Even for the most skilled hostess, dinner parties can be brutal: if the conversation is light and frothy, chances are the post-meal cappuccinos won’t be. Or vice versa.
The way to pull one off without wanting to throw your DeLonghi coffeemaker or your socially challenged husband out the window afterward is to hire a pro.
Chefs like Lisa Pattman of Midland Park have recently begun taking their aprons—and their heavy-duty cutting boards, commercial-grade knives, and recipes—on the road into local homes for one-night-only engagements.
Even better, they’re taking the sting out of small talk by directing the conversational flow. For a fee that’s not over-the-top—$25 to $35 per guest in Pattman’s case—chefs lead parties by sharing exactly how they prepared the evening’s multi-course dinner.
Pattman is a former Food Network employee who worked on Emeril Lagasse’s and Mario Batali’s shows, and also served as Sting’s personal chef for a time. When her daughter was born ten years ago, Pattman gear-shifted into cooking instruction. In addition to her catering service, Lisa Pattman Unique Custom Catering, she had been running in-store cooking demonstrations for Williams-Sonoma when she launched Tablespoons Cooking Club, her party service, from her home last year.
“People kept telling me, ‘I’d love you to come in and do this instead of me coming out,’” she says. “I decided that, to drum up business, I’d put the onus on them to invite guests.”
Now, in addition to North Jersey, she travels “wherever it’s worth it,” including New York City, to host. She’s even been invited to Spain to do a party.
“This is fun for me—I love to talk in front of people. And the environment is so great. People are here to have fun. We have wine, we keep things light,” Pattman says.
Debbie Kravitz-Bail and husband Doug’s Maplewood home was recently the site of one of Pattman’s cooking-class dinner-party hybrids.
HERE’S HOW: Guests gather around the cooking island (left) to observe professional chef Lisa Pattman (top) as she prepares the evening's meal; Swiss chard for the main course (center); home-owner Debbie Kravitz-Bail enjoys the festivities (bottom).
“This is just a fun evening for everybody, because it gives [friends] a chance to get together and also learn something they can use every day,” says Kravitz-Bail, who is the mother of a 14-year-old and works in product development for Macy’s in Manhattan.
Because chefs typically arrive not only with their own tools but also five-star résumés, even self-described foodies—four of Kravitz-Bail’s eight guests say they cook all the time—can learn something.
The menu for the evening fit a festive New Year’s Eve theme and was dreamed up by Pattman, while Kravitz-Bail provided the hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, and wine.
Guests watched attentively around the kitchen island, wine glasses in hand, as Pattman launched into an explanation of the artfully presented appetizer—curried butternut squash soup with lime yogurt and toasted pumpkin seeds. “Why is this in a shot glass?” one guest asked after the servings were passed around. “It’s a hip way to serve soup right now,” another guest chimed in. “You don’t have to shoot it, you can sip it,” Pattman instructed.
Pattman offered lots of tips, including how to get the most out of butternut squash: “Don’t buy the kind that’s pre-chunked in the grocery store,” it’s not as fresh, she said. “Roast it in the oven with the skin on, then let it cool. It peels right off.”
Like the appetizer, the main course—braised chicken with Swiss chard, tomatoes, and balsamic reduction over fontina-and-chive mashed potatoes—had been prepared by Pattman in advance. The meal she demo-cooked during the party while doling out tricks of the trade (“Get your pan super-hot and do the chicken skin-side down”; “You have to have a good, sharp knife—a sharpening steel is only going to realign your knife, not really sharpen-sharpen it”) would be wrapped up for another time.
When Pattman plated the dinner, assembling the chicken and chard over the potatoes, then poking a sprig of rosemary, feather-like, on top, a roomful of ooh-ing and ahh-ing ensued.
Once forks and napkins were passed around, came the chorus of verdicts: The spectacular-looking food was equally delicious.
While Kravitz-Bail’s guests lingered over dessert—a decadently rich, triple-chocolate mousse cake worthy of holiday festivities—she reflected on pulling off the near-impossible: a perfect dinner party.
“It’s almost too good to be true,” she said as Pattman supervised a kitchen cleanup, part of her cooking-party service. (She also provides guests with a printout of every recipe.)
“All I had to do was provide the venue. The food was delicious, and everybody had a great time,” Kravitz-Bail said. “Nothing could be easier.”
Creative touches to make your New Year’s Eve festivities memorable
Instead of champagne by the glass, buy the bubbly in single-serve bottles. Lots of companies offer mini containers, called champagne splits, which can be purchased by the case for about the same cost as the larger bottles. The individual bottles are fun to sip through a straw. Plus no broken china or dishes to wash!
In some Mediterranean and Latin American countries, it’s good luck to eat 12 grapes—one to represent each month of the coming year—at the stroke of midnight. Buy different varieties and freeze them. Before your guests arrive, arrange the fruit on a crystal dish or platter as a centerpiece for your dessert table. By midnight, the fruit is semi-thawed and ready to eat.
Who doesn’t love fortune cookies? This is just the occasion to see what the future holds. Check out hand-dipped selections with nuts and nonpareils at ediblegiftsplus.com.
What the Pros Know
A few trade secrets from chef Lisa Pattman:
✱ Never buy salted butter—it will alter the dish’s salt content.
✱ If you’re crying over an onion, stick your head in the freezer.
✱ Always mince your own garlic. The pre-minced kind in the jar doesn’t have the flavor.
✱ Any recipe that tells you to add the garlic in with the onion is a terrible recipe; always do the garlic afterward.
✱ Anchovy paste: most people don’t know they’re eating it, but it makes many dishes taste better. It’s kind of a secret ingredient.
✱ “Never buy cooking wine—if you can’t drink it, you can’t cook with it.”
Traveling chefs in the area:
Lisa Pattman Unique Custom
Catering: 201-612-9689,
lisapattmancatering.com.
Chef Loryn Dugan:
973-520-8703, chefloryns.com.
Diane Henderiks, R.D.,
specializes in healthy cooking:
732-922-6269, ditkonline.com
Margaret Noon is president of Slow Foods Northern New Jersey, and a French Culinary Institute-trained chef who teaches small groups, usually fewer than six, about the versatility, and potential deliciousness, of locally sourced foods: 908-654-3242. sustenanceevents.com
Judy Mancini trained at the Culinary Institute of America and specializes in vegan and gluten-free private classes: 201- 981-3318, burdenfreefoods.com
