Stockwell - For the Table: Easy, Adaptable, Crowd-Pleasing Recipes

This is a book for a new way of planning and cooking dinner menus that are simpler, more flexible, and more fun. Its here to prove that a dinner party doesnt need to be formal or fussy or even a lot of work to be celebratory and meaningful, and Im here to teach you how.

I believe that the act of gathering around the table is whats actually special and most important about a dinner party. Putting out a couple platters of food prepared just for that table of people, and passing those platters around until everyones had their fillthis sharing feeds more than just bellies. It is what helps us stay connected, form new relationships, and maintain lasting bonds with our chosen families. Now more than ever, this act of intentional gathering for a festive dinner is a useful ritual to bring into our lives. Its uplifting, its fulfilling, and its a lot of fun.

The menus that follow are each built around two large platters for the table. These are not the meat-and-three-sides dinners our grandparents or parents served. While one dish in each menu is often more protein-forward than the other, neither is necessarily the main. Instead, they costar, each giving a shining performance on its own, but together are a true showstopper. Many of the menus include meat, but I dont believe we should all be eating meat all the timethese are special occasion menus, and so I source my meat carefully from local organic farms and enjoy every bite of it. When meat is on the menus that follow, though, I always provide tips for how to feed a meat-free guest, and there are plenty of vegetarian menus too.

Making just two large-format recipes is my favorite way to host dinner for a crowd of any size and works just as well for your weeknight family dinners as it does for entertaining. When you focus on making just two special things for dinner, you can actually have time to bake a cake and change your clothes before dinner too, and everything you make is better for not being rushed in the hustle of too many things. In addition to making life easier, serving dinner family style lets everyone choose what ends up on their plates, and the passing of platters back and forth across the table (or the revisiting of platters on a buffet) creates connection among a group.

The two recipes that anchor each menu are designed to go together, and I hope you will try serving them together, but you can, of course, pick them apart and reconfigure as desired. My menus are organized by season because thats how I like to cook, and what I want to eat depends so much on weather and seasonal availability. So if you do mix and match recipes, its best to do so within a season. In addition to a couple platters, I almost always add a sauce, because Ive found that nothing more easily makes a dinner feel like a special dinner than serving a homemade sauce for the table. Ive left the after-dinner sweet and before-dinner snack planning of the menu up to you though, with an arsenal of easy no- to low-cook snacks and gluten-free desserts that you can add to any menu.

Ive been hosting dinner parties since I was a teenager (I even dabbled in it as a kid), and there is still nothing that makes me happier. Over the last decade plus, Ive worked in the editorial offices and test kitchens of some of the best food magazines and websites, including SAVEUR, Epicurious, and Bon Apptit, and I got my culinary degree at the International Culinary Center in New York City in the process. As a food editor for Epicurious, I learned how to streamline and simplify my recipes as much as possible without sacrificing flavor to make them foolproof for home cooks, and developed more 30-minute weeknight dinners than I can count. I know that your time, dear reader, is precious, and I will never waste it. While working fulltime and overtime in NYC food media, I kept hosting constantly, cooking in a small apartment kitchen with no dishwasher. My lack of time and kitchen space taught me how to focus on what really matters when entertaining, and how to streamline my cooking and prep as much food ahead as possible to minimize dishes and maximize my own enjoyment of my time with my guests. (I now live in the Hudson Valley with a bigger kitchen and a dishwasher, but I still like to cook and entertain this way.) The menus that follow almost all appeared on the dining table in my Brooklyn apartments over the years. They have been put through the test of being served to real live guests, some of them many times, and I promise you they work.

Yes, all the recipes in this book are gluten-free, because I have to eat gluten-free, but you can always add bread (regular or gluten-free), and the very few recipes that use all-purpose gluten-free flour can also be made with regular all-purpose flour. I firmly believe in accommodating any and all dietary restrictions when entertaining, so Ive clearly marked my menus with what diets they accommodate, using the icons that follow:

gluten-free

vegan

meat-free

dairy-free

pescatarian

Each menu also includes suggestions for how to revise or add to the meal if needed to accommodate additional dietary restrictions. Dietary restrictions are here to stay, so its good to know how to roll with the needs of your guests.

I hope this book will inspire and help you gather people around your table for dinner. Its time to have more dinner parties!

Before I dive into sharing my recipes and advice for hosting, I thought I should try to explain why. The day after a dinner party when the thank-you texts from friends start to roll in, I always respond with, Thank YOU for coming! And no, thats not to be cute. I truly feel so grateful for anyone who shows up at my table and trusts their night to me.