The Perfect Menu

The Perfect Menu

Sunday, 5-25-25

I’m so excited. My first dinner party ever in my own apartment! I’ve put up my framed Chat Noir poster, and I’ll get some fresh flowers the guy sells down the street. I really want to impress my boss, Nancy, the food editor, and my co-workers, especially after I didn’t know what ganache was and pronounced jicama like jikama. Thank God my neighbor has a bigger table with matching chairs he’ll let me use.

How I got the job as research assistant for Food & Wine magazine right out of Ohio State U I’ll never know. I don’t know much about cooking, but my dream is to become an editor. My resume is really paltry and I won’t get anywhere if I don’t nail this job. So I’ve got to convince my guests that I’m not totally clueless in the kitchen. I’ve been deep-diving food blogs and recipe sites all week, and I think I’ve put together the perfect menu. I’ve got a degree. Surely I could figure this out.

APPETIZER

Buttered Leek and Gruyère Galette

ENTRÉE

Duck a l’Orange

Manchego Cheese Ravioli

Sautéed Haricots Verts with Almond Slivers

Roasted Butternut Squash with Curry Leaves

DESSERT

Burnt Basque Cheesecake

Tuesday, 5-27-25

Shit. I promised everybody an exquisite homemade meal, but who would think that my boss is vegan and that my co-worker Luna is cheese-intolerant and that the photographer, Liam, is allergic to gluten? What would Emily English do? She’d pivot. I can do that. I’ve had to adapt so much since moving to New York City. Time to simplify. Voilà as the great French chefs would say!

ENTRÉE

Vegan Mushroom Risotto

Vegan French Onion Shepherd’s Pie with Lentils and Cauliflower Potato Mash

Roasted Butternut Squash with Curry Leaves

Green Beans with Almond Slivers

DESSERT

Homemade Cranberry Frangipane Tart

Saturday, 6-7-25, 4 p.m.

I shouldn’t be spending time writing in my journal, but I’m trying to calm myself. I followed the risotto recipe exactly so how did it come out so gluey? Oh, crap, don’t stir constantly. Didn’t see that. You’d think something fancy would require constant stirring. My shepherd’s pie didn’t look anything like the photo. The mash floated down into the bottom lentil layer like a submarine, and all the ingredients mingling together looked nothing like a pie. I do have some leftover lentils I could use.

Two grocery stores and three bodegas didn’t have almond slivers, and then I totally forgot about them. They’re so small, they can’t be important.

The tart is molten red blobs drowning in a sea of burned crumbs.

I removed the batteries from the smoke detector, opened the windows to get rid of that smell, and sprayed the apartment with Spicy Cinnamon air freshener. That should work.

6 p.m.

DAMN! I can hardly type this because I just slashed my finger trying to cut that dumb squash. The bleeding should stop before my guests arrive in an hour. I wish I had time to pick up something else for dessert at least. But I’ve got to be here to change my bandage every few minutes. I wonder if I should get stitches. No, I can’t afford the time. Well, I did get lots of wine from the clearance rack. It took me an hour, but I finally was able to peel off all the $5.99 sales labels. Maybe everybody will get so drunk they won’t even notice how bad the dinner is.

DINNER

Lentils

Green Beans with Mushrooms

DESSERT

Gluten-Free Caramel Chocolate Chip Girl Scout Cookies

10 p.m.

That was a disaster. Even my apartment’s décor failed. Liam looked around and said, “Such a different aesthetic.” He only says “different” for photos that aren’t up to par. Nancy brought a delicious vegetable salad. Unlike my lentils or green beans, the sides of her salad bowl were scraped clean. She said, “Uh huh” when I set out my food and looked at me as if to say, “Where’s the rest?” Then when I put the Girl Scout cookies on the table, I saw her close her eyes and laugh.

Luna brought flowers, but I didn’t have another vase to put them in so to be a good host, I threw mine out and put hers in the vase.

The guests barely drank half a bottle of wine. As Luna tasted it, her cheeks bulged out. Later I saw that her cloth napkin that I’d borrowed was soaking wet.

Still, the conversation was good. And everyone seemed to enjoy a few rounds of Exploding Kittens.

Friday, 6-13-25

I thought for sure I’d be fired after that disastrous dinner. I heard Luna tell Liam that she had stopped at McDonald’s afterward. Each day that went by, I hoped that I somehow had escaped any repercussions, but today the managing editor emailed me to tell me to come to her office at 3 p.m. I was nauseous all day. I tried to unobtrusively sweep my little desk stuff into my purse along with a Food & Wine notepad as a souvenir. I only was able to put in a few minutes of work researching Greek olive varieties while the hours crawled by. Maybe I could move back in with my parents and get a job at The Columbus Dispatch.

Finally, I took my long walk of shame to the editor’s office. Her dress was fire, though she probably was a little old for it. She looked as if she was in a good mood, which I thought was kind of rude when she was about to fire me. She told me how she’d heard about my dinner party. I couldn’t help bursting into tears and babbling about the menu I had planned to make until everything went sideways. She smiled like my mother does and told me that with my obvious inexperience, she was impressed that I had held a dinner party at all, which stung a bit, but fair.

She said she wanted to offer me a column, one she’d been thinking about for a long time but had been looking for the right person to write it. It would be called “A Newbie Cook’s Kitchen Disasters.” Was I interested? A column? This could be my launching pad to greatness! Perhaps I could try baking a pie. How hard could that be?