A Late Summer Dinner Party Before the Harvest
One long table under the oaks in Napa, the week before crush takes everybody I love.
The valley smells like dust and warm fruit by the third week of August, and everyone I know is about to vanish. Crush is coming. So I did what I always do when I feel a door starting to close. I called eight people and told them we were having a late summer dinner party on Saturday at seven, and that they were to bring nothing but themselves and a sweater for later.
Nobody said no. Nobody ever says no in August.
The week everything stops being ours
If you have never lived near a harvest, it is hard to explain what happens to a wine town in September. People stop answering their phones. Dinners get cancelled at four in the afternoon because the sugars came in higher than anyone expected and somebody has to be at the crush pad until two in the morning. My friend Teodora, who runs a tasting room and has the driest sense of humor of anyone in this valley, calls it the disappearing.
In Tuscany the vendemmia does the same thing to a village. I grew up watching my aunts cook enormous, unglamorous meals in the last quiet week, the kind of food that fills a room and then gets forgotten because nobody was taking pictures. That is the meal I wanted. Not a performance. A goodbye that tastes like the end of summer.
The farm stand decides the menu
I did not plan this dinner from a cookbook. I planned it from a wooden crate on the side of Highway 29.
Late August in Northern California is an embarrassment of riches, and it is also a deadline. The peaches are at the exact point where they will be spectacular tonight and mealy on Thursday. The corn is still sweet enough to eat raw, standing in the kitchen, cob in hand, before anyone else arrives. The zucchini have gotten a little too big, which nobody wants to admit, and which risotto forgives entirely.
So the menu wrote itself. Peaches on the grill while people are still arriving and holding their glasses awkwardly. Then a risotto that takes long enough to make that the kitchen fills up around me, which is the actual point of risotto. Then a bowl of figs and a plate of almond cookies I did not make, because I have limits.
Peaches first, because they will not wait
There is a fifteen minute window in a summer evening when the light goes copper and everybody is a little shy and nobody has eaten yet. Grilled peaches are for that window.
You halve them, you put them cut side down on a hot grate, and you leave them alone. That is the whole trick, and it is the trick with most good food. The heat pulls the sugar out and lays a black grid across the flesh, and the fruit goes from crisp to something closer to jam without collapsing. Then torn burrata, basil straight off the plant, chili honey, flaky salt. Eaten standing up, with your fingers, over a cutting board.
Half of them were gone before I got the plate to the table. I have stopped fighting this.
Grilled Peaches with Burrata, Basil, and Chili Honey
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- 1. Heat a grill or grill pan to medium high. The grate should be clean and hot enough that a drop of water skitters.2. Warm the honey and red pepper flakes together in a small saucepan over low heat for 2 minutes, then take off the heat and let steep while you grill.3. Brush the cut sides of the peaches lightly with olive oil.4. Place the peaches cut side down on the hotgrate and leave them alone for 4 to 5 minutes, until deep grill marks form andthe fruit releases easily. Do not move them early.5. Flip and grill 2 to 3 minutes more, just until warmed through. The peaches should be soft at the edges but still hold their shape.6. Tear the burrata over a large board or platter and arrange the warm peaches around and on top of it.7. Spoon the chili honey over everything, tear the basil across the top, and finish with flaky salt, black pepper, and a thread of olive oil.8. Serve immediately with grilled sourdough, while the peaches are still warm and the burrata is still cool.
Notes
How to throw a late summer dinner party without losing the day
The reason I can do this on a Saturday and still be a person on Sunday is that I have gotten ruthless about what actually matters.
Two dishes I cook, and everything else is bought or torn or poured. One is finger food that needs no plate. One is a single pot that feeds everyone. Dessert is fruit and something from a bakery box. The table gets linen and candles and absolutely no centerpiece, because a centerpiece is a wall between people who are trying to talk.
I set the table at four, when it is still too hot to be outside, so that at seven I am not the woman running back and forth with forks. At five I put four bottles of ONEHOPE Sonoma Rosé in a galvanized tub of ice, because a cold bottle already open is the fastest way to make people stop apologizing for arriving. I stop cleaning at six. Every late summer dinner party I have ever ruined, I ruined by trying to do one more thing after six.
The risotto is where everyone ends up in the kitchen
I do not know why I pretend to be surprised by this anymore. You stand at the stove with a wooden spoon and a ladle and a glass of wine, and within four minutes there are five people leaning on the counter behind you, and someone is cutting corn off the cob without being asked, and someone else is telling a story about a man they dated in Bologna in 2011.
Sweet corn and zucchini, lemon at the very end, enough butter that I will not tell you the amount. It is a Tuscan technique doing California work, which is more or less my whole life. The corn milk goes in with the stock, which is the part people always ask about afterward, and which costs nothing and changes everything.
We ate it out of shallow bowls at the long table under the oaks, with the last of the light coming sideways through the rows.
The long table, the low light
By ten it was cold enough for the sweaters I had told them to bring, and someone had gone inside for a blanket, and the candles were guttering in the small wind that comes down the valley after dark. The figs sat in a bowl in the middle of the table getting slowly demolished. Teodora took her shoes off. Somebody’s dog fell asleep under the bench.
Nobody wanted to leave, and I think it was because we all knew what Monday looked like.
This is what I have come to believe about feeding people at the end of a season. You are not cooking dinner. You are building a little fixed point that everyone can steer back toward when the work swallows them. Next week they will be exhausted and covered in grape must and they will not text me back for a month, and that is fine, because we did this first.
The peaches will be gone by Thursday. That was always the assignment.
Sweet Corn and Zucchini Risotto with Lemon and Basil
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- 1. Cut the kernels from the corn into a wide bowl. Stand each stripped cob back up and scrape it firmly with the back of a knife to release the corn milk. Reserve the kernels and the milk separately.2. Bring the stock to a bare simmer in a saucepan and keep it hot on a back burner. Add the corn milk to the stock and stir.3. In a wide heavy pot, heat the olive oil with 2tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Add the onion with a good pinch of salt and cook gently for 8 minutes, until soft and translucent but not browned.4. Add the zucchini and garlic and cook 5 minutes more, stirring, until the zucchini is just tender at the edges. Season with salt.5. Add the rice and stir for 2 minutes, until the grains are coated and the edges look translucent.6. Pour in the wine and stir until it has almost completely evaporated.7. Begin adding the hot stock one ladle at a time, stirring often and waiting until each addition is nearly absorbed before adding the next. Keep the heat at a lively simmer. This will take 18 to 22minutes.8. When the rice is nearly al dente, stir in the corn kernels and one more ladle of stock. Cook 3 minutes more. The risotto should be loose enough to spread slowly when spooned onto a plate.9. Take the pot off the heat. Beat in the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter and the Parmigiano vigorously, then the lemon zest and juice. Taste and correct the salt.10. Rest the risotto 2 minutes off the heat, tear the basil over the top, and serve in shallow bowls with more cheese at the table.
