Good-Tempered Food, Good-Tempered Friends

This past Saturday night, we invited our friends Hillary and Steve over for a very casual dinner with their kids. 

I always love to do a bit of styling. It doesn't take very long to create something pretty and I think the effect is always worth it.  For this meal, I anchored the tablescape with a chunk of coral and let some clippings of bougainvillea roam freely around it. A few votive candles and some sprigs of greenery from a flowering hedge...and voila.

Piero whipped up some wienerschnitzel for the children and they ate their dinner in the garden while we sipped aperitifs by the pool and caught up on each other's lives.

The Bloomsbury Cooler (serves 8)

In a large pitcher, mix one cup fresh mint leaves and one cucumber, thinly sliced. Add two cups Absolut Ruby Red Grapefruit vodka and two cups fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 10 lemons). Add simple syrup to taste (I used about 6 oz.) This is your "potion." Serve over ice with equal parts club soda. It's sweetly tart and totally refreshing.

For our starter course, The Divine Italian made six pounds of meules meunieres. In a testament to their deliciousness, the shells mounted up at an alarming rate.

Dinner was grilled monkfish drizzled with gremolata, along with pan-sauteed fava beans on a bed of wild arugula, mache and pea sprouts. That's my husband on the right, looking deservedly proud of himself. (Piero, you rock.)

For dessert, I served Nigella Lawson's almond cake (from "How to Be A Domestic Goddess".) It was ridiculously easy to make. You toss all the ingredients into a Cuisinart (including an entire tube of marzipan -- mmm!) and pour the batter into a springform pan. 

We ate it with sweetened creme fraiche and blackberries.

After their movie ("Five Children and It"), the rascals came downstairs for a piece of See's chocolate. The decision-making process was arduous.

It was a lovely night. Hillary is leaving for Tibet next week on a ten day expedition with her father. She is my most intrepid friend, having recently hiked Mount Kilimanjaro on her own; in addition, she's planning an upcoming trip to Antarctica. Adventure obviously runs in her genes. Her father is a career diplomat and former ambassador to England. The two of them are going to explore the frontiers of Lhasa and beyond. I'm so excited for her. Take lots of pictures, Hillary!

Even after everyone had left and we finished tidying up, it felt as though some of the night's joie de vivre still lingered in the air.  

I firmly believe that a house is like a cast-iron frying pan -- in order to achieve its full potential, it needs to be seasoned. Just as a much-used pan has traces of all the meals that have been cooked inside it, so a house retains a sense memory of every moment experienced within its walls. By providing your home with a bounty of good times, you season its soul...and yours as well.