocktails and abundance of recipes culling from gourmet to comfort-food. Above all else, she is the consummate hostess. Clearly, she spends hours preparing everything down to last details but manages to pass everything off to guests as if it were nothing at all, just a few soufflés and salads she’s thrown together with ease.

And those curves! So womanly and knowledgeable and bursting with butter-cream! They are the curves of a lady-cook I can trust. (The emphasis is directed at you, Giadia DiLaurentis -- how can I be expected to take seriously a chef who looks as if the only food she’s ever eaten in her entire life has gone straight to her boobs and no where else?!). The Fiancé once commented that her husband, Jeffrey, must be the luckiest man alive. I cannot disagree. Swoon.

My dinner party, in the end, was a success. Turns out if you supply guests with enough blood-orange martinis, no one is any the wiser that the menu has been cobbled together last-minute out of salad mix, cheese logs and a Foreman grill. As far as I know no one left hungry, few sober and, hopefully, none were able to tell that I hadn't actually sat down in twelve hours.

I’d like to think that maybe, maaaybe, the Contessa would have been proud.