(Next month: Vicars and Tarts?)

By Kate Christensen

NOT YOUR MOTHER’S POTLUCK

By the time late February rolls around, I’m visited by a sinking suspicion that the past months of bone-deep chill, rock-hard snow, calcified ice, and knifelike winds will actually never go away and that Maine has somehow slipped into a brutal, permanent glacial micro-climate, a mini Ice Age of its own, while the rest of the world heats up.

Summer was so long ago, it feels like years, decades even, since I’ve gone barefoot in beach sand or picnicked in sunlight. Was that actually me dancing under the stars at that wedding last July? Who was that carefree, lucky person who did those things? Not this hunched, pale, blinking hermit swathed in a thick wool scarf and down coat, my hat’s earflaps frozen to my cheeks, feet insulated in snow boots.

Feeling thoroughly sick of the isolation, hunger, and cold, and itching for some social fun—enough hunkering down in pajamas with my warm dog and husband in the glow of Netflix—there’s only one thing to do: throw a dinner party, fire up the stove, and fill my kitchen with warm bodies to cheer the place up.

But dinner parties are expensive and a lot of work, and I owe people payback invites for meals at their houses over the past year—how to narrow the guest list down to the six or eight people who will fit around our dining table?

Then I hit on the perfect solution, the Tom Sawyer of dinner parties: a potluck.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a kid growing up in Arizona, potlucks were the cool, festive thing to do in my mother’s hippie/boho friend circle. I have visceral memories of tables draped in Indian bedspreads, groaning with pottery bowls filled with turgid lentils and rubbery tofu casseroles next to platters of zucchini, banana, and carrot bread. Think Seals and Croft on the stereo, wind chimes, incense and pot smoke, plenty of facial hair (men), chunky necklaces (women), and unleashed dogs (and kids). Potlucks always made me a little queasy. I hid in a corner with a book, picking at a greasy slab of banana bread, anxious to go home.

But this is 21st century Maine, a place of scrappy practicality, community-mindedness, and respect for tradition. A potluck dinner happens to fulfill all of those regional mandates. I decide it’s time to get rid of the cobwebs/wind chimes and reinvent the whole concept.

So I send out emails, inviting about 20 of my favorite people over on a Saturday night, and telling them to bring food. (Full disclosure: our friends are all good cooks. If you’re going to throw a potluck, this is a huge and indispensable plus. In other words, I wasn’t worried.) “The theme is ‘surprise me,’” I tell them. “The magic of potlucks is that it all works out.”

THINGS HEAT UP

To follow the general rule of thumb in hosting potlucks—namely, that you should provide a protein and a green—I go to the South Portland Hannaford to stock up on ingredients. I’ve decided to make a big pot of Hoppin’ John, that traditional good luck Southern New Year’s dish, with black-eyed peas, golden Carolina rice, and Andouille sausage. It feels appropriate—the year is still fairly new, after all—and it confers a literal meaning on the “luck” in the party’s name. Also, it’s a hearty, nourishing, savory one-pot meal that feeds a crowd and is delicious for days afterward.

For the greens, I make Braised Savoy Cabbage, which tastes like sophisticated-but-homey haute cuisine. It’s an addictive alchemy of sauce-coated, velvety leaves but has only five ingredients besides cabbage, salt, and pepper: Dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, chicken broth, olive oil, and onion.

Once the kitchen is warm and steamy from the pots bubbling on the stovetop, my husband, Brendan, and I set up two long, cloth-draped tables in the dining room and plenty of chairs in a circle in the living room. We clear counter space in the kitchen for prep assembly and a bar. On the tables, we arrange stacked paper plates and bowls, plastic cutlery and cups, napkins, tea candles, and snacks for the centerpieces—potato chips, pistachios, clementines, and chocolates. On the side countertop, we assemble an array of beer, wine, sparkling water, cider, kombucha, ice, along with bottles of rum and whiskey for anyone who can’t even with winter anymore.

