'tis the Season

We're smack dab in the middle of the holiday season, and the gatherings and various festivities that accompany it are well underway. Now is a good time for reminder on holiday party etiquette on the part of the guest - a discussion that dovetails nicely with a somewhat similar discussion held over at I Am Not a Chef blog.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, a discussion emerged between Gastro Gal and myself regarding proper etiquette when a guest is bringing a dish - in this case an appetizer. My plan was to do Calibresi skewers of grapette tomatoes (the last from my garden), balled goat cheese to resemble buffalo mozzarella and pesto also made of basil from my garden and all finished with a drizzle of a balsamic reduction. I had planned to prepare the skewers and finish with the pesto and reduction at the hosts house. The point of contention being: should the appetizer be complete upon arrival? Is it appropriate to assume that some preparation done at the location of the gathering, however small, is OK? Gastro Gal was definitely on the side of "No, and hell no!", maintaining that the dish should be complete and ready to go so as not to place undo burden on the host. Now, this is a common sense approach, and truly all I would have required was a teaspoon, and 2 minutes to complete my plating. Still, the point was a solid one. The workaround was simple enough: I simply drizzled my reduction onto the plate, filled a ramekin with the pesto and placed in the middle of the platter and arranged the skewers around the ramekin. It was both functional and decorative at the same time and did not at all distract from my original design of the dish. Consider then, the guest who has agreed to make mashed potatoes and shows up with a pot and a sack of unpeeled spuds. It happens, and we all have accounts to look back upon.

So, a kind word in closing: if you are bringing a dish to any gathering, unless you have made specific arrangements with the host, the dish had best be completed and ready to serve as is. Period. In my case, I was indeed fortunate, as this was our host's first time at throwing a Thanksgiving feast, and the task did weigh heavy on her brow. Any intrusion into her timetable was one more fly in the ointment. I can say with relief and gratitude, I was not one of those flies.