By seven, the couch is heaped with coats, and the whole downstairs is full of warmth and conversation. The tables look like a gourmet buffet, an intentional balanced meal of starters, soups, and salads and plenty of hearty main dishes.

Olivia Gunn and Meaghan Maurice bring cheese, bread, and flowers, the classic “there was a Rosemont on the way” offering. Mary Pols plunks a heap of fresh wild Snow Island Oysters on the counter, some as big as a fist, grown by Quahog Bay Conservancy in Harpswell, purchased at Gurnet Trading in Brunswick. She starts shucking them into a plate of ice, with a mignonette alongside, as Dan Abbott flourishes his wife Monica Wood’s signature Deviled Eggs with an air of marital pride. Two beautiful soups arrive, a Creole Callaloo Soup that Rick and Barb Russo have made (“The recipe calls for crab, but I always substitute shrimp,” Rick says, “and warning, it’s got a kick,” so I dive right in), and an equally piquant Orzo and Andouille Soup courtesy of Ari and Breana Gersen. There are two complementary salads, a Shrimp and Artichoke Vinaigrette from Allison and Lincoln Paine, and a Citrus Salad with Cardamom Honey from Desi van Til and Sean Mewshaw. As Desi puts it, “It’s vaguely Moroccan, full of the vitamin C we need in winter, and oh so pretty.” Yes indeed.

“Why is it always the same damn people at these writer parties?” my friend Bill Lundgren mock-grouses as he arrives.

“They’re called our friends, Bill,” I tell him, and we both laugh.

I’m sensing a theme here (besides local literati), and it’s Southern/Mediterranean, full of spice, citrus, sausage, and seafood. For the mains, besides my Braised Cabbage and Hoppin’ John (which I set out with a few bottles of Frank’s hot sauce), there’s Bill’s pot of rich, fragrant lentils, decidedly not the 1970s hippie mush of my youth. I’m happy to see Ron Currie and Lisa Prosienski’s classic Tamale Pie, which warms my Arizona-bred heart. Ron confesses that he researched the perfect potluck dish, and this is what he came up with. One bite and I’m transported back to the Southwest. And Rachael and Seth Harkness have made a luscious chicken dish with oranges and fennel from an Ottolenghi cookbook. “You can actually eat the oranges,” Rachael says proudly. And I do—more vitamin C.

IN FULL SWING

A couple of hours in, I find myself on a chair in my own living room with my second plateful of food, talking to a few friends between bites. Our dog, Angus, circulates among the crowd, trolling for freebies and dropped bits. Brendan’s in the kitchen, wrestling to open the last oyster, a gigantic Pandora’s Box of a monster, and talking to another group of friends. Over the animated discussion of recipes and decision making, I get the sense that we’re all satisfied, except for the usual heartfelt complaints about parking on the West End. The thing about a potluck, I realize as I fork another delicious bite into my mouth, is that people tend to bring their A-game. There’s an element of competitive derring-do. No one wants to look bad. You want your dish to be popular.

As the night winds down, Desi turns on the oven and puts her dessert in to warm—a Panettone Eggnog Bread Pudding. Portions are distributed. Bites are taken. Eyelids flutter and groans of joy are heard. It’s that good.

Another rule of thumb for throwing a potluck is that everyone takes home what they brought. After the last guest departs around midnight, all we have to do is stack the disposable dishes in the recycling bin, shake out the tablecloths, put away our own leftovers, and move all the furniture back to the proper spots.

We awaken the next morning to a clean house and a full fridge, with the happy glow of a successful party, along with the conviction that it’s time for potlucks to enjoy a new heyday. We’re going to throw another one this summer, we decide over leftover Hoppin’ John with a fried egg on top and a hearty sprinkling of Frank’s. We’re already wondering what everyone will bring. 

 

Kate Christensen is the author of seven novels, including The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, and The Last Cruise. She’s written two food-centric memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. She lives with her husband in Portland